15
“Mila?” I said in a raspy voice after screaming for help and banging on the door. In my right hand, I held a crowbar that I found on the grease-stained floor, waiting for one of the assholes to come back. “It’s me, Adina. Where are you? I need help.”
“Er, I’m just leaving the dining to head back to Morgana,” she replied. “What’s happened? Are you Okay?”
“No. I’ve been locked in the basement of the Lud, and I can’t get out,” I explained, trying to stay calm.
“Intentionally?” she gasped in surprise.
“Yes, they…” I was about to explain that I was trying to break into their frat house to retrieve my gun from Nicolae’s bedroom, but I realized that was a stupid idea. So, I went with, “It’s a long story, but the frat house assholes have locked me in the basement.”
“Have you called the campus police?” he asked, sounding as if she was reluctant to come help me, not that I expected her to. But she seemed distracted, and I could hear voices in the background, so she was probably with friends and didn’t want to leave.
“Um, I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, but I didn’t want to involve the police, because I’d have to invent an excuse as to why I was trespassing.
“I’ll call them for you, if you want, unless you want me to come down there, but there’s not much I can do, so it’s better to call the police,” she panted as if walking as she spoke.
Then a male’s voice asked, “Who’s that?” and I realized that I didn’t know Mila at all. She was with a man, who was probably just a friend, since her boyfriend was back home.
The conversation was cut short when I heard the click of the lock, and I breathed, “I have to go.”
“Wait. Adin-” she stressed as I swiped off and ran behind the wooden stairs, so I could watch them walking down and jump and surprise them with a solid smack over the head with the crowbar. At least, in my head, it was easy.
The door squealed open, and whoever it was flicked the light on, and my plan was immediately ruined. He then stepped slowly and confidently down each step, taking his time, until he stopped three steps down and called, “Little wabbit, where are you?”
It was the oldest Warwick, Nicolae, who tread those steps like a black mane lion and scanned the basement before looking down between the stairs.
“There you are,” he mumbled with a smile on his face, then stepped down onto the ground floor and approached me as I raised the crowbar to swipe him, but he caught it easily in his hands, and I realized what a fool I was.
Using a gun and a knife was more about technique, but a crowbar was all about raw strength.
“Good try, rabbit,” he chuckled. “We could set you loose in the forest and hunt you down. How would you like that, wabbit?”
“I’ve called the police,” I lied, “they’ll be here any moment.”
“Have you now? Dumb move. Looks like we’ll have to bury you somewhere,” he insisted, looking me up and down. “Small bodies are easy to hide.”
My phone was still in my hand, and he brutally grabbed my wrist, squeezed it tight, and ripped my phone out of my hand. I kicked him in the shins, and he propelled backward, wearing a sly smile. “Don’t touch me,” I snarled.
He folded his arms across his chest, standing two feet from me as my back was pressed against the wall by the stairs, looking cocky as hell. “Explain,” he demanded.
“Explain why you were snooping around,” he clarified.
I swallowed to moisten my dry mouth, then coughed as all I could smell was gas and grease from the engine parts lying around. “I want my gun back. I know you have it.”
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at me in suspicion. “What makes you think that I have your gun?”
“I heard your brother and Lev talking about when I was in and out of consciousness after you fuckwits kidnapped and drugged me,” I told him.
I flinched under his gaze as my heart beat rapidly against my ribcage. “What did you hear them say specifically?” he pressed.
“That the gun was hidden in your bedroom,” I told him. “So I came to retrieve it.”
There was a vague memory of them having a rowdy discussion about the gun going missing, but they didn’t seem too concerned about it, so I assumed they found it again.
He hesitated, watching me closely, amused. “And…what were you planning to do once you retrieved your gun?”
The intensity of his stare was familiar, reminding me of the man who watched me getting seduced by Ez while he stood behind a bookshelf.
But I wasn’t one hundred percent sure if Nicolae Warwick was the spy because all I saw was his eyes.
But the heat of his gaze was tearing me up as he waited for my answer.
I exhaled, “I think my stepmother is trying to kill me.” I gave him an honest answer, and he flinched in surprise.
“What makes you think that?” his tone had warmed, but still curious, tilting his handsome head to the side.
I wavered, deliberating whether I should tell him everything. I had been doing a lot of thinking since we returned from my hometown. My head was so stuffed with distorted thoughts, and it took a couple of days before I found clarity and could discern the difference between real and imagined.
“Joining the dots.” My answer was vague because I didn’t trust him. “When I had the chance to think about everything that’s been going on, it all seemed calculated as if planned. I know you’ll think I’m nuts, but…” I breathed through the nerves fluttering about in my stomach.
“Can you expand on that?” he urged me. “What dots are you joining?”
“You’ll think I’m reading into things,” I said as the gas and grease smell was irritating my throat, and I had to cough again.
“Please, can I have some water?” My fingers pressed against my throat in an attempt to ease the tickling.
But hopefully, once he’s gone to fetch a glass of water, I can try to escape.
Unfortunately, that plan fell short when he swiped his phone and called Ezrah, “Bro, can you bring down a bottle of water and some food, maybe a Pop-tart or something?” he shot me a mischievous look, “for the spy.”
My stomach turned at the thought of eating anything in this stinky, dirty space, but I definitely needed water. “How long are you going to keep me down here?”
