66. Chapter 63
Mari
A sharp pain twanged from one side of my head to the other as I opened my eyes. Stifling a groan, I groggily took in my surroundings. I shifted to lift a hand to my head, finding them bound behind the chair I was currently sitting on.
I shoved at the hazy blanket that had fallen over my mind, trying to force myself into gear. I needed to get out of here, wherever the hell here was. I was just so fucking tired, and my head felt so, so heavy.
A clatter sounded nearby. My internals flinched at the noise and my heart jumped at the sudden sound, but all I could manage to do was reopen my eyes again.
My red dress had a few tears across the skirt and a gaping hole across my left ribs.
I scoffed. The lack of blood meant someone had torn up my dress for fun .
A white powder was littered across the delicate fabric, some in what looked like fingerprint patterns.
No wonder I feel like I’ve downed half a bottle of tequila.
“She’ll be up soon,” a sickeningly sweet voice said. “And then we wait.”
“What if he doesn’t come?” a man’s voice said. Was that …?
“Trust me. He’ll be here. Then the real fun will begin.”
I forced my head upright, urging my body to cooperate with me and not whatever drug they’d shoved into my system. Those lifeless, icy eyes were already on me, so focussed my loose, aching jaw trembled. I swear she could see right through the mask I’d strained desperately to put into place.
“Well, if it isn’t the life of the party.”
Even in the dark, her tall frame was beautiful. But when I looked into those piercing eyes of hers, I could still see it. The rot inside of her.
“That’s a bit generous, don’t you think?” I clenched my jaw painfully to keep it from dropping as the man from before stepped out of the shadows. Randy wrapped an arm around Talia’s shoulders, a wicked gleaming grin on his face.
I focussed on the blue and purple bruises on his face and bit down on a smile, remembering just where they had come from. Who they had come from.
I focussed on the pain in my jaw, the haze that was slowly easing from my mind.
I focussed on keeping that blank mask across my face, the one I’d seen Chance use when he was around her . I pinned every ounce of my concentration into that image while I scