Chapter 35 #2
The room tilts. Not physically. In me.
For now.
I drag in one careful breath through my nose and try to think past the panic surging hot and fast in my bloodstream.
Jimmy.
That thought hits next.
Jimmy’s going to know something’s wrong. Ryan left. He’ll circle back or call or both. The second I don’t answer a text fast enough, Jimmy’s going to start looking.
That should comfort me.
Instead, all I can think is not fast enough. Not if Drew’s already here. Not if my mother’s bleeding. Not if my father is somewhere in this house or somewhere else hurt or worse.
Drew leans closer, the gun still pressed to my side hard enough to bruise. “I’ve been waiting for your guard dogs to slip,” he says. “Didn’t take much.”
Rage flashes hot enough to burn through the terror for half a second.
Because of course that’s what this is. Not spontaneous. Not reckless.
Planned.
He watched. He waited. He tested. And the second he saw an opening, he came straight at my family because he knew exactly where to hurt me.
“You’re insane.”
He laughs again. “Maybe.” Another pull on my hair, sharp enough to make my eyes water. “But you could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble if you’d just stopped fighting me.”
I close my eyes for half a second. Not to surrender. To get hold of myself. Because if I start pleading or screaming or reacting the way he wants, I give him more than he’s already taken.
So I open them again and say, very quietly, “Go to hell.”
That lands.
I know it lands because the hand in my hair tightens and the muzzle digs harder into my side.
My mother makes a strangled sound against the gag. Not fear now. Protest. Like she wants me to stop. Like she knows exactly how bad this man’s temper can get when he feels challenged and would rather take anything he does to her than watch me provoke him another inch.
That nearly breaks me.
I force my gaze to stay on her.
She’s conscious. She’s scared. But she’s with me.
I need that.
Drew moves us both a step farther into the room, still behind me, still half-hidden at my back.
And then I see it.
Blood on the coffee table. A lamp knocked sideways. My mom’s favorite coffee mug shattered on the floor near the couch.
Signs of a struggle. Signs she fought. Signs he had to force this.
Good.
Not because I wanted her hurt.
Because if she fought, it means she stayed herself in it. It means he didn’t get to walk in here and own the room from the first second. It means he had to work for this. And maybe that sounds sick, but right now I need any piece of power I can find.
“What do you want?” I ask.
He goes quiet behind me. That alone is answer enough. Control. Punishment. Humiliation. Some ugly cocktail of all three.
But after a second, he says it anyway. “You.”
The word lands in the room like rot.
My skin crawls.
Mom starts shaking her head violently against the cushions, tears standing in her eyes now.
“No,” I say immediately.
Drew’s breath brushes my ear. “That wasn’t a question.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
The gun presses harder. “Then your mother dies first.”
The words are flat. Casual. Unembellished.
That’s what makes them so much worse. Not shouted. Not dramatized. Just truth as far as he’s concerned.
My whole body goes cold all over again.
I look at my mother. At the blood. At the zip ties around her wrists. At the panic in her face.
And I know.
This isn’t bluffing. Not fully. Maybe he doesn’t want to kill her. Maybe he doesn’t want the extra heat. Maybe in some version of his fucked-up logic she’s just leverage and not the point. But he absolutely will if he thinks it gets him what he wants. That certainty drops into me heavy and final.
My voice comes out thin despite my best efforts. “What did you do with my dad?”
He chuckles. “I like that you keep circling back to him.”
“Answer me.”
“Alive,” he says. “For now.”
Again.
That phrase again.
I hate him so much I can taste it.
I need to think. Need time. Need something.
“Why?” I ask.
Not because I care about his answer. Because men like Drew always want to explain themselves. Always want someone to stand still long enough to hear why their violence is actually noble if you squint hard enough.
Maybe if he talks, he loosens his grip. Maybe if he talks, he makes a mistake. Maybe if he talks, somebody out there realizes something’s wrong and gets here before he can move us.
Drew shifts behind me, pleased. “There it is.”
I don’t answer.
He takes that as encouragement, because of course he does. “You could’ve had a real life,” he says. “You had every chance to get out of that filth, and you still kept choosing them.”
Them.
Not your family. Not your people.
Them.
As if he’s not standing in my parents’ living room with a gun and my mother tied to a couch bleeding on the upholstery. As if that makes him cleaner somehow.
