Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Aria
“Charlotte, could you give Aria and I a moment alone?”
Folding her arms, Lottie jerked her chin up. “So you can bully her into doing what you want her to do instead of what she wants? Absolutely not.”
A muscle jumped in her father’s cheek, a sure sign he was reaching the end of his patience. “You can either go back upstairs and wait for me, or I can carry you up there. Do I need to explain what will happen if I have to force your obedience, Charlotte Ann?”
Again, color blossomed on Lottie’s cheeks. “Ah… No, Sir.”
“I didn’t think so.” Softening somewhat, Braden moved out from behind the desk to cup his wife’s face in his hands. “I am asking you to trust me to do the right thing, Lottie-bug. Can you do that for me?”
Aria saw the moment Lottie caved. Her shoulders drooped and her expression lost its defiant edge. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good girl. I’ll be upstairs in a bit so we can talk.”
The color in Lottie’s cheeks darkened, leaving Aria to wonder if ‘talk’ was code for something else. Something she did not want the details of, no matter how curious she might be.
Braden brushed a kiss over Lottie’s lips and she turned, but she didn’t immediately leave the room. Worry flickered across her face as she reached for Aria’s hand to grip it tightly. “You’ll be okay without me?”
“It’s just my dad, Lottie. I’ll be fine.”
“I know. He can just be a bit, um, pushy when he wants something.”
Aria let her lips curve up in a smirk. “So can I.”
That seemed to ease Lottie’s worry, and the other woman tossed her head back, her loud laugh filling the room. “Touché. Well, I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
With another squeeze of Aria’s hand, Lottie slipped from the room, closing the door behind her, leaving Aria face to face with her unreadable father.
“I’m not getting rid of the baby.”
She wasn’t even sure where the statement had come from, but seeing the way Braden grimaced, it clearly needed to be said.
“I had a feeling you might say that. But you have to consider not just your safety but your child’s as well, Aria.
Killian’s right. Once word gets out that Killian O’Rourke has an heir, you won’t be safe. ”
“Well, if there was ever a time for me to use the ridiculous trust fund you set up for me, I suppose it would be now. My apartment building has good security but an alarm system for my apartment might not be a bad idea.”
“Absolutely not. You’re not staying in Charleston.”
Annoyance had her spine stiffening. “Like hell I’m not. I made a commitment to Mr. Williams and I intend to see it through.”
“Killian doesn’t want you anywhere near Richard Williams, and while I may not be thrilled about this… situation, I do trust Killian completely when it comes to matters of security. If he says he doesn’t want you near him, then neither do I.”
“Well, I suppose you’re both destined for disappointment, then.”
“Aria, be reasonable.”
“I am being entirely reasonable. I’m not changing all my plans and uprooting my life just because someone might find out I’m carrying Killian’s child and they might come after me.
I’ll be safe, I’ll take whatever precautions I feasibly can, but I am not leaving Charleston and I’m not giving up my internship. ”
“Goddammit. Do you have to be so damn stubborn?”
“I come by it honestly.”
The crack had a smile tugging at his mouth. “I suppose you do.” Sighing, he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I just want you safe, Ari. It would kill me if anything happened to you.”
Moving toward him, she let herself be pulled into his arms, let the familiar embrace calm her jittering nerves. “I want me to be safe too, Dad. I promise I’ll do everything I possibly can to stay that way.”
“Except go back to Oregon and quit your job.”
“Except that.”
Her father’s chest rose and fell with a sigh. “Would you at least consider moving in here for a while? Until we can find you a place of your own with better security.”
“Dad…”
“I know, I know. But it would give me some peace of mind.”
It chafed, god knew it chafed to have had that little taste of freedom just to have it ripped from her again. But the last thing she wanted was to have her father fretting over her whenever she was out of his sight, though she knew there wasn’t much she could do to stop him worrying.
“Compromise,” she said, anticipating the groan she received in response, seeing as how ‘compromise’ was her father’s least favorite word. “The second there’s any hint of danger, I’ll move in here. I’ll even let you call Holden and hire a guard dog.”
“All right. But only if you promise to tell me the second anything odd or threatening happens.”
“Deal.”
Aria
Part of the reason she’d chosen the apartment building she had was its proximity to her new job. Walking to work, even with the brisk late February wind tugging at her hair and clothes, was exactly what she needed to clear her head.
She hadn’t slept worth shit the past few days, the blame for which she placed squarely at the feet of one Killian O’Rourke.
Not only had she checked the locks on her doors approximately a hundred times before she’d gone to bed each night, every little noise had jerked her out of sleep, convinced someone was in her apartment.
As a result, she was not in the best of moods come Friday morning, and as she’d already learned, Mr. Williams was rather old-school and could get very cranky if she wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows when she reported for work.
So whether she was feeling it or not, she’d have to plaster a smile on her face sometime between her front door and her boss’s office.