He swiped off the phone and then began swiping on my phone, “Until I’m satisfied.” Then a sharpness flashed in his eyes as he held up my phone, “You lied. There are no phone calls to campus police.”
“I asked my friend to call them,” another lie, but I didn't want to get Mila in trouble with these guys, but she was safe, and I wasn't. “She’s probably talking to them now.”
He shrugged nonchalantly, like he didn’t care, and then continued to swipe through my phone. “We let you keep your phone because we put a tracker and a listening device on it to trace you.”
“Liar,” I accused him, which prompted him to detach the back of the phone and then show me the little device. “Didn’t your father teach you anything?”
“He taught me how to use a gun,” I replied, “and that’s why I want it back.”
He looked up at me from under those dark eyelashes, and it struck again how similar that look was to the man in the library. “Are you aware that the Yorks filmed you…” a hardened look pressed into his chiseled dial, “and my brother in the gardens?”
“Really? It was they who blackmailed my father?” A dormant volcano began to stir within me as the more I discovered, the more I wanted to cause hell on everyone around me, including the assholes who hold me captive in their stinking basement.
He rationalized, “So, you do know that your stepmother-”
“Yes, I have been informed that the Yorks are my stepmother’s nephews.
These are the dots I was joining,” I fumed.
“My stepmother convinced my father to pull me out of my previous college to send me to this shithole in the middle of nowhere.” I pointed my angry finger at him as I continued, “He…” I paused to control my emotions because I was tearing up thinking about my father.
“He would never kill himself.” I moved further under the stairs, in the shadows, so that he couldn’t see the emotion on my face.
“You don’t know that because you don’t know what goes in the mind of man,” he argued, and I felt he was talking about himself.
“Why would he leave me…Forget it. Forget I said anything,” I clammed up because I didn’t want his input. I didn’t want Nicolae to tell me I was wrong or that I was exaggerating.
He said smoothly, “I agree that you have a reason to avenge your stepmother and the Yorks, hell, we might even help you with that-”
“Really? You’d help me?” I was flabbergasted, then pulled myself together. Who was I kidding? They’re my enemy. “I don’t need your help.”
He snorted. “The wabbit is contradicting herself. We wouldn’t be doing it for you.
We’d be doing it because we don’t like the Yorks.
That family is a thorn in our side. The thorn is not as big as the Boleyn thorn, of course, but now your father is dead and your stepmother, I assume, is taking over the running of the business. Right?”
I hissed, “I can’t let that happen. I can’t let her… No. I won’t let that happen.”
“Well, that’s two families collaborating against us,” he concluded.
“Because you’re not actually there running your father’s business, instead, you’re here.
Out of their way. So, I don’t care about your personal conflicts with your stepmother.
My only concern is what the Yorks and your stepmother’s plans are now that Maxwell Boleyn is out of the way. ”
I snarled back at him, “Whose fault is it that I’m here instead of my home?” but he didn’t hear me because a solid knock on the door drowned me out.
He ran up the stairs, unlocked the door, and let Ezrah in, armed with bottled water, a bag of potato chips, and Pop-tarts on a plate. “What’s the plan?” he asked Nicolae, then searched for me in the basement, and then seemed relieved when he found me under the stairs. “You alright, Adina?”
“No,” I spat. “I want to leave, and I want my gun back.”
“She wants her gun back, Sick,” Ez mocked me.
“Well, she ain’t getting it back,” Nicolae asserted.
“Sick?” I sniggered. “Why are you called Sick?”
“Short for sickle,” Ez educated me.
“Dumb name,” I glowered. “Wooo, my name’s Sickle, because I cut wheat. So tough.”
Nicolae cracked a smile, while Ezrah was already shooting me that dimpled smile. God, I hated them.
“Give me my gun back,” I shouted, stomping my foot on the concrete.
“Alright, we’re done,” Nicolae said smoothly, climbing the stairs. “Leave her food here, and I'll chuck a blanket down. She can stay here the night.”
“Wait,” I yelled after him.
“She’d look better in my bed,” Ezrah debated, standing at the bottom of the stairs, gazing at me with that desire in his eyes.
I glanced up at Nicole, who was at the top of the stairs, and he looked down at me between the slats, and it was a look again that sent a shiver down my spine.
It was the same venom-laced gaze that struck me in the library.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I whispered, but it wasn't loud enough for him to hear.
He then broke the gaze, looked at Ezrah at the bottom of the stairs, who seemed to be waiting for his permission, then said, “No, she needs to spend a night down here to reflect on what she did wrong.”
“I did nothing wrong,” I yelled after him, angry as hell. “You stole from me. You kidnapped and drugged me. Asshole.”
Ignoring my heated rant, “Hurry up,” he said to Ezrah, holding up the key. “I need to lock her in.”
“Bro, are you serious?” Ezrah refused to move, looking about the basement. “It's cold down here, and there’s no bed.”
“We’ll chuck down a mattress,” Nicolae spat, “Hurry up, Ez. Get your ass up here.”
Ezrah hesitated before following his brother up the stairs. Ezrah left first while Nicolae shot me another look, before shutting the door behind him.
The door slamming echoed before falling like a ton of bricks. Fuck, I hated the Warwicks and this shithole college.