Chapter 2
Ariana
2
Stay calm, Ariana, I think to myself. Whatever he wants, he needs me alive for it; otherwise, he would’ve killed me already.
The thought doesn’t feel as reassuring as it should be, but it gives me enough energy to at least get moving. I’m about to come out of the water when I stop and give him the nastiest glare I can conjure. “Do you mind?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“Not at all,” he replies.
I take a deep breath, hoping that someday I will be able to live down this shame. Until then, I have no choice but to stand up, wet and naked and fresh off an orgasm in front of a complete stranger.
Did I not lock the door? I swear I remember locking the door.
His gaze lingers on my body for a fleeting second, his nostrils briefly flaring as he looks away. Honestly, if he weren’t about to kidnap me, I’d actually think he was hot.
With shaky legs, I manage to get out of the tub and quickly pat myself down with a towel before putting some clothes on. He steps into the hallway and motions for me to follow him, the gun permanently trained on me.
Once we reach the door, he has me slip into a pair of sneakers that I left nearby and brusquely takes me into the hallway. I keep looking around, hoping that one of the neighbors might step out and see us, but nobody does. At this hour, the whole building is probably drifting off to sleep while I’m getting kidnapped.
Damn.
“Who are you?” I ask in a hushed tone as he grabs me by the arm and takes me down the stairs. “What do you want?”
“Did I say you could talk?” he shoots back without even looking at me.
He’s too busy scanning our surroundings, making sure that we’re completely unnoticed. We exit out through the back door of the building, and I freeze again at the bottom of the steps. He didn’t come alone. There are three motorcycles parked in the back alley where I’m well aware the building’s cameras don’t work.
“Come on,” the man says, yanking me away from the steps.
“Hold on,” I gasp, shaking my head in pure horror as I realize he wants me to ride on a motorcycle with him. “Are you insane? I’m not getting on that!”
“He’s not asking,” another man says.
“I’m not getting on a motorcycle with you,” I hiss, anger suddenly taking over and getting the better of me.
The first man brings the gun up and presses it against my temple. The feel of the cold steel is enough to stop me from moving altogether. “You are, Ariana, whether you like it or not.”
He knows my name. And his gun could end me in a second.
I need to stay calm. I need to do as I’m told in order to secure my survival. One deep breath later, and I’m given a passenger helmet to wear while the man gets on his bike and turns the ignition. His partners quietly wait while I try to figure out a way to climb onto the seat behind him. The rumbling sound of the Harley echoes through the entire back alley, and I know they don’t want to stay here too long. The last thing I should do is piss them off, so I clumsily climb on the bike and wrap my arms around my kidnapper’s waist.
God, this is insane.
I hold on for dear life as we ride through Everton City like ghosts in the middle of the night. The gun is no longer pointed at me, I realize, once we stop at a red light. A pickup truck pulls up beside us.
“If you scream or make the slightest hand gesture, my partners will kill him,” the kidnapper says, his voice raised over the sound of the hogs.
I nod slowly in understanding.
The driver of the truck gives us a curious look, but as soon as the light turns green, he floors it and goes on his merry way. Could I have tried to ask for his help? Could I have tried to simply jump off the bike and start running? I could have, but better not to risk it. They would probably still shoot me. If I were to get away, I could give the police a description and they can’t have that. That’s why he showed his face in the first place—to make sure I knew how serious this was.
I’m the mayor’s daughter. He knows my name; he knows who I am.
My father. This has something to do with him.
My blood starts boiling. We dart down the main boulevard and head north, leaving the city center behind and delving deeper into the night. “Oh, shit,” I mumble. I know exactly what this is about.
By the time we reach our destination, I understand what I’m dealing with. We take a dirt road and pull up outside a building. I’m guessing we’re about two or three miles outside of Everton, far enough away from the highway for this place to go unnoticed.
It appears to be a clubhouse of sorts—a bar on the ground floor with rooms and offices upstairs. Its parking lot is filled with motorcycles and a couple of trucks. Judging by the noise and the number of vehicles, there must be at least thirty or forty people inside.
My handler waits for me to get off the bike first, but I’m too frazzled and shocked even to move. I try to sift through my options. Do any of the people inside know what’s happening out here? Is this some kind of plot? What is their endgame, and what does it mean for me?
“You’re the Steel Knights,” I say.
“And you need to get off my bike,” my kidnapper replies.
I curse under my breath and climb off the bike. My knees are shaking, though, and my mouth feels dry. The seriousness of my predicament soon hits me; we’re in the middle of nowhere, close to the city yet far enough away to be out of sight. There are hills behind the clubhouse, but they’re covered with orchards, vineyards, thick bushes, and miles and miles of wilderness beyond. A person could easily get lost in there, and I know I wouldn’t be able to make it back to Everton on foot even if I were able to escape. Not tonight, anyway.