I laugh once, and the sound comes out broken and furious. “You think this makes you better than them?”
His grip jerks tight. “Watch your mouth.”
“No.” The word tears out before I can stop it. “You don’t get to break into my parents’ house and pretend this is about saving me.”
That one lands hard enough to change the temperature around us.
His breath turns sharp. The gun shifts.
My mother squeezes her eyes shut, bracing.
And for one brief, terrible second, I think I pushed too far.
Then Drew goes still in a different way. Not calmer. Colder.
He leans in close enough that his mouth is almost against my ear. “You’re going with me,” he says. “You can do it now while she’s alive, or you can watch me put a bullet in her first and then I’ll drag you out kicking and screaming.”
Everything inside me crashes at once.
Fear. Rage. Helplessness. The sick, surging need to throw myself backward and claw his eyes out with my bare hands even if he shoots me for it after.
But my mother is right there.
Bleeding. Bound. Breathing hard through the gag. And I cannot gamble her life on me being fast enough.
My chest is rising too hard now, each breath too shallow, the edges of the room threatening to blur if I don’t force air in deeper.
Think.
Someone is going to notice. Someone has to. Unless Drew planned for that too. Unless he found a way to stop them. Unless I am standing in the middle of the exact opening he wanted and everyone else is still ten steps behind.
My scalp burns where he’s holding my hair. My side aches where the gun is pressed into me. And all I can think is that I cannot let him take me without knowing where my father is.
Not if Dad is bleeding somewhere too. Not if he’s tied up in a bedroom.Not if he’s already...no.
I cannot think that thought. Not yet.
I force myself to look at my mother again.
Her eyes are huge. Desperate. Not for herself. For me.
That’s the worst part.
She’s scared for me more than she is for herself.
I shake my head once, tiny, because I don’t know what else to do with that. Then I say the only thing I can think of that might buy another minute. “If I go with you, you let her go.”
Drew laughs softly. “See? You do know how to listen.”
My stomach twists so hard I think I might be sick. “That’s not a yes,” I say.
“It’s close enough.”
“No.” I try to turn my head, and he jerks my hair hard enough that pain flashes white across my vision. “You let her go first.”
My mother makes another choked sound.
Drew goes quiet behind me for one long, awful second. Then he says, “You don’t get to negotiate.”
The gun leaves my side just long enough for hope to spike stupidly, and then I hear the hammer click back.
Mom freezes.
So do I. And suddenly there’s no room left for bluff or posture or trying to play this like I’ve got options I don’t.
Because this is it.
This is the edge.
Drew’s hand tightens in my hair again, dragging my head back just enough that I can’t look away from my mother. “Move,” he says. “Or she dies first.”
And just like that, I know exactly what he has planned for me. Not just terror. Not just punishment.
He wants me alive. Portable. Under his control. He wants to take me.
And if I don’t go, my mother dies on this couch and he drags me anyway.
Drew’s hand stays twisted in my hair, the gun angled just enough against my ribs that I can feel every tiny shift of his grip.
Move or she dies first.
The room feels too small all at once. Too hot. Too bright. Too sharp.
My mother is still on the couch, wrists bound, gagged, blood drying in her hair, and every instinct I have is splitting itself in half trying to decide what gets us both out of this alive.
There is no good option. That’s the part that settles in next. Not panic.
Something worse. The understanding that I’m already too late for the version of this where nobody gets hurt.
So all I have left now is damage control.
How bad. How fast. How much I can buy with compliance before I find a way to break this open.
My throat is dry enough it hurts when I swallow. “Don’t touch her again,” I say.
Drew lets out a low, humorless laugh against the side of my head. “You’re not really in a position to make demands.”
“No,” I say, voice shaking despite how hard I’m trying to hold it steady. “But if you want me walking out of here without a fight, then you stop putting your hands on my mother.”
That makes him pause. Not because he cares. Because he likes hearing me bargain. Likes hearing me play this his way, even if I’m only doing it because the alternative is watching him put a bullet in Tracie Mitchell’s head in her own living room.
My stomach turns. I keep my eyes on my mom.
Her breathing is fast and shallow behind the gag. Her eyes are huge. Terrified. And angry.
That part doesn’t surprise me.
My mother has never done fear quietly. Even when she’s scared, there’s always fury under it, always some sharp, stubborn refusal to give anybody the satisfaction of seeing her fold cleanly.