Chapter 29
RAINA
I’m in an empty house on the outskirts of Portland. I doubt anyone has even set foot in this place over the past couple of years, judging by the thick layer of dust and grime that has settled pretty much everywhere.
“What are we doing here, Deanna?” I ask my captor as she walks into the room. She keeps checking her phone, but based on her jittery irritation, I don’t think she’s getting the answer she’s been waiting for.
In the corner, a camera tripod sits quietly. She used it to film my ransom video, and I’ve been trying to understand the extent of this entire project ever since.
“Shut up,” Deanna mutters.
“There isn’t much else I can do here, except sit and talk to you,” I say and nod at the rope tightened around my wrists. “I mean, you could always let me go. I won’t say a word.”
“We both know that’s a lie.” She settles on the dusty windowsill. “I need you to shut up, Raina.”
I shake my head slowly. “You’re supposed to keep me alive, right?”
“For now.”
“What’s the plan, then? You get Alex, Max, and Vincent to pay my ransom? Is it some kind of retribution for having lost your job? Something you think you’re owed?”
Deanna scoffs and gives me a sour look. “I didn’t lose it. You got me fired, you fat, obnoxious bitch.”
“Fine, if that’s how you want to remember it. Fine. I got you fired,” I shoot back with a flat smile. “Now what?”
“Now we wait for a Bitcoin transfer. Once that’s in, and depending on how good you are at groveling, I might let you go. Or I might keep you around for another week while I ask for more funds. I deserve a generous payout.”
“You do? What for?”
The least I can do is keep her talking. There’s no telling where Deanna’s self-control actually ends. She proved that much the minute she kidnapped me at gunpoint. The woman is unhinged, and I am pregnant. I owe it to myself and to my baby to survive this nightmare.
“What for?” Deanna replies, almost laughing. It’s as if I asked her the dumbest question she’s ever heard. “For all the work I put in. For the high-end clients I attracted. For the glowing reviews. Haus of Sin was built on my back!”
I offer a slight, almost sympathetic nod. “Forgive me, but weren’t there always ten of you? Five guys and five gals.”
“I was always the favorite, the most popular,” she replies. “I raked in most of the revenue. And they threw me away like I was nothing because of you.”
“Deanna, this was never about me. Why don’t you at least admit that? I never did you any harm. I never told the guys to fire you. I only kept my head down and did my job. You’re the one who kept at me with your insults. You turned Haus of Sin into a schoolyard.”
“You deserved every single insult,” Deanna snaps, “for having the audacity to claim them, all three of them.” She shakes her head in disbelief. “My God, do you really think you’re better than me?”
“I never thought that.”
“You think if you’re a so-called good girl, go to college, get your degree, that makes you better than me?
I came up on the streets!” she almost screams. “I have had to screw my way out of the gutter. I built up my S it wasn’t my intention. Had I known you guys had something in the pipeline, I never would’ve allowed our relationship to develop. You should’ve just told me, woman to woman.”
“I warned you. I told you that you wouldn’t be able to handle them.”
I give her a wry smile. “You never told me you had plans. It’s a little different because I could definitely handle them—and then some.”
“Are you trying to get yourself killed, bitch?” Deanna snarls and points the gun at me with a trembling hand, but her finger is nowhere near the trigger.
“No, Deanna. I’m just trying to make you understand that no matter what you do, you’ll never get Vincent back. You’ll never get Alex or Max. The most you’ll get out of this is the money, I guess. They’ll pay. But only if you let me live.”
“I thought I cared about the money. Looking at you, so helpless and pathetic, I don’t think I’m interested in the ransom anymore,” she says with a vicious smile.
“You knew where to find me earlier,” I reply, a thought crossing my mind. “And I know you’re nowhere near computer savvy enough to work with cryptocurrency and anonymous internet stuff.”
“So?”
“You had help,” I say slowly, eyeing her. “Is Jeremy involved in this?”
Deanna laughs lightly. “Maybe you’re not as dumb as I thought you were.”
“Did he rope you into this?”
“He gave me an opportunity to get revenge plus some money on top. I’m thinking I could do one better now. I could get money, and I could get you out of the way, too. He’ll be mad, but he’ll have some cash to roll through for comfort, at least.”
“What are you saying, Deanna?”
She gets up and comes closer. Her finger is firmly on the trigger of the gun as she raises it toward my head. My heart starts racing, the prospect of imminent death sending shivers down my spine.
“I’m saying that, if you die, Raina, it’ll be the end of many problems, especially for me,” she replies.
I could kick her in the teeth, but she’s not close enough, and she’s still holding a gun. I need to talk her out of whatever madness she’s tempted to unleash in this abandoned suburban house.
“If you kill me, Vincent will never even look at you again. He’ll do everything in his power to make you pay.”
“Then I might as well just kill you. If I can’t have Vincent, then you shouldn’t have him either.”
“Deanna, no, please,” I manage as she takes another step forward. “Jeremy needs me unharmed, okay? He needs proof of life for when the money gets sent, right?”
“I don’t think I care about that anymore,” she mumbles and cocks the gun, eyes narrowing as she takes her aim.
Fear and despair take over as I try to find another way out of this. “Deanna, please. You don’t have to do this. We both came up in the streets, right? We just took different turns, that’s all. You can still have the life you want.”
She is close to pulling the trigger. I can feel it in my bones: the chill of death itself eager to embrace me, to rip me from this world. The words roll off my tongue loudly and unexpectedly. “I’m pregnant, Deanna!”
Deanna freezes, hand in the air, her grip tight on the gun’s cold handle. A wandering ray of sunlight captures the steely glint from the barrel as a subtle tremor sets in.
“You’re pregnant?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.
“Yes. I just found out. One of them is the father, so whatever your beef is with me, it shouldn’t involve my unborn child. Please, you don’t have to do this.”
She sighs deeply. “You’re having his baby.”
“We didn’t plan for any of it, okay? Please, Deanna.”
“You can’t have his baby,” she says.
The gun rises just as the front door is smashed wide open.
I scream as chunks and splinters of wood fly into the hallway, and the fractured door falls flat on the floor.
The room is suddenly filled with men in black jeans and Kevlar vests.
Too many automatic rifles are pointed at Deanna. She doesn’t move an inch.
She didn’t even register the speed with which the grand finale came crashing into her life. She still doesn’t register the change in the balance of power.
And I remain still, bound to my chair, crippled with fear, her gun still aimed at my head.
“Raina,” Alex’s voice emerges from the chaos. He’s one of the men in black jeans and Kevlar. One of the men holding a deadly weapon.
Vincent and Max are here, too. The tableau soon comes into focus as I begin to identify police badges and uniforms joining them in the spacious, cold living room.
Relief is just within my reach, yet still so far away.
“Deanna, I’m going to need you to put that gun down,” Vincent calmly says.
He’s aiming right at her head, and judging by the size of his weapon, it won’t make a small hole either.
Deanna slowly looks at him. “Why?”
“Because it’s the only thing you can do to save yourself right now,” he replies. “It’s over, Dee. You know it. We’ve got police in here with us. The whole place is surrounded. Jeremy is currently in cuffs, giving his statement, confessing to the whole plot. You’re done.”
“Then why put the gun down, if I’m done?”
“Because if you kill Raina, you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison,” Vincent says.
“Provided the bullets I’ll put in you first don’t kill you.
You’ll experience agony and misery, day in and day out.
You will lose track of the days. You’ll get maybe an hour of sunlight now and again.
But if you put the gun down, the charges will be different. You might be out in a few years.”