Chapter One, Roomies
The best part about having an active imagination was that you could have dreams about licking chocolate off the abs of hot alien dudes and it would help you forget about the fact that you’d been kidnapped. Not just kidnapped, but shot with a damn tranq gun, like you were in some spy movie.
Not even a cool spy movie. But a low budget one.
When I came to, dream collapsing with a cry of sadness, everything felt wrong.
My head throbbed like I’d been hit with a brick, and my throat burned from breathing in air that wasn’t clean.
Not just gross city air, rife with pollution like I was used to.
I meant really dirty air. Filthy ass, dusty, crusty, musty air.
The type only found in serial killer basements and that one storage closet in your house that you stored Christmas décor in and never aired out.
I coughed, spluttered, and blinked until my eyes caught the flicker of dim light coming from a vent near the ceiling. The dirt ceiling. As in, underground dirt ceiling.
Lola, I thought of my therapist again, as my heart instantly started to pound, I need you to know I died happy and you were a great therapist. My ass was fat, my stomach was full, and I’d just had a threesome in the woods.
Don’t feel sorry for me. Just delete my browser history on my phone.
I don’t need the cops knowing how shit I am at spelling, or that I enjoy watching ASMR videos of people pretending to be giving me cranial nerve exams.
I sniffled as I tried to sit up. The smell was of metal, dirt, and something that used to be disinfectant but had long since turned sour tickled my nose. It was enough to make me sneeze hard enough to jolt my back.
I tried to move more, but my body was heavy. My wrist jerked and metal scraped—chains. Thick ones. Not the fun kind used to tie you up before a sex game, but the legit murderer kind.
My back hit cold concrete, and I took stock one piece at a time. My legs worked, my chest hurt, but nothing felt broken. No bruises I could see, no blood, no cuts. Aside from a dry throat, heaviness, and the fact that I was kind of craving chocolate now, I was fine.
But I was also in a murder basement, with a steel door the only way in or out, so I tugged on the cuffs again, harder this time.
They didn’t give. Not even a little.
“Come on, you motherfuckers, be a good chain for mommy and break.” I hissed as I yanked my arm three more times until my shoulder hurt and I coughed again.
A noise came from across the room, rough like someone clearing their throat. I jerked my head toward it, presuming I was about to get murdered by a jackass in a mask.
And not the cute mask like Atlas wore. But a creepy one. Made of human skin, or a sack with holes in.
A man sat against the opposite wall. Massive and terrifying but not in a mask. He looked at me, and I narrowed my eyes, trying to get a clearer look at him. A few blinks later, my eyes adjusted better to the dark.
“Mornin’, miss.” He drawled, Southern accent as thick as my friend Ruby’s.
The sound instantly made me want to find her and hug her. And then ask her to shoot whoever had kidnapped me because kidnapping was rude, and I… well, I was a hypocrite. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I was a criminal. I was a good girl.
Kidnapping was fine when I did it, not when it happened to me.
“Good morning,” I said, as I checked him out for safety reasons and pretended not to be terrified.
He was all muscle and broadness, shoulders tense under a dirty black T-shirt, one thick wrist chained to the wall just like mine.
Even hunched over, I could tell he was taller than both my men, stronger too, like a damn NFL player or something.
His hair was long enough to touch his collar, a deep brown tangled at the ends, and his handsome face was marked up with bruises and scars that didn’t look fresh.
Tattoos ran down both arms, dark lines and shapes half hidden by shadows.
He looked like he’d been here a long time and had stopped caring about it, even if his bright green eyes still seemed unnaturally light despite the current situation.
He watched me for a beat before I blurted out, “You look like shit.” My cheeks burned. “I didn’t mean that in a rude way. You’re handsome or whatever. I just meant you look like someone’s been playing with you like you’re a pinata.”
“That’s usually what happens when you’re chained up in a dungeon.” He shifted slightly, the chain clinking against the wall. “There ain’t no southern hospitality down here.”
I pulled at my own again, trying my best not to shiver in my very inappropriate clothing to be kidnapped in. “Where the hell are we?”
He shrugged, the movement slow. “Some kind of bunker.”
“Cool. Love that. Always wanted to wake up in someone’s kidnap dungeon.” I scanned the room again, still seeing nothing but dirt, heart hammering under my ribs. “Last thing I remember, I was having a great nap. Then, some nutjob broke into our cabin and did a Taken with me.”
He lifted his head, watching me. I appreciated the fact that he kept his eyes on my face, and not my body, which was thoroughly visible in my fishnets and underwear.
It wasn’t like I was shy, and I was more than used to being stared at.
But I’d dressed this way for my men, not a new dungeon roomie, and I preferred him being polite.
It saved me from getting my wraith to pluck his eyeballs out.
I checked my arms and legs again, dragging the chain just far enough that I could double check for injuries.
My knees were dusty from the floor. But I had no bruises.
No blood. Whoever grabbed me had been careful enough not to hurt me, and you would have thought that would have made me feel better, but it did not.
I presumed they just wanted me awake to hurt. Like I had with Reaper.
For a few minutes the silence pressed in, too heavy for me not to want to scream. After a very long internal discussion of things I was going to share with my therapist, I looked back at the stranger.
“How long have you been down here?”
He glanced at the ceiling. “Last thing I remember before this place was the week before Christmas. Had a terrible date. She drugged me over dessert.” He leaned his head back against the wall, eyes half open. “I woke up chained here.”
