Chapter 20 Kaia
KAIA
He’s going to kill me.
The only reason he didn’t shoot me on the dock is because he’s going to kill me in the dungeon cells where his daughter can’t intervene.
Flynn’s iron-like grip around my throat tightens by a fraction as he drags me through the familiar heavy door leading down to the dungeon.
My heels kick and scrape against the stone steps while my fingers carve into his forearm as I struggle between regaining my balance and ensuring I don’t fall.
“Flynn!” I choke his name passed my lips while my mind races for any excuse or reason that I can give him to save myself.
But there’s nothing.
There’s no way he will forgive what I did and it’s some insane miracle that I’ve survived this long.
When he tackled me off the dock and into the water, I was sure that was it.
Death was wrapping its cold, dead fingers around me and drawing me deeper and deeper into the frozen depths while Flynn fought to strangle the life out of me.
Part of me doesn’t blame him. I tried to steal his daughter.
The other part of me is furious I got caught and the future I overheard him spitting about is about to come true.
A dark ceiling above me gives away to gray ceiling tiles as we reach the bottom of the stairs and Flynn yanks my body along with him.
My fingers cut deep enough into his skin that blood wets my fingers, but he doesn’t even seem to feel it.
The last glimpse I got of his face was dark fury, but from this angle I can’t see anything but his shoulder and the ceiling.
Until he suddenly throws me forward and I land on a cold, stone floor.
Rolling once, I surge back up onto my feet and launch myself at him, fueled by a fight for survival, but he slams the bar doors closed before I can reach them.
As I hit them, I grab the bars with one hand and thrust my arm through the gap, fighting to reach him.
“Flynn! Don’t you dare leave me here!” I yell at him. “Come back and kill me like a real man!”
He stands a few feet away, his entire body a rigid line that shudders with each breath he takes.
Both his hands curl into tight fists that pull his skin painfully taut over his knuckles.
In the low light, all the angular features of his face take on a sharper edge with the deeper shadows, and he glares at me with eyes of pure black.
“You don’t dare make demands of me,” he snarls. “You twisted cunt. I let you into my home. I fed you. Clothed you. I kept a roof over your head and treated you well and you went after my daughter?!”
“You kidnapped me!” I scream back, slamming myself against the bars. “You slaughtered everyone I ever cared about, of course I took Angie. I had to save her from her monster of a father!”
He starts toward me with a furious snarl and then seemingly thinks better of it. “Your judgment means nothing to me. I gave you one more chance and I warned you what would happen if you crossed that line.”
“Then why am I still here, huh?” Curling my hands around the bars, I pull at them in my anger. “Not really a man of your word, are you? Fucking coward!” The words pour out of me with no real direction other than hoping he’ll open the cell door and I can have a chance to fight for my life.
Facing a future of wasting away locked up in a cell until I’m nothing but a shadow isn’t one I can stomach to face.
“You’re here because Angie saw fit to save you from a bullet to your thick fucking skull,” Flynn barks at me.
“The girl you tried to harm! What is it with you Yudkins, huh?” Suddenly he slams against the bar and I flinch back in fright, saving my fingers from becoming trapped in his fists once more. “You have no fucking honor! No morals!”
“Morals?” My heart pounds and my face flushes with a deep warmth as anger collides with my body’s attempts to warm me up.
“That’s sickening. You’re fucking sickening.
I was trying to save her. I bet it was you, wasn’t it?
You’re the one who traumatized her so much she can’t speak!
No wonder, what else could I expect from a monster who sees women as nothing more than a commodity to line his pockets?
” I surge at the bars, my mouth running away with itself.
“How long until she pisses you off and you throw her up for auction too, huh?”
The air around Flynn seems to thin and the walls draw close, as if his anger is taking up far too much space.
Then, without another word, Flynn turns on his heel and storms out of the dungeons with a deafening slam of the door that shakes dirt and plaster loose from the ceiling above.
A beat of silence follows as I stand there, gazing through the bars as the locks clunk into place.
Then, a deep wave of hopelessness washes over me and I sink to my knees with a wail.
Soaked to the bone in clothes growing ice cold, I cradle my face in my hands and sob.
I was so close.
Angie wasn’t fazed by my actions and happily got into the boat, but how was I supposed to know that Flynn is possessive enough to have some insane detection system surrounding his daughter?
Talk about a helicopter parent.
My soaked clothes cling to my body, chilled by the air around me.
Each sob wracking me sends shivers down my spine as the chilled ends of my hair tickle my bare shoulders, and my chest aches with my failure.
I wanted to be free.
I wanted to save Angie from the monster Flynn really is and I failed.
I’ve failed everyone.
Anya.
My family.
As tears pour down my cheeks, further soaking my palms, my thoughts flood with sickening possibilities of what’s in store, until I’m gasping for air and torn between screaming out my pain and curling up in the corner waiting for death.
Maybe I can goad him into killing me quickly, maybe I can—
“Kaia?” A sudden croaky voice cuts through the dull light and my head snaps up as I flinch in fright.
Someone else is here?
Who on earth is here?
As I turn, the voice speaks again and the familiarity of the tone painfully lances through my chest as I turn.
“Kaia? I thought that was you.”
Through puddles of tears, I peer through the dull light to a bed tucked at the far end of the cell and my heart stalls in my chest as my mouth falls open.
“Vic?”