Chapter 34 Plot
Plot
A smack to the face woke me from my blissful unconsciousness.
“Ow,” I muttered under my breath as my cheek smarted.
The stinging pain made me wince and groan until my eyes could finally focus again. My hip ached something fierce while my leg buzzed with annoying sharp tingles.
Testing my limbs, I found my wrists tied to the arms of a chair and sighed in irritation. This was going to suck.
At least they left your legs free.
Yeah, their mistake.
Lifting my stiff neck, I struggled as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my only visibility granted by the city lights outside.
My vision bounced in several directions until they finally settled on Clive and Owen, both also bound to chairs in front of me, duct tape over their mouths, and looking like complete shit.
Fuck.
If they were down, then I was completely on my own until Darren came back from being an absolute fucking monster elsewhere. Hopefully, he was already on his way because I had no idea how long I could keep whoever these people were occupied without actually killing me first. But I had to try.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked aloud, finding several more men standing guard scattered throughout the shadowed room. Then the man whose jaw met my foot earlier walked into the room.
“She wakes,” he declared, his hands coming together in a single clap.
I sighed quietly to myself, attempting to keep my anger at bay. “Who the fuck are you?”
He shrugged and took a step closer. “Oh, I’m just the hired hand, but you can call me Smith.”
“The fuck do you want, Smith?”
His dark hair fell over his brow, reaching well past his shoulders in long, greasy strands. A single gold tooth caught the moonlight when he opened his mouth and smiled.
“I’d watch it with that attitude, baby girl. Maybe you’re not used to dangerous cities, but around here, that kind of disrespect can get you killed real fast.”
I frowned at him, tilting my head. “Bitch, I’m from Detroit. Don’t lecture me about dangerous cities. Now what the fuck do you want?”
He chuckled as he took a few steps closer, his hand dipping into his pocket and pulling out a decent-sized switchblade.
“I heard you were a feisty one. I like that.”
I growled in frustration. “I’m not going to ask again.”
He flipped the pocketknife in his hand. “You’re in no position to be making demands, sweetness, but for the sake of time, I’m only here to collect some information from you. That’s all.”
I almost snorted. “Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m deliberately left out of the team meetings for a reason.”
“Oh, I think you might be surprised at how much info you actually hold in that pretty little head of yours,” he argued. “In fact, I’m willing to bet it’s only going to cost your bodyguards all of their fingers to find out.”
I chuckled when I saw Clive and Owen both roll their eyes.
“Well, that is one of their job duties, so by all means, waste your time long enough for Darren to return.”
He tsk’d, shaking his head. “You would have me torture and kill them just to protect your murderer of a husband?” he accused, pointing at Clive and Owen.
I leveled him with a glare. “Dying for me is literally their fucking job. What, you think Darren would spare them if I got killed on their watch?” I laughed and shook my head.
“He’d make their death twenty times worse than anything you could possibly do to them.
So you’d actually be doing them a favor. ”
Now, he looked frustrated.
“So like I said before, I don’t know shit about shit.”
Smith took a few steps toward me. “Alright then, let’s test your theory.”
He marched over to me, raising the blade over his head.
I braced for the impact, but instead of pain, I heard two muffled gunshots echo from a silencer behind me, piercing into Smith’s gut and chest.
“What the fuck?” he grumbled, the look of shock and confusion painting his face before he fell to the floor with a loud thump. None of the remaining men in the room even flinched at the shooting, no one moving to help him or return fire.
What the hell was going on?
“Sorry about that little display. My phone call took longer than I expected,” said a familiar voice from behind me.
I knew that fucking voice.
The last person I expected to see walked from around my chair and leaned over me, a smug smile across his face. He gave me a little finger wave with his black leather gloved hand.
“Matt?”
His grin widened as he tucked his gun back into his holster. “Hello, Jaden,” he taunted. “Comfortable?”
“What the fuck is this? Why did you just kill him?”
He stepped away from the chair, placing his hands in his pockets, and turned to snicker at me.
“Like he said, he was just the hired hand.”
I scowled at him. “Where’s Darren? How did you even get in here?”
Matt sighed like he was annoyed, the shadows of the room hiding his eyes as he leaned against one of the broken couches.
