38. Juliet
38
JULIET
A n arm encircles my throat just as I throw my hips back and bend over. The man at my back grunts as I thrust my ass into his groin and instead of trying to free myself from his grasp, I reach up and clutch at his forearm, holding it to me. Cory’s lessons come sprinting to the forefront of my mind as my body reacts with the instincts he’s tried to instill in me.
Self-defense is never about being stronger. It’s about being smarter.
The man’s body lifts off the ground as I push back even harder and he goes sailing over my back, tumbling to the ground. I don’t wait around to see if his friend will try to help him or come after me. I start running. Ice inflates my lungs, scraping my throat raw as my sneakers slap against the cracked pavement of the parking lot. Back towards the lights, back towards the football field.
It had taken me a solid twenty minutes from the front of the stadium to the back of the parking lot. I plan to cut that time in half if not more.
Booted footsteps stomping the ground behind me answer my earlier question of whether or not the second guy had stayed back to help his friend or not. A curse squeezes out of my lungs and I cut to the left, diving between two sedans as I hit the next aisle of cars. The sound of him working to keep up with me doesn’t cease. In fact, it sounds like he’s getting closer.
My heart hammers in my ears. Thump. Thump. Thump . It drowns out everything else even though I’m trying to listen for the man behind me.
I reach the next aisle of cars, but before I can swerve to the right, a body slams into me. To my utter horror, I scream as I hit the ground. My knees slam into the pavement, rattling me up to my damn jaw. The man on top of me spins me, hand gripping my throat. Instead of going limp, though, I grit my teeth and press one elbow back to the cold hard ground, thrusting my hips into his and shoving the two of us to the side.
The man doesn’t speak, but he does grunt, and when he lands on his side, I rear back and kick the shit out of his calf. His hand loosens its hold and for the briefest of moments, I contemplate screaming for help. We’re closer to the football field now. But what are the odds that anyone will hear me over the announcer and crowds? What are the odds that if someone realizes who’s asking for help that they’ll even bother?
No one in Silverwood gives a fuck what happens to a Donovan, after all.
I scramble up off the ground the second I can slip free from the man’s hold and take off running again. My hair flies behind my face, and I can feel something wet against the inside of my pants leg. I must have broken skin on the last fall, but I don’t have time to concern myself with a wound.
One foot in front of the other, I drag in lungfuls of air as I set my sights on the lights getting closer. Almost… fucking… there…
A black van screeches to a stop mere feet in front of me, too fast for me to actually stop, and I know that I’m going to slam into its side before I can get my feet to cooperate with my mind.
This is so going to hurt, is the only thought spiraling through my head when the side door pops open and swings down. Horror slams into me a second later and I drag my heels into the ground.
Too late. Too motherfucking late. Twin hands lift me right before I manage to stop myself from careening into the near empty van and lift me, practically throwing me into the back and against the masked man from before.
Hands latch on to me and I finally give up on any pride I might have had. Any reason to not call for help. I scream. I kick. I thrash. I punch and curse.
My arms are pinned and then I’m flipped onto my stomach. The cold snick of handcuffs sliding onto my wrists sends my mind into a whirlwind.
No. This can’t be happening.
“Door, get the fucking door!” The driver snaps, though his voice sounds muffled—as if he’s yelling through a partition of some sort.
I can’t see it, but I know that the man who’d been chasing me is the one that threw me inside and now, he’s the one to slam the door closed. Despite the lack of lights in the parking lot, the pitch blackness that swarms me the second the door closes freezes me for all of two seconds. Then, it’s pure chaos.
My foot connects with a man’s thigh and the responding grunt of pain is as loud as my harsh breathing. No. No. No . I scream again, but this time it’s actual words.
“Nolan!” Tires squeal. “Lex! Gio!”
“Shut her up!” The driver barks.
“Fuck you!” A body slams me onto the bumpy metal floor, but the driver presses the gas and whips the van to the side, sending both me and the two men in the back careening into one of the curved walls. I kick at anything I can, pulling my legs up and jerking them out until they connect with warm bodies.
My stomach revolts and the hot chocolate combined with the cheap greasy food I had for dinner threatens to come up. I bite back a groan as the van turns again and my body is thrust to the opposite side of the back and I slam into the first man with a grunt. My head snaps back and connects with his chin as his hands come up and grip my shoulders.
“God damn it, V, you’re going to kill us!” The man behind me snaps. Though I want more than anything to fling myself away from him, his head was hard as fuck and the black and white spots dance in front of me—corrupting the darkness that otherwise surrounds us.
