Chapter Thirty #2
His eyelids fluttered open for a moment. “Don’t…don’t tell Millie,” he rasped, gasping for breath. Snatching up his wrist, I checked his pulse, not knowing who Millie was.
“I won’t tell Millie shit,” I vowed as the black cars surrounded us.
“You can tell Millie. Wake up! Stay with me, Jake.” The men, dressed in black suits and ski masks were coming for us—for me.
I looked around and then went back to my friend.
“I need you to stay alive. Stay alive, Jake.” I looked at the screen, knowing the boys were still listening. “Save Jake first.”
“Margo, baby,” Hayes roared in the background, the familiar sound of chopper blades cutting to the air was the reason I nearly missed it.
Tears were hot on my cheeks and my chest was heaving. I couldn’t fight all of these men alone.
I didn’t stand a chance. It would get me killed.
“Save Jake first,” I ordered on a sob and ended the call.
“Millie,” Jake groaned, his voice fading as he fell out of consciousness again.
The driver’s side door and passenger door were both wrenched open, and I was grabbed from behind, being pulled away from Jake as the man in front of me raised his gun.
He pressed it to Jake’s forehead, and I screamed.
The man at my back had me out of the car, but I was still holding on, fighting and kicking, trying to pull myself back inside.
Tears were running down my face as I snarled, “You kill him, you tell Gordon he will never have me. I will never come willingly. I will never be his again! Put your fucking gun down!”
The masked man turned his head to me, cocking it to the side as I kicked his partner’s knee.
A hand was over my mouth then, and it took two more men to get my hands off the door.
Still, my threat worked, the man with the gun stepped back and jerked his head in a silent order.
Then I was hauled off to the nearest car.
They zip-tied my wrists behind my back, shoved me in headfirst, and slammed the door. Then we were off.
I sobbed into the leather seats, the streetlights passing by over me.
Hayes, get to Jake. Save Jake. Not me.
The room was dark and cold but not moist. I had a wild imagination, and for some reason, I figured all kidnappings would be the same. That each time, I would be taken to a cold but moist dark room. This room had no moisture. No signs of life. It was cold and dry. Not what I expected.
Once Gordon’s men had gotten on the road, the man in the passenger seat had put a smelly bag over my head.
It smelled like a mix of weed and fried chicken.
These guys weren’t professionals. That much was true.
Kidnappings were supposed to be out of the public eye, right?
At least Carrie’s kidnapper had the decency and the basic intelligence to take us out back where no one could see us.
These men had attacked me in the middle of campus—when the majority of students were heading out to grab dinner or heading back to their dorms. It was very poor planning on Gordon’s part because now the entire city of Seattle knew.
A shooting on a college campus. It would be on the national news within the hour.
However, my ex’s lack of planning—his recklessness—also scared the living shit out of me. That meant he was desperate and he had nothing to lose. So he was going to get back the one thing he could never keep: me.
I didn’t know how long I’d been here. When they shoved me inside and pulled the bag off my head, the light was on.
I didn’t get much of a chance to look around.
They told me to go sit on the small cot in the corner and to be quiet.
If I made any noise, they would “shut me up.” Uncharacteristically, I did what I was told, and the second my butt hit the dirty mattress, the light was gone and the door slammed.
Gordon would be here soon, and if he was still the man I once knew, the first thing he would do is brag. Brag about everything he had now and how much I had missed out on. He always did that when I tried to leave him, along with making promises he would never be able to keep.
Hayes was coming for me too.
That’s why the tears stopped shortly after they covered my eyes. The tears weren’t for me. They were Jake. My bottom lip trembled at the thought, and I sucked it back between my teeth.
No, Margo.
No tears.
You’re going to make it out of this.
Hayes will come for you.
He will always come for you.
Memories of him appearing behind the last kidnapper unfolded in my mind like a warm blanket.
Visions of the blood on his hands and the fierce but gentle anger in his voice when he crouched down in front of me.
His soft touch. His forest green eyes. The way his arms felt around me for the first time when he shielded me from stray bullets.
He was and always would be my Superman.
My body began to sway back and forth as I lost myself in memories of him.
More time passed, and when my psycho ex opened the door and smiled at me, I was calm. The lies were on my tongue, and I was ready to fire them.
“There’s my pretty girl,” Gordon greeted, his deep voice smooth. Two men followed him inside, their faces still covered. His dark eyes drank me in, lingering on my butterfly tattoo for a long time. They flicked up to meet mine. “I bet that hurt.”
