Chapter 30
My head feels groggy. Am I still drunk? Was I even drinking?
I can’t remember. My eyes snap open to the blinding light. And when I try to move my arms, they don’t budge. “What the fuck?”
I tilt my head up and see what’s stopping them. Handcuffs. I’m handcuffed to a bed. I scan the room. I don’t know where I am or how the fuck I got here. I tug until the metal starts cutting into the skin on my wrists. They aren’t going anywhere. Fuck.
I use the bedposts to pull myself up until my back is flush with the headboard.
“Oh, you’re awake.” At the sound of her voice, relief washes over me.
“Why am I cuffed to the bed, Aurora? How’d I get here?” I ask her.
“I got you here. Sorry, you might have a few bruises.” She walks over and sits on the bed.
“Unlock these cuffs,” I tell her.
“I will. Soon. First, I need you to listen to me and not freak out,” she says.
“What the fuck? Get me out of these.” I start thrashing against the cuffs again.
“Stop. You’re only going to hurt yourself.” She straddles my lap. “I just want to explain.”
“You can do that without sitting on me,” I grunt.
Why the fuck am I getting hard? I’ve been kidnapped by a psychopath. She could do anything to me right now, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop her. And still, having her sit on me, her pussy pressing down on my cock, I’m fucking hard.
“It doesn’t seem like you mind me sitting on you all that much, Connor.” She smirks.
“My dick doesn’t have a brain, Aurora. Just because he still likes you doesn’t mean I do.” Probably not wise to taunt her, but fuck it.
“That’s… I don’t believe you. Anyway, don’t you want to know why you’re here?”
“Why?”
“I’m saving us.” She smiles like she just solved world hunger.
“There is no us ,” I remind her. “Now let me go.”
“There will always be an us , even if you refuse to let yourself acknowledge it.”
“Aurora, we were destined to break up. You know that. I know that. If my family found out about you, they wouldn’t just kill you. They would…”
“They would what?” she asks, craning her neck to one side to stare at me.
“Do you know what they did after Kenny died? What I did?”
Aurora shakes her head.
“I had to give them someone, Aurora, and it sure as fuck wasn’t going to be you. So I lied. I told them the Albanians did it,” I admit.
“Okay, I… You could have given them my name,” she says.
“No, I couldn’t. They found the daughter of the Albanian boss. It was her wedding night, and I watched as my father and uncle had ten of their men beat and rape the girl, while her husband was forced to watch. It went on for hours before they finally killed them.”
“You… More innocent people died because of me?” Aurora climbs off the bed and starts pacing the room.
“No, they died because of me . Because I gave my family the Albanians,” I tell her.
“Because you were protecting me,” she says. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“And what? Watched as they raped you? Watched as they beat you? As they broke you? No thanks.” I shake my head. Just the thought of that happening to her makes me feel fucking sick. “Aurora, take off the fucking cuffs!”
“I can’t. You’re going to leave and I need to make sure you stay.”
“Why?” I ask her.
“They’re going to kill you, Connor. I can’t let them kill you,” she says.
“Who?”
“My family.” She falls to the ground, sitting with her back against the door.
“Why would your family want to kill me?” I need more details. I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“They know your family stole a container. Killed some of our men. They’re going to attack, Connor,” she says.
“What?” They’re going to attack my family? I need to warn my father. I need to get my mother out of the house. “When?”
“I don’t know, but I had to make sure you weren’t there.”
“Aurora, you need to let me go.” I pull harder on my wrists, but nothing budges. “I need to warn my parents.”
“No.” She shakes her head.
“What do you mean no ?”
“You said it yourself. They’re not good people, Connor.”
“That doesn’t make them not my parents .” I keep pulling at the cuffs. My wrists are bleeding but I can barely feel it.
“I can’t lose you,” she says.
“So you thought you’d kidnap me?”
“Boyfriend-nap.” She shrugs. “Better than being a widow.”
My brows draw down. “Pretty sure you gotta be married to be classed as a widow.”
