Fuck.
I stood. “Get in there. Don’t care how you fuckin’ do it.” I strode out of the living room and into my bedroom and threw my bag on the bed. “I’m on the next flight.”
I hung up.
I’ve never felt fear before. Had nothing to fear since it was beaten and tortured out of me when I was a kid. But suddenly that catapulted into me because I didn’t need to take a flight to New York in order to check what was up with London.
I knew.
I’d made a fatal error. I’d spent a week with London and Mother found out about it.
No attachments.
Mother was making sure of that and now London was paying the price.
“FUCK. YOU!” I screamed.
His beefy arm raised and then his hand smacked me across the face so hard I fell to my knees. I put my palm on my throbbing cheek, the impact like I’d been hit with a wooden paddle.
I would never submit to these assholes. They could beat me until my last breath. I wasn’t giving in to them.
“No. You’re the one who will be fucked.” He laughed and the sound was like fingernails running down a chalkboard. I wanted to take his fingernails and rip each one off and shove them into his eyeballs. I had no idea where that came from because I wasn’t like that. I always tried to find the good in people. But this man grinned and looked giddy when he inflicted pain. He liked hurting others. He enjoyed it and that wasn’t just mean-hearted, it was evil and cruel.
I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d been kidnapped. But I was taken a week after Kai walked out and I knew that because I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I’d counted the days, hoping it would get easier? every morning when I woke. It hadn’t.
I’d tried to get back to my routine, but I’d been in a daze, unable to sleep or study. Even Ernie noticed a change in me and asked if I was okay.
I told him I was stressed over school, but that was a lie, and I think he knew it by the way he shook his head and frowned as if disappointed in something.
I hated myself for thinking about Kai and yet no matter what I did, he was there in my thoughts. Maybe that was how they kidnapped me so easily. I’d opened my door to what I thought was my order of Thai food and the next moment, blackness. I hadn’t even had time to scream.
And since then, I’d been drugged with some kind of sedative. I was transported in a windowless van and switched vehicles several times, but I couldn’t tell who moved me or what anyone looked like because my vision was all fucked up. I was force fed and had to pee at the side of the road before being thrown in the van again.
Finally, they stopped drugging me and I started to process the reality of the situation. And it was so terrifying that I wanted the drugs back. I wanted to stay in the fog and not wake up again until I was back home. I cried for hours in the van, quietly so they wouldn’t hear me, but they were choking sobs of fear. The unknown gripping my chest so tightly I hyperventilated.
Once the tears were gone, the anger rose and that was where I was emotionally when the van stopped. I was angry at them. Angry at myself for crying. Angry at opening the door in my loft. Angry at feeling helpless.
I was dragged from the van, and taken inside a massive house. I only had a second to process it, but the place obviously belonged to someone exceptionally wealthy with the elaborate front hall that had beautiful paintings on the peachy-brown stucco walls. I heard voices approaching and they weren’t speaking English. It sounded like Spanish.
The bruising grip on my arm tightened as he yanked me forward and I stumbled. “Move.”
He pulled me down a hall, opened a door, and I was dragged down a flight of stairs. A few more steps and another door, which he opened, then shoved me inside. He stood in the doorway as I did a quick scan of the room with cement walls and no windows. The anger had invaded, but the fear was fighting for the top position because being locked in here… it was my worst nightmare.
I swallowed back the bile as I faced the man. “Whatever you plan… it will be by force because I won’t do it any other way.”
He smiled. It was a cruel, malicious smile that revealed his one crooked, lower front tooth. Despite the sweltering heat, shivers ran through me and I crossed my arms in an attempt to control my shaking.
“We’ll see.” He slammed the door and the lock clicked.
Oh, God.
Even though I knew the door was locked, I still tried it. I even attempted to undo the screws of the doorknob with my fingernails, but I broke all ten of them in the process.