“Not as much as you choking me did,” I deadpanned, scanning the room casually. To my right, there was a screw sticking out of the wall, forgotten and painted over. It was at just the right angle. “The place is a dump, but I’m glad to see you’ve updated your wardrobe.”
I had to admit—he looked like a completely different man.
Black suit, dark blue shirt, sans the tie, and expensive shoes.
No worn-out jeans, stained T-shirts, stolen Nike shoes, or messy hair.
His dark hair was combed back with gel, giving the world a view of the delicate tattooed scripture along his hairline.
Hebrews 10:31. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
“I’ve missed you,” he said, smiling at me.
He’d fixed his teeth; gleaming white veneers had replaced his old jagged, stained ones.
“You look good.” I said nothing, and he looked over his shoulder, flicking his fingers.
The two men behind him left the room and shut the door.
“You don’t need to worry about them, babe. They won’t hurt you.”
Babe.
God, how I wanted to kick him in the jaw.
“They shot at me.”
He inhaled, taking a deep sigh as he put his hands in his pockets. He looked at his shoes, rocking back on his heels, blowing out air. “Yes, well, I do apologize for that. I told them to be gentle with you.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” I whispered, curling my lip in disgust.
“What can I do to make you comfortable?”
“You can let me go, Gordon,” I snapped, standing up. “That’s what you can fucking do.”
His eyes flashed with something sinister as a slow grin stretched across his lips. “Still have that fire,” he murmured. “Missed that too.” He tipped his head to the cot. “Sit back down.”
“Fuck you,” I seethed, moving over to the wall and leaning back against it. I adjusted my hands at my back, hooking the zip tie on the screw.
Gordon simply smirked and shook his head. “Fine, stand. I don’t care either way. You’re back and that’s all that matters to me.”
“Back, where?”
He turned to face me. “With me.”
I cocked a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Babe, I didn’t spend all these years dealing with your dipshit of a brother for nothing.”
My spine snapped straight. “What?”
He gave me that damn grin again. “Did you honestly think I was going to let you walk away from me, Margo?”
No.
No.
No.
No.
I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
A chuckle filled the air then, a direct echo from some of the most painful memories of my life.
“I let your brother accumulate a debt with me while I built my empire. I knew Marcus had access to your account, babe. He fucking boasted about it any chance he could get. ‘My sister has the cash, don’t worry.’” He paused and pointed at me, smiling wide.
“You walked away from me. You refused to let me try and make things right.”
“You beat me,” I whispered.
His hand fell away, his jaw tightening. “I was in a bad spot.”
“You were always in a bad fucking spot,” I shot back, leaning forward slightly, my hands working the zip tie now. “You never had enough money for rent; you never helped me take care of things. All you did was sit on the couch, jack off to cheap porn, and get high!”
He didn’t deny anything. He simply put his hand back into his pocket, planted his feet wide, and shrugged a single shoulder. “I’m a different man now—a better man. I told you I was going to give you the life you deserved, Margo. I meant that.”
He had told me that. That sweet promise whispered to me the night he took my virginity, was what I held on to.
It was why I stayed so long. That promise instilled a false hope in me, a hope that I put on him.
Night after night, while his friends came over to smoke, fuck strangers, and eat all the food I’d worked so hard for, I lay on the mattress I’d found on the side of the road and told myself that one day he would keep that promise.
Then he started hitting me.
That’s when the hope began to die.
When hope was dead, my dignity rose out of his grave, and I left.
Better man, my ass.
“When I found the strength to leave you, I was covered in blood. My lip was split, and you had shoved me into the dirt.” He said nothing, staring at me as if I was his property. “I get to choose the kind of life I want,” I said, my voice firm.
He looked away from me, shaking his head to himself. “She doesn’t get it.”
“What, Gordon? What don’t I fucking get? I have a life. I have friends! I have two jobs, a home—I have a family.”
“Marcus and I are your family,” he said, his voice cold, looking at me again.
“Another word you don’t know the definition of.”
He looked at the ceiling. “I should’ve ordered Marcus to pay me back sooner. Perhaps then you wouldn’t have been so stubborn, so independent.”
A harsh laugh left me. “We both know how independent women scare you, Gordon.”
An alarm wailed outside and the door opened. “Got a problem, boss,” a masked man said, leaning in.
My ex sighed and looked over at me. “We have so many things to talk about, babe. One of them being why you’re on an FBI protection list.”
I blinked, my anger sobering.
Gordon shot me another glance, and then he and his men were gone. Leaving me alone.
I looked over to the camera in the corner, focusing on the red recording light. My heart skipped a beat.
Red Snake was here.
My Superman was here.