“I have a plan,” she says.
“Oh, great, she has a plan . I can’t fucking wait to hear what craziness you’ve cooked up.” I laugh.
“I might be crazy, but guess what? You love me, so some would say you’re crazier.”
She’s so sure that I’m still in love with her. I don’t have it in me to tell her I’m not. It would be a lie. I could try to get her to believe me, but at this point, I don’t think it’d make a difference. She’s clearly made up her mind about us.
“What’s the plan here, Aurora? You gonna keep me tied up for the rest of our lives?”
“No. Just until I know you’re not going to do something stupid like go back to the city,” she says.
Back to the city? Where the fuck are we?
“What if it were me? What lengths would you go to if you overheard that your family was coming to attack mine?”
“I made sure you weren’t anywhere near where the attack was happening, Aurora. I didn’t fucking kidnap you,” I grunt.
“Last night,” she says. “You knew they were going to take the container?”
“I didn’t just know. I helped them.”
“Why would you steal from my family?” she asks.
“Why would you kill my cousin?” I throw back at her.
“I didn’t do that on purpose. It was an accident. I wasn’t myself,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry. Aurora, unlock the cuffs,” I reply more calmly. “Let’s talk.” Maybe if she thinks I’m onboard with her insanity, she’ll free me. “Tell me what the plan is.”
“We’re going to lie low here for a few days, and then we can move. Find someplace no one will go looking for us. Just you and me,” she says. “I have passports, credit cards. We can go anywhere.”
I blink. How long has she been planning this? She has passports? “Aurora, we can’t just leave. You can’t leave your family.”
“I can’t leave you.” She shakes her head. “I’m not crazy, Connor. I know you feel it too.”
She’s prepared to leave her family for me?
“Okay.” I nod. “Let’s do it. Just you and me,” I agree, because she’s not going to free me if I don’t. “On one condition.”
“What?”
“Never drug me again.”
“What if…?”
“Never,” I interrupt her.
“Okay, deal.” Aurora smiles. Until the sound of tires on gravel has her frowning. “Fuck.” She stands and rushes over to the window.
“Aurora, get me out of these,” I tell her.
“It’s the Irish,” she says. “How the hell did they find us?”
I probably should have mentioned that there’s a tracking device in my wallet, my shoes, and my belt. My parents are paranoid of me being taken. They can’t lose their heir. But I’m not worried about that right now. I’m worried about her and what they’re going to do if they get to her.
“Aurora, you need to fucking untie me. They cannot find you here,” I call out to her.
“Okay.” She comes over and unlocks the cuffs.
I shake out my arms. “Is there a back door?”
“Yeah.” She bends down and picks up a bag. “Follow me.”
I don’t know why I listen to her, but I do. I trail behind her, dropping my wallet to the ground before losing my belt and kicking off my shoes.
The sound of the front handle jiggling has me pushing her faster out the door and closing it behind us. All I can see is forest. Where the hell did she take me?
“We need to run,” I whisper.
“That way.” Aurora points to the left. “But first, I need to do something. You go. I’ll catch up.”
I look down at her as she digs around in her bag. “Yeah, that’s not happening. What are you doing?”
“Creating chaos.” She smirks at me as she holds up a hand grenade.
“Fuck no. Get up.” I pull at her arm.
“Wait! We need that,” she says, reaching for the bag. She scoops it up again and I drag her along the yard. When we reach the edge of the woods, she slips out of my hold.
I turn around to grab her again, but she’s already running back towards the house. Fucking hell, this girl is going to get us both killed.
I follow after her, stopping when I see her arm sling back and the grenade launch through the air. It lands by the cabin before detonating.
“Aurora!” I yell out. But she doesn’t turn around. She’s staring off into the distance. I follow her line of sight and freeze.
No. This is not happening. One of my father’s men has a rifle pointed at her. And when I step closer, I see the bright-red light aimed at Aurora’s forehead.
I dive for her, and the sound of a single gunshot pierces the air, right before both of our bodies hit the ground…