Chapter 54
Mia
My head is buzzing when I finally come to. The airbag is deployed, the radio is still playing, and someone is pulling me from the car, but I’m too woozy to stop him.
“Look what you did to your face, little one. You fucked it all up,” Dagger’s voice says, as my heart pounds with adrenaline.
He was in the truck? I feel an ache on my cheek from the airbag, but I don’t have time to assess where I’m hurt before he’s mumbling something about wanting me pure and pretty.
Dagger’s voice echoes as I’m pulled farther still, gravel biting into my legs.
“Aiden!” I try to scream, but he doesn’t respond. I cry out his name again, then once more.
“Stop mumbling, little bitch. No one can hear you out here.” Mumbling? I was screaming.
I try to adjust my blurry vision. I’m limp and easy to move and am now being dragged into long grass or brush.
Dagger leers down at me. “Do you think I’m fuckin’ stupid, lass?” he hisses. “Wherever you were planning to lead, I knew your boyfriend would be waiting.”
He throws me down on the cold, dew-covered grass, and I realize Dagger has no idea how close we are to the cabin. If I could get up, maybe I could run there. It’s less than a mile away.
“What are you going to do?” My words come out stronger as I regain my senses. The sky is bright with stars, and I wonder if this will be the last time I see it. “Are you going to rape me the way Gator raped my sister? Kill me?”
He drops down to straddle my waist with my wrists tucked under his knees.
He grips my throat and lifts my face to meet his.
“I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to keep you.
I’ve been watching you flaunt this innocent little girl act for weeks now.
” His breath smells like vodka and cigars.
“I knew you were her sister the moment I fucking looked at you. It’s the eyes. ” He starts to laugh maniacally.
“They’re the windows to the soul, you know.
Yours are even sadder than hers. A little more fucking depressing, but just as pretty.
And they’ll be even prettier when I wire your fucking mouth open, and you’re leaking drool everywhere as I fuck your throat.
” He grins, and I nearly vomit. “I have a little birdie hunting for a lookalike of your sister, one even younger than she was,” he growls, shoving my head back down to the earth.
I try to turn as my stomach lurches, but I don’t even have the strength to puke.
“I’ve kept your cage for you,” he singsongs as I try to scratch at him. “My little birdie has kept it nice and warm.”
What the fuck is his little birdie? I fight to get my arms out from under him, but it’s no use.
“You won’t get away like your sister did. Gator was a greedy little fuck. Wouldn’t let any of us touch her, but he’s not here to stop me from touching you.”
He licks his lips.
As my head slowly clears, I formulate the best way to attack him. I’m gonna gouge this motherfucker’s eyeballs out of his head, and then I’m gonna run. All I need to do is get close enough for Aiden or Mason to hear me scream.
“You underestimated me. You both did, you and your prez.” He grinds his hips into me, and I struggle, but his weight is crushing.
“Don’t fight me, Emilia. I still have your knife, you know. That little dragonfly. I knew another one just like that once…a tiny bumblebee.” He lifts his chin, and that’s when I see it—a long, jagged scar near his collarbone.
Attagirl, Nic.
“But now your president has it. Some people choose to keep their trophies. Not me,” he says with way too much joy and satisfaction at the look of rage on my face.
“I like to plant mine like little seeds…” He leans down and speaks against my collarbone as I will my body to get stronger.
“You never know when you’ll need a safety net in this world.
To take someone out in the way they least expect it.
” He shakes his head and looks around the scene.
“Never trusted your prez.” His eyes fall back to me.
“He’s a fucking thief, taking what’s ours. ” Ours?
“I was going to wait to get you back home before I sampled the goods, but you’re much too tempting for that, lying here crying into the grass.
My poor sister,” he mocks me, pretending to cry, and tears well in my own eyes.
“My poor, weak sister who was looking for a quick fuck and got what she deserved.”
I scream and then spit at his face, but he doesn’t try to silence me. Instead, he tilts his head back and starts to laugh.
“Where have I heard that sound before? Hmmm, let me think. Oh, I remember!” He leans down and licks up the side of my neck. He’s sick and twisted and enjoying every second of this. “The day I followed you and your sister home. The day I saw her looking at me when I was talking to your president.”