“He’s about to be busy for the next hour or two. So we have plenty of time to chat.”
I furrowed my brows, my muscles tensing from his words. “Why? Just so you can send Darren a stupid message?”
He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Actually, I’m here to forward you a message.”
My brows furrowed deeper.
“You see, I was recently visited by a ghost,” he added. “A very young, pretty, blonde ghost.”
My stomach instantly dropped, my eyes widening with shock.
Oh no. He found her first. Fuck!
“What the fuck did you do?” I snarled.
Matt marched toward me in three steps and backhanded me across the face.
“What did I do?! Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!” he roared down at me.
I spit out the blood that burst into my mouth. “You mean saved her from a life of sexual servitude? Yeah, shame on me.”
He scoffed dramatically. “Oh please, spare me your hero complex. I don’t have time for that shit.”
“What have you done with her? Where is she?”
Matt scoffed. “I haven’t done anything with her because I don’t have her,” he snarled. “Yet.”
I glared at him, my wrists straining in my binds, but I took solace in the relief I felt knowing Kayla was still free of him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Matt placed his hands over his hips, sucking in a breath like he was having a hard time finding the words.
“Kayla has apparently teamed up with your old boyfriend to take Darren and his organization down.”
My brain froze, and my heart stopped. No way I just heard that.
“What did you just say?”
He dipped his chin, his gaze all business. “You heard me loud and fucking clear.”
I blinked, looking away to stare off into space as my reality shifted on its axis.
Was this real? Had this really happened?
No, it could be a trick. Don’t fall for it.
“Prove it,” I demanded.
Matt folded his arms across his chest, exhaling heavily. “Jason said you would know what Wily Wilder meant. Something about stealing a class pet from school or something?”
My breath caught in my chest, neurons firing in my brain like a pinball machine, bouncing against the walls, struggling to make a connection.
Wily Wilder was a nickname I’d gotten in the second grade when my teacher caught me trying to sneak the class pet out of the classroom by hiding it in my backpack.
But the little danger noodle slithered through a hole in the fabric and plopped out right onto my teacher’s desk as I headed for the door.
The nickname stuck when I got caught for the third and final time.
“He also said that walking away from you in that bathroom in Rome was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.”
My stomach dropped, the memory causing my eyes to water from an emotion I couldn’t afford to lose myself in right now. But I just couldn’t help it—hope and relief fluttering in my heart like a storm of freed butterflies.
She did it. Kayla found Jason. She actually made it out! She was safe!
“Holy shit,” I whispered to myself, my heart rate jumping through the roof. And then I grinned up at Matt like a goddamn fool. “That’s fucking awesome!”
My hype was only slightly compromised when Matt’s fist connected with my other cheek, the blow rocking my chair.
“Silence!” he bellowed. But even as the fierce pain radiated throughout my skull, I couldn’t stop the joyous laughter rolling up my throat.
“Did you just say silence? What are you, a Disney villain?” I chuckled through the sting.
“You took away the one thing that I actually gave a shit about in this world, so it probably wouldn’t be wise to celebrate in front of me, especially since those two are the only reasons you’re currently still breathing,” Matt warned, his voice rough like gravel.
And still, as my cheek began to swell, I laughed. “Yeah, forcing Kayla to sit on the floor and eat from your hand like a fucking animal just screams tender, loving care. Eat a dick, Matt. You never cared about her,” I retorted, unfazed. “You just wanted to own her.”
He looked at me like he wanted nothing more than to slaughter me, but I couldn’t stop smiling, practically dancing in my chair over the fact that Kayla had done it.
Something we had planned had actually succeeded for once, and it made everything that Darren had done to me over it worth every torturous second.
Though, despite my hopes, Jason and Kayla teaming up with Matt was not something I had on my Operation Take Down bingo card. His involvement in all of this would surely make everything much more complicated. Could this asshole even be trusted? Was Kayla even safe with him around?
Matt shook his head as he watched the imaginary wheels in my head turn in every direction, a scowl curling in the corner of his mouth.
“You know, I almost felt sorry when you got shot during your training exercise, but now I can see you very much deserved it,” he snipped, tightening his arms across his chest.
My humor and excitement screeched to a halt at the mention of my gunshot wound. “What.”