I gag, and just before my dinner and hot chocolate comes up, I turn my head away from myself and vomit all over the bottom of the van. Liquid fire burns up my throat and it takes all of my self-control to hold back the whimper as my body heaves and seizes with the effort of my puking.
“Shit!” The second voice doesn’t match the driver’s and it’s not coming from behind me, so it must be from the guy that had opened the rear door of the van. “She threw up. Don’t you dare take another curb like you’re running from the fucking cops, V, or it’ll be all over the damn place.”
The hands on my shoulders lift me bodily and slide me to the side. I fight back the urge to puke again as sweat beads pop up along my forehead and down the back of my spine. All at once, the cold seeping in through the metal walls and door of the van is back. I slump into a corner, feeling sluggish as my legs are lifted.
How the two in the back with me can see in the darkness, I don’t know, but I can do nothing as my legs are wrapped in what feels like rope. “Don’t bother trying to get away again,” someone says.
“Fuck… you…” The words come out slow and slurring, like I’m drunk. That means something, doesn’t it? I try to remember what I’ve learned about medicine, but it’s all foggy for some reason.
“Shit, she might have a concussion.” The voice is close, and I jerk when warm fingers brush my chin. I blink and a low grayish light turns on towards the very back of the van’s bed. “Kilo.”
Kilo—the man I’d head butted, I assume— shuffles over, avoiding a section of the van floor as he does. Most likely where I’d puked. Good, I think snidely. They can clean that shit up. I’m not sorry.
Neither man has removed their masks—that has to be a good thing, right? It means they don’t plan on keeping me, right?—but I’m starting to figure out their differences. The man currently in front of me has longer lashes that are dark and inky in color, but his eyes aren’t nearly as cold as the original man’s I’d seen. I’d only thought as much.
The first man—Kilo, it appears—shuffles him to the side and takes my chin in his grip. I can hardly lift my limbs, and my head feels like it weighs a ton. The ache has exploded through my brain and every twist and turn he urges from me has me biting back curses and whimpers.
Why does it hurt so much? What the hell is his head made of? Concrete?
I scream when my head is whipped to the front again and a bright ass pen light is shoved into my eyeball.
“Definitely a concussion,” Kilo surmises and the penlight disappears.
He dies first, I decide. When I have control of my body again and I don’t feel like vomiting again, I’m going to kill him first.
“Shit, the boss isn’t gonna be happy. They wanted her in good condition.”
Good condition? What the hell does that even mean?
I don’t manage to ask, though, before Kilo is reaching over and into a bag that’s strapped to the wall. Pulling out a needle filled with a clear fluid, he pops off the cap and flicks the side. As if I didn’t already know this wasn’t some random kidnapping, the preparation that they’ve obviously gone to would tell me.
I close my eyes so I don’t have to see it, but when the needle pierces the skin of my arm, they fly open once more. I stare at the man injecting me with whatever drug they brought to put me out.
“You’re… so… fucked…” I slur out the words, my only warning.
“You think so?” Kilo doesn’t sound particularly concerned and that only pisses me off even more. He finishes pushing the plunger of the needle and slowly removes it from my arm before handing it to his friend to put it away.
“I… know… so…” I choke out as he gingerly eases me down to a lying position. The edges of my vision grow fuzzier and panic crawls up my throat.
“Sorry, but I don’t think so,” Kilo replies, his tone nonplussed. He says something else, but it’s too late and my ears are no longer working. It sounds like he’s saying something about no one bothering to come for a girl like me, but I can’t be sure.
The worst part is… I know he’s right. Who would come after me? Mads and Roquel have no resources. They’d just go to the police, and what would Silverwood PD do about me? Let me go, that’s what.
The Scorpion Kings? Would they? I mean, really? Why? Because they fucked me a few times? No. It’s useless to think they would rescue me for pussy. To them, I was probably just a good way to pass time for a bit than I was a reason for one of their own getting hurt.
As if I hadn’t already been presented with the truth time and time again, the realization that I’m all alone in this world crashes into me with all the subtlety of a freight train. My insides crack wide open and I can see in my mind’s eye as the image of the back of the van’s ceiling spirals in front of me how useless it would be to expect anyone to save me.
No one is coming to rescue the daughter of a criminal.
Just like no one came to rescue me the night a monster snuck into my bed.
I’ve always been alone, I just didn’t know it until now.