My heart begins to pound, and my eyes widen. He saw Nic and me in the alley?
“I watched that little light bulb go off when she remembered me.” He chuckles, the sound wrong and morbid, as he leans down farther. He whispers, “That’s when I knew she had to die, lass,” and another wave of nausea washes over me.
He sits up, and I struggle to pull my hands from under his knees. I watch in horror as Dagger fake injects himself with a needle and then makes a croaking sound, his eyes falling closed.
“What better way to kill a little junkie than with an overdose. Tragedy brings everyone together.”
My body registers what he’s saying before my brain does, and I’m thrusting my hips up with all my might while pulling my arms from beneath him. Dagger falls forward as I flip him off me.
“You fucking killed her?” I scream. “You fucking monster!” I climb onto him, my hands around his throat.
Nicola… Nicola, I’m so sorry. He gave her the heroin. He poisoned her. He fucking took her life. I knew. I fucking knew she wouldn’t take heroin.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” I’m shaking all over, and my jaw is clenched as I try with all my might to choke him.
He flips me onto my back again, and I rake my nails across his face. He hisses, “I was going to kill you that day too, you know, but I spared you.”
Blood sprouts from the scratches I carved into his face.
“But if you don’t start behaving, I will fucking kill you too, and it won’t be as pleasant for you as an overdose.” His tone is angry now, and I know this is the end.
I flinch as blinding headlights approach, and a spark of hope races through me. But it dies as Dagger chuckles darkly.
“Ahhh…here we are,” he says joyfully.
I can’t tell if it’s a car or a truck, but I scream, “Help!”
“Did you bring what I asked for, little birdie?” Dagger calls over his shoulder to the person who has just closed the driver’s side door.
I squint, trying to focus. It’s a woman, but her body is still a shadow. She slowly gets closer, and I find myself staring up at the prettiest brown eyes and a heart-shaped Barbie face.
“Sure did, baby,” she answers Dagger. Her long, dark hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and she’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She’s fresh and pretty and smiles ear to ear at me, like she always has.
“Libby!” I cry. “Help me, Libby, please!”
She drops a coil of rope and a brown paper bag on the ground, then crouches beside me. She’s still smiling, her glossy pink lips full as she trails the back of her hand down my face.
“Isn’t she pretty?” Dagger asks, almost whispering. “Kiss her.”
“Yes, sir,” Libby says, bending down to kiss my lips. She forces her tongue into my mouth, and she tastes like bubble gum. My stomach turns as I realize she’s with him.
“Libby, please…” I beg, sobbing now. “Help me…”
“I am going to help you, Mia. That’s why I came as soon as Dagger told me to meet him here,” she says.
“He’s crazy, Libby… Please help me! Aiden can protect you!” I cry.
She tilts her head to the side, and her long brown hair falls over her shoulder. Her eyes are full of adoration.
“I don’t need protection, silly.” She laughs for a long moment, and it’s so out of place. “We’re in love.” She slides her hand down Dagger’s arm. “And he wants you, so I want you too. We take what we want.” Libby kisses Dagger on the cheek as he looks at us, lust-filled and crazed.
“We’re going to be such a happy family,” Libby adds, clapping her hands, and I finally realize that she’s batshit fucking crazy.
My mind floods with every time she told me she’s jealous of me and Aiden. That she thinks I’m pretty. That none of the men around the club were for her. It wasn’t because she wanted Aiden. She already had a man. It was because Libby wanted me for their fucked-up little house of horrors.
She was his informant. How he knew when I was alone at the club. All along, Libby’s been in the background, watching and waiting. For him.
Back when I first started working at Lavish, I’d told Libby I wasn’t interested in Aiden. Maybe that’s why Dagger didn’t believe our relationship was real in the beginning.
Now, he grabs a brown glass bottle wrapped in a rag from the bag she brought.
“This is just to help you sleep,” Libby says in her usual soothing, high-pitched singsong voice. She runs the back of her hand down my face again. “Just until we get you home.”
FUCK THAT.
I scream and start to fight again just as the tiniest little zip whizzes by my head. It’s not the typical sound of a gunshot. Just a small little thwap that has Dagger looking down at where his arm has now sprung a bloody leak.
Aiden.
As the stream of blood quickly grows, so does my hope.