“That’s one way to end a date.” I frowned as I crossed my legs and bit the inside of my cheek. “So, you’ve been here since then? It’s like February now.”
He blinked at me a few times, no reaction bar that about the length of time he’d been chained up.
I swallowed hard as I looked toward the steel door again, pulse ticking faster. “What does she want? I presume she’s the same lady who took me. I remember it being a woman.” A woman who had literally dodged bullets, which definitely wasn’t nerve-wracking at all.
He shrugged. “She likes to play with people.”
“Oh, cool.” I exhaled, pulse spiking. “That sounds rapey as fuck.”
He shook his head, softening his voice. “Not like that. She plays games with them. With us.”
“Oh.” I blinked, because that somehow wasn’t comforting either, and my mouth went running on its own. “Well, good news. I’m great at games. Monopoly, Scrabble, and a little poker. I’ll hold my own.”
That earned me nothing—just another unreadable look. He didn’t even seem to notice how sarcastic I was being. Clearly, his imprisonment had made him… empty. A poor little empty man. No sense of humor left.
I wanted to cry, but hot girls didn’t cry when in danger. They figured shit out and ran away.
Then cried.
“So,” I said after a second of being unable to sit in silence with all the voices in my head panicking, “do we get fed? Because I like food. You don’t look starved, and you must have had water if you’re not dead yet, so…”
“Twice a day,” he grunted. “Water too, yeah. Then bathroom breaks when she feels generous.”
“Great,” my heart slowed down a little, but not enough to make me able to relax against the dirt like he was. “Gourmet living. Love that for us.”
He said nothing. Just stayed there, hanging like a sad puppet nobody wanted to play with anymore.
I twisted the cuff around my wrist again and watched him. “You got a name?”
He shook his head.
“Fine.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You look like a Brick. Big, quiet, bland. Brick suits you.”
His mouth twitched, barely. “Don’t.”
“Too late.” I smirked, nerves easing with my distraction. “You’re Brick now.”
He went silent again, like he was hoping I’d shut up.
“So why’d she take you, Brick?” I asked. “She just grabs random dudes for fun?”
He stared ahead, voice flat. “I’m a hitman. Someone probably paid her. Happens sometimes when you’ve pissed off enough people.”
Pretending not to be instantly concerned about Brick murdering me, I tilted my head.
“Sounds fun.” I looked down at my bare knees again, brushing away dust with my fingers.
“Well, I’ve got no idea why I’m here. Maybe she just wanted a challenge.
Or maybe she’s a new stalker. I’ve got a running collection. ”
He finally looked at me properly, eyes narrowed. “You collect stalkers?”
“Apparently,” I pulled my fishnets to keep my hands distracted from the current situation, and the earlier headfuck of knowing that I’d not caught Missy’s killer yet, and now it might have been too late.
“Some girls collect shoes or degrees. I get psychos. Which has been great so far, but my previous stalker did laundry and cooked. This one is not up to scratch.”
“Right.” He said nothing after that, just kept watching the ground like it had something more interesting to say.
“Well, I know you’ve been here a while, but we’ll be out soon.” I filled the silence again because silence was torture. “I’m not worried. My boyfriends will find me.”
That got his attention again. “Boyfriends?”
“Yeah, plural,” I clicked my tongue. “Giovanni’s one of them.
He’s mafia but not the gross kind. Flirty, talks too much, thinks he’s charming—and he is, but I’d never say that to his face.
We do this thing where I pretend to hate him, and he likes it.
” My throat got tight, hands shook. “He’ll call in every favor he’s ever owed to find me and use his gang.
And then there’s Atlas. He’s the other one.
Hitman, hacker, scary as hell to other people, but super smart and sweet to me.
He’ll have me tracked already. He’d never let anyone hurt me or keep me in the dirt like a pretty pre-corpse. ”
Brick stayed quiet, still not giving much away as I forced myself to focus on my own words.
They were true. Gio would help find me with his gang ties. Atlas would find me himself.
I gave it twenty minutes before I saw a ghost mask bursting through the door, and all our enemies dead.
Thirty minutes max.
I looked back up at the ceiling vent, forcing my brain to keep working instead of panicking.
“Missy,” I said out loud, like she could hear me.
“You always said I’d end up in some creepy guy’s basement.
Guess you were wrong. It’s a creepy lady’s basement.
So technically, you owe me twenty bucks and were a terrible feminist. Turns out women can be kidnappers too. ”
The guy across the room finally made a sound—a short snort, quiet but still very much real.
I grinned. “So you can laugh, Brick? Nice.”
He shook his head, green eyes rolling. “You’re a strange little thing.”
“Thanks,” I pretended that my heartbeat wasn’t louder than my headache. “I try.”
He opened his mouth, then the lock on the door clicked. Metal scraped; a key twisted. We both looked up as light spilled in, bright enough to make my eyes water, as hope blossomed in my chest.
Then swiftly died.
A woman stepped inside. She wore black jeans, a fitted shirt, gloves, combat boots, and a black balaclava with little devil horns stitched on top. She stopped just inside the doorway, tilted her head, and I swore she smiled under the mask.
“Hello, beautiful,” she purred at me, her faint Russian accent making my heart hurt more. “I think it’s time us girls had a little chat.”