Which was the other reason she’d chosen to walk, hoping it would give her enough time to put on her happy face.
She was so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. And she had only a split second of awareness that anything might be wrong before the world went black.
Panic locked around her lungs, froze her blood in her veins as a set of unfamiliar arms came around her, lifting her from the ground.
Oh god, oh god, oh god. Killian was right. They want my baby.
That single thought unlocked her muscles and she came alive, fighting and screaming for all she was worth. Fabric filled her mouth every time she tried to inhale, threatening to smother her, and tears burned at the backs of her eyes.
“Help! Fire! Someone HELP!”
But no matter how hard she kicked or thrashed, her assailant’s hold never faltered.
One of her flailing punches landed, and a dark thrill pulsed through her veins at her attacker’s grunt of pain.
“Grab her fucking hands, would you?”
Shit, shit, shit. Was there more than one?
Of course there’s more than one, criminals run in packs.
Someone else grabbed her hands, as instructed, yanking them behind her back and securing them with something that seemed like a zip tie. A second zip tie wrapped around her ankles, effectively binding her in place.
Blinding terror flooded her body. “Please,” she whispered. “Please let me go. You have the wrong person.”
“’Fraid we can’t do that, sweetheart.”
Bile rose in her throat at the thought of being called sweetheart by someone intent on killing her. “Fuck you.”
Quiet, menacing laughter met her ears a moment before she was laid down on a floor of some kind.
A trunk, she realized when the lid slammed over her. She could work with a trunk. Hadn’t she seen enough action movies to know exactly what to do in this scenario?
Willing her heart rate to slow, she struggled to think through her next steps. First things, first, she needed to see. Which meant getting whatever they’d draped over her head off.
Okay. She could do that. Tilting her head to the side, she rubbed her temple against the floor of the trunk. The bag or whatever it was moved, but only so far, and she realized with growing dread that they’d tied it around her neck so it couldn’t be removed.
Aria swallowed down the hysteria threatening to rise up and choke her. Even if she couldn’t see, she knew what to do. Kick out the taillights and pray a cop stopped them or some Good Samaritan noticed and called the police.
Should have let dad hire Holden and his fucking guard dogs.
She wiggled as much as she was able, reaching out with her bound feet until they pressed up against something. But when she kicked, hard enough to send the vibrations radiating up her spine, she realized she was kicking the side of the trunk.
It took several clumsy tries, but at last she found what she was pretty sure was the taillight and kicked at it for all she was worth. Not that it did her any good. If it was the light, it stayed stubbornly in place, no matter how hard she tried to dislodge it.
She was still kicking desperately at it when the car slowed, then stopped. And that bone-deep terror returned, sending her heart hammering against her ribs so hard it was a wonder it didn’t leap right out of her chest.
“Let me go, you fuckers!” she screamed when the lid popped open again and those same arms from before lifted her from the trunk.
But as before, her demands were ignored, and she was carried… somewhere. Into a house, maybe? She was pretty sure they went down a set of stairs at some point.
Wherever they were, there was a chair, and as soon as they cut the zip-ties from her wrists and ankles, they bound her to the hard metal beneath her with some kind of rope.
“All right, sweetheart.” Assailant number one, she was pretty sure, his voice rough but with a hint of amusement that was somehow more terrifying than anything else he’d done to her so far. “Boss man is on his way, but in the meantime, we have some questions for you.”
“You can shove your questions right up your ass.”
“Feisty little thing, isn’t she?” The second voice was so similar to the first, she almost couldn’t tell them apart.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that she could still sense the first assailant standing in front of her while that voice had clearly come from behind her, she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference at all.
“She is. What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“None of your business.” If they were going to kill her anyway, she would be damned if she would give them the satisfaction of answering any of their questions.
“All right. Let’s try this. Are you carrying Killian O’Rourke’s child?”
“No.” The lie rolled easily off her tongue. If it meant keeping her and her baby safe, she would lie straight through her fucking teeth if she had to.
“Good to know.” Again with that cheerfulness in the first assailant’s voice that chilled her right to her core. “If you were, I wouldn’t be able to use this.”
A sharp electric sound buzzed beside her ear, making her jerk against her bonds. “What is that?”
She hated herself a little for the tremor in her voice. But she hated him more for laughing at her fear.
“You don’t know what a taser sounds like, sweetheart? You really are sheltered, huh?”
A taser? Fuck. She might not know a lot about being pregnant, but she was very, very certain that being tased was not a doctor-recommended activity for pregnant women.
The electrical buzz sounded beside her ear again and her head spun as panic clawed at her chest. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“They won’t.” The voice was so wrong, so out of place, her brain refused to believe it. Until the cover was whisked from her head and she found herself staring up into a familiar pair of glittering emerald eyes.
“Hello, princess.”