Chapter 22
EMME
Like some lame, long-lost cousin, I ran open-armed at Charity. “You came!”
We hit in a soft confusion of hugs and laughs.
“Of course! Why would I not?”
Arm in arm, we entered the Saucy Sally—a laid-back pub where steak, chips, and peas, was the commonest meal. It had few standards except that you leave without throwing up on anything.
“Great place,” I said, looking about at the mix of couples and groups celebrating something or other. Most would move on to a club afterward, I guessed.
The bar was stuffed with polished timber ornamental bits and a very long line of alcoholic beverages.
“It’s okay. You said you wanted unfancy?”
“I did. I just want to eat and vent, again.” I grinned, and she rocked back in her chair, laughing.
“Oh my god. I don’t mind at all, Emme. Go forth and vent, I say. Not that guy again? The Dom?”
Sheepishly, I shrugged. “I have to apologize to you. I lied.” I lightly headdesked the table, careful not to break anything.
“Ah-huh. I thought so. It was pretty obvious to me. We will educate you one day, girl, on the perils of men. Get a good vibrator instead.”
“Yeah. Cheaper and less traumatizing.” The server was heading our way, so I pulled the laminated menu closer and started to read.
“Broken heart?”
“No. I wish. A broken pussy was all I was hoping for.”
At the choked sound, I spotted the waiter, a girl of about twenty, looking half shocked, half gleeful. She gathered herself. “Are you ready to order yet?”
We waved her off.
Charity straightened her dress—it was pretty with a daisy-covered blue bodice that emphasized her cleavage.
She nodded at me. “You can spill it all after we order, and have a drink or two before us. Beer? This place says beer. Order me the steak, blue, with chips and that salad.” She tapped the menu.
“Champagne, please. I want to pretend I’m celebrating a break-up.” Which I was, and since Grayson was paying my rent, I had enough to spare for this. “I want to get slightly shit-faced in an upper-class sort of way.”
Charity eyerolled and headed to the bar, her long black hair swinging like a mane across her backless dress.
She drew admiring looks from several men with her pert ass swaying below the hair.
I grinned ruefully to myself. If only it was that easy for me.
My standards were either way too high, or way too low for most guys.
The food and drinks arrived, and Charity interrogated me. Nicely though. She was well aware that I wanted to spill everything.
“So.” She waved a chip at me. “The kinky bitch in front of me is complaining that two hot, rich men flew her to Germany and set up this big party just to try to cater to her kinks? Yeah, that sounds terrible. How dare they?”
“Said that way…” I twisted my mouth and forked a piece of carrot. “Yes. He probably spent thousands.”
“Fuck. I mean it would have freaked me out. He, I mean they, are rich as fuck, and you managed to piss them off. I would have run away long before, though.”
I swallowed, drank the last of my champagne, and eyed the empty bottle. “Another?”
“Sure. I’m not drinking any more, though. My car needs me to take her home.”
A second bottle arrived, the room began to swim a little, and my tongue loosened.
“Come on,” Charity whispered, clandestinely, leaning in. “Was it that bad?”
The chair squeaked as my back thumped into it. “Ummm. I should find the ladies. I need to pee.”
“When you come back, you have to tell me!”
I made my way there and staggered back without running into anyone. Charity had refilled my glass. I ran my finger down the condensation on the outside.
“Okay. What I didn’t tell you last time is this…”
Anger flared, surprising me. I hadn’t realized it had stuck with me.
It wasn’t because of the CNC party especially, but because of everything.
Everything had failed us. Even the way he had tried annoyed me.
I’d thought that Grayson understood me—got me on some primal level, where no other man would dare to go—but what they’d organized was so far off base it had been a shock.
Maybe it had looked like a spoiled tantrum to the people at the party, but it had been a crushing blow to realize he didn’t understand me at all.
Being angry was stupid, but some angers simply existed, and you couldn’t logic your way past them.
The only cure for some aggravations was to stew in them and let them slowly lessen over time.
So I took another breath and spilled about the CNC party. This was what I had resisted saying to Charity for a long time.
Even as I described it, shock sifted onto her face at the mention of Wolfman and the woman with the sewn-shut eyes.
I should not have said anything.
I think I had promised not to? Fuck that though, what really was giving me a thrill was knowing I still had the same bugged phone.
I’d hung onto it. After all, Grayson let me go and switching over wasn’t simple.
Why not keep it? I did intend to eventually get some tech expert to clean it of whatever they had done.
And so, they might hear this. They, meaning Grayson and Axl.
If so, this was me giving them a final finger.
Up yours, guys. Up yours, with something big and knobbly.
While I spewed information about that night, tears arrived. More anger showing? I swiped them away.
Charity made all the right noises and comments, and I began to feel, if not better, at least vindicated and a bit more normal. Normal people would be furious.
Maybe I could actually be a logical, god-fearing, law-abiding citizen.
At Charity’s warning, I looked around, then I gulped the last of my champagne.
The pub was closing. Chairs were being put up. Everything was swaying. The lights, the table. Me.
Together, we exited. I leaned on her and kept telling myself not to throw up. Luckily, I held it in until we were outside in an alley. Charity watched, miserable and holding her nose. This seemed the best ever end to such an awful affair.
