Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

2. Daisy

Iwas drifting through a blissful darkness when heavy footsteps pulled me from sleep.

I struggled to get my bearings as the man in the ski mask entered the room with a tray of food. Usually I heard the key in the door first, but sleep had become my sanctuary in the hours between food drops and escorted trips to a utilitarian bathroom down the concrete hall outside the room where I was kept prisoner.

Only a little bit of light leaked in from a row of narrow glassless windows set into the wall under the ceiling, but I’d had more food deliveries than I could count, so I was guessing I’d been here at least a week, maybe longer.

The door swung shut behind the guard but I didn’t bother making a run for it. I’d tried that exactly once in the early days of my captivity. Not only had the door locked automatically when it shut, but I’d gotten a punch to the face for my trouble.

My jaw still hurt.

Like all the guards, this one was big and obviously male, but the ski mask and his clothes — jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt — hid anything that might have given me a clue to his identity, except for a tattoo on the back of his hand, some kind of ax with a thick handle that looked like it was made of sticks.

He set the tray on the floor near the door, then turned to leave.

“How much longer am I going to be here?” My voice bounced off the brick walls of the room and was distorted by the intermittent rush of water that came from beyond my prison.

“Take it up with the boss,” the guard said, unlocking the metal door.

“I’d love to. Can you ask him to pencil me in for tonight?” It wasn’t the first time my dad had resorted to harsh measures to make his point, but this was ridiculous. This wasn’t taking my credit cards or kicking me out of the house.

He’d had Calvin kidnap me, was holding me prisoner, clearly trying to teach me a lesson because I’d moved in with the Beasts.

“Tell him… tell him I’m sorry. That he was right.” It hurt to say it out loud, not because I had a problem admitting when I was wrong, but because I’d started to care about the Beasts. I’d given my virginity to Wolf, had gotten close to Otis, had wanted to get closer to Jace.

It was both humiliating and painful.

The guard pulled the door closed and the lock clicked into place with a finality that drained me of hope.

I walked over to the tray by the door, the concrete floor cold under my bare feet. I didn’t know what had happened to my heels, but I assumed they’d fallen off when Calvin grabbed me off the road. At least I’d been wearing jeans when I’d been kidnapped after work — my nice ones, but they were still better than a skirt.

I picked up the tray and took it to the twin-size mattress on the floor. It never stopped being weird to see the gourmet salad and smoothie (not the kind I made myself, but still healthy, with fruit and yogurt and protein powder that left an aftertaste on my tongue), the whole-grain bread and bougie bottled water.

The cognitive dissonance was enough to make me feel crazy — eating food that might be served at Chasen’s, the high-end bistro favored by tourists in Blackwell Falls, while being held prisoner, and not the princess-in-a-tower kind of prisoner either.

Leave it to my dad, the king of discipline, to prioritize healthy food. He’d always insisted we eat “clean,” part of the reason I was so rigid about my morning smoothie, among other things.

I had to force myself to take a drink of the smoothie, not because it wasn’t good but because after days of nothing but health food, I was starting to dream about Syd’s cheeseburgers, gooey pizza, donuts.

Basically anything loaded with fat and sugar.

I’d never questioned the health food I ate as a matter of routine, but now that I didn’t have a choice it felt stupidly restrictive. Why hadn’t I enjoyed the good stuff when I’d had the chance?

I picked up the plastic fork on the tray and dug into the salad (chicken with strawberries and pecans) while I looked around the room, hoping an escape route would materialize even though I knew it was hopeless. I’d been trying to find a way out since I’d first woken up on the mattress with a raging headache.

My prison was just a brick room with rectangular windows sans glass near the ceiling. Every now and then the rush of water sounded from outside, the spray making it in through the openings, and I thought maybe I was being held near the dam downriver from the falls that rushed behind my mom’s house.

To escape, I’d have to ditch the guard — not just the one who brought me food and took me to the bathroom, but the ones who stood in the hallway outside my door. Then I’d have to find my way out of wherever I was being held, hope I could do it without running into other guards.

And I had no weapon. Even my utensils were plastic.

A wave of despair washed over me and I heard my mom’s voice in my head.

You’re stronger than you know.

It gave me some comfort, but comfort wasn’t going to get me out of here. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed a rescue.

I heard Jace’s voice in my head, calling me princess, and hated myself. He’d been right about me all along.

My private humiliation turned into something cold and fierce, and I vowed I’d never be this helpless again. If — when — I got out of here, I would never again let someone like Calvin get close enough to hurt me. I’d make sure I could defend myself, that I didn’t have to rely on someone like the Beasts to save me.

Thinking of them was like sticking an ice pick into my chest. They’d killed Blake. Proof of it had been all over Blake’s old phone. I’d been racing home to grab my things, my mind a tornado of shock and denial, when Calvin had kidnapped me.

I’d never gotten the chance to confront them about what they’d done, but it wasn’t like that mattered.

They’d killed him.

I’d known it was a possibility. Even as I’d let myself get close to them — to Wolf and Otis anyway — I’d known.

But I hadn’t wanted to believe it. I’d been falling for them — hard and fast — and I’d papered over the possibility that they were killers.

When I’d seen the texts on Blake’s phone, all I’d wanted was to get as far away from them as possible. Now I couldn’t help regretting that I hadn’t had the chance to confront them.

There were things I wanted to know. Why did they do it? Why did they confess when they could have let me take the fall? Why didn’t they — especially Wolf — tell me the truth? They’d already done the time, it wasn’t like telling me was going to make a difference.

And there was another question, one I hated voicing even in the privacy of my own mind: did they care that I was gone?

Pathetic, right?

It shouldn’t have mattered how they felt about me. Not when they’d killed Blake.

But I couldn’t help it. I missed them. I missed Wolf’s quiet reassurance and the way Otis made it clear looking out for me was a foregone conclusion. I even missed Jace’s snide comments and the way he thought I was a huge pain in his ass (a feeling that was definitely mutual).

I tried not to think about the possibility that Calvin had moved my car before Wolf, Otis, and Jace found it at the end of the turnoff to the house at the top of the falls.

I didn’t know what had happened after Calvin knocked me out — there was always the possibility that he’d cleaned up his mess, took my bag to make it look like I’d just walked away — but I was banking on the fact that he’d wanted to GTFO before someone saw me passed out in his car.

That meant the Beasts would find my bag in the passenger seat of the Mustang. They’d realize I didn’t have my phone, that I’d left everything behind. They’d know something was wrong.

I hoped.

I thought back to the times I’d been with Wolf. If I closed my eyes, let the sound of rushing water blot out my mental noise, I could almost feel his chest under my hand, could almost see the way he looked at me, his eyes burning with the blue fire that seared my soul.

I could see the gold flecks in Otis’ eyes, could feel his oil-stained hands sliding into my hair, his breath on my lips just before he kissed me.

Would they look for me? Or would they consider it one less pain in their collective asses?

I didn’t have the answers. There was only one thing I knew for sure: whatever had been between us was dead and buried.

It had to be.