Whether I like it or not, I have to stay here, at least for the night. But I will escape and find my way back home. I have to.
The men turn their engines off and look at the clubhouse.
“Back door,” my kidnapper says.
“We’ll go through the front and meet you upstairs,” one of the others replies.
They take their helmets off, and I now have a full view of my abductors. I stare at them in sheer disbelief. How can criminals be so damn good-looking? It’s unfair. My kidnapper is dark-haired and dark-eyed. The second guy is bulkier, muscles struggling against his black T-shirt, while his short blonde hair and piercing blue eyes nail me to the spot. The third guy carries himself with a light boyishness and a smile to match, wonderment in his hazel green eyes, slightly messy brown hair, and a five o’clock shadow.
“We know you’re smarter than you look,” Blue Eyes tells me, straight-faced other than a muscle twitching in his square jaw.
“Is this because of my father?” I ask.
The first guy drags me away from the parking lot, and while I’m tempted to protest vocally, I catch a glimpse of his holstered gun and remind myself to be a good girl until I figure out a way to get out of there. It’s my only option. If this is the MC’s clubhouse, which I’m pretty sure it is, then everybody in there is a Steel Knight, which means I can’t turn to any of them for help.
“You will keep quiet,” the man orders as we enter through a back door.
The corridor ahead is narrow and dark, but music and laughter echo from the front.
“You will stay in your room, and you won’t try anything stupid,” he adds, dragging me up the wooden steps leading to the upper floor. “If you do as you’re told, no harm will come to you. That, I can promise. If you don’t comply with our demands, however, there will be consequences.”
“Yeah, I got that from the gun pointed at my head,” I mutter.
I’m thrown into a room with a double bed and barred windows. Though it’s not small, it still makes me feel claustrophobic. At least there’s an ensuite bathroom. A TV mounted on the wall is encouraging; perhaps it will help pass the time more quickly while I plot my escape. If Harvard couldn’t trap me, the Steel Knights won’t either. This could be sheer delusion, but I’m entitled to it.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, finally at my wit’s end as the man checks the room before pulling out the key to the door. “What is this all about?”
He’s joined by the other two. “All good?” he asks them, completely ignoring me.
“Yeah. They know to stay away from this room,” Blue Eyes says.
The other one chuckles softly. “She’s going to be a handful, you know that, right?”
That’s it. I grab the first object within my reach—a glass ashtray that’s heavy enough to crush a man’s skull—and throw it right at them. It crashes into the wall, exploding into thousands of shimmery particles, startling the men to the point where at least one places his hand on his weapon. But I’m too angry and aggravated to care.
“What do you want from me?” I ask again, my voice eerily calm.
The men look at me with hard, cold eyes. “You’re nothing more than a means to an end,” the kidnapper says. “You’d better hope your daddy values your life.”
I’m stunned. All I can do is watch them as they leave, closing and locking the door behind them. I stand there in the middle of the room for what seems like forever. I can hear the classic rock music reverberating through the floor from the bar downstairs, muffled voices, and the sound of billiard balls crashing together. Life in the clubhouse goes on normally while I’m trapped between four walls and barred windows.
“This can’t be happening,” I whisper to myself and start looking around, panic setting in as I try to look for something, anything, that might help me escape. The bars on the windows are wrought iron. They’re mounted on a metallic frame, but I can’t unscrew the screws with my bare fingers. I try and almost rub the skin right off in the process.
“God dammit,” I hiss from the pain, sweat dripping down my face.
There’s nothing else I can use right now as a weapon. I destroyed the ashtray, but that wouldn’t have done much good on its own, anyway. The TV is useless. I need something sharp, something that might actually be able to help me defend myself. The bedroom offers nothing. Just a bed, the dresser, and a flimsy old nightstand.
“The bathroom,” I mutter.
There's not much luck in there, either. The sink is virtually naked. I could break the mirror. But what good will that do? Seven years of bad luck and possibly getting close enough to slit their throats with a shard. It sounds stupid. The more I look around, the more helpless I feel. The more I think, the less sense my thoughts make.
Before I can talk myself back into any semblance of control, I sit on the floor and start crying my heart out, terrified and confused and beyond furious. This is on my father and his insistence on going against those who have means and methods of making people disappear—people like me.
Oh, God, this will get uglier and uglier; I can feel it. I can already see the newspapers—my face plastered across the media, photos from my social pages, likely the least flattering ones.
I’m angry.
I’m helpless.
And I’m a prisoner surrounded by people I know nothing about and can’t trust. If my father doesn’t adhere to their demands, they might do horrible things to me. I’ve seen enough movies and procedurals to imagine some of the worst ways in which this could end. And for what? It’s got to be about that stupid task force.
He’s the one who stirred up a nest of wasps, and yet I’m the one getting stung.