“I’m rid of them, thank god,” I said to her when we were in her car.
“Yes, you are. Come home with me and sleep it off. Just no more barfing, please.”
I waved my hand from where I had sunk into the seat. “Shhh-ure. No problem.”
The world kept spinning and spinning.
I could tell when we pulled into her garage because darkness fell and there was that grating sound of the door closing. I shuffled higher up the seat, heard Charity open her door and gasp. Someone else opened my door and hauled me out. I clutched at whoever this was and tried to focus.
Something stung my neck. The swimming walls blurred leisurely into black.
When I woke, it was to instant fear. I was hogtied, with tape wound over my mouth and over my eyes.
I thought through this, slowly, regaining my senses, resetting my brain.
All of this had been done, even though I’d been drugged and drunk.
It told me I was in the hands of someone only lightly concerned with keeping me alive.
Wherever I was, it swayed, and there were sloshing sounds below. This had to be a boat. An engine was running but had stopped. I heard male voices, laughter, then I registered a sound that stabbed into my heart as ruthlessly as a dagger: I heard Charity scream and sob.
She kept screaming, and the men kept laughing. There were thumps and slaps, and these were the sounds of what I knew must be her being beaten and abused.
No, please. Not my friend. Not her. I writhed and pulled at the bonds, attempting to get loose. I failed, achieving nothing except to strip skin from my wrists. I could only lie there and listen.
Eventually, she stopped crying out, though the muffled noises made me think they were still assaulting her.
Why was this happening?
We had been abducted by someone. I ruled out Grayson. He would never go this far.
Whoever this was, it was my fault. Someone thought I’d incriminated them. It was the CNC party—it had to be that. Was the whole world bugging my phone?
The tape over my eyes became soggy with my tears.
A while later, long after Charity had ceased to cry, someone entered and came to me. Every step they took made my heart thud louder. My fears spiked to new heights.
“You’re next, Emme. Tomorrow. Then we sell you to someone. You don’t get away with messing with my life.” His boot landed in my side, with a thud of pain, and I choked and wheezed in air.
Who was this?
“It’s Martelle, in case you don’t remember me,” he said from much nearer.
I guessed he had knelt next to me on this blanket-covered floor.
His fingers stroked my face. “I look forward to fucking you until you bleed. Lucky for you, you’ll fetch a good price so I can’t carve you up with my knives. Not like your friend.”
I tried to scream at him, and it came out a high-pitched grunt. Who was this?
“If Martelle doesn’t ring a bell. Think of Wolfman.”
I stilled. Him. Fuck.
He walked away, and a door closed. The boat engine started up again.
I began to shake. I’d killed Charity. He might be lying? But even if he was not, I knew they’d hurt her badly.
My fault. All mine.
Somehow, I slept, and when I woke this time, I was dying to pee and there were more screams. A man was screaming. I wondered who the poor bastard was. Abrupt bangs made me wonder if those were those gunshots. The chill in my flesh deepened, and I shivered, once, and then could not stop shivering.
Not Grayson? Could it be him? Had someone told Martelle where we were?
Martelle seemed willing to do anything to those who offended him.
My forehead corrugated as I held in most of a sob.
I wriggled for the umpteenth time and tried to pull loose from the plastic ties binding me.
My ankles and wrists were burning from my skin wearing away.
The door crashed open, and I held my breath.
“Emme? You’re Emme? We are here to help you.”
I nodded and tried to see through the tape.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
This was no one I knew. I angled up my head as well as I could.
“Leave her hands tied and her eyes covered. Undo everything else and bring her on deck,” Axl said. “We have things to settle.”
Axl was here. Hope rose then crashed. What was he doing?
“Okay.”
They were keeping me under control. What was Axl doing? They were rescuing me but kept me tied? That seemed ominous.
I didn’t ask about Charity because I wasn’t sure who was a safe person to ask. I was also afraid to find out. My poor friend. I tried not to imagine what they had done to her. Knives, he had said.
Hot tears spilled. Charity had never been anything but good to me—to everyone she met.
How could someone so bright and fun, and warm hearted be killed like her life was inconsequential?
The world would be darker without her in it.
What was I going to without her if I ever got out of here? How was I going to tell her family?
Christ, it was all my fault. Me and my stupid, reckless impulses.
The tape came off my mouth, and my feet were freed.
“Walk, Emme.”
Stumbling, still reeling at the loss of Charity, I ascended the metal stairs, helped by this man.
The noise of a helicopter rotor spinning slower and slower reached me. I was helped down, carried mostly, onto a smaller boat. We sped a short distance across the water where another boat had been waiting. Once aboard this new vessel, I was forced to sit on the deck.
“Keep her there,” Axl said. “You have a decision to make soon, girl.”
“My friend,” I finally dredged up the courage to ask. “Charity? Is she okay?”
“You will wait until asked to talk.”
I bit my lip. What else could I do? Shivering, as a sea breeze swept across me, salt-laden and cold, I crouched in a shattered heap, and I waited. Life could not get much worse than this. I despaired of any good outcome. Even if I had been rescued, there was also Charity.
Her future and her recent torture, and that I might soon find out the details of what had happened to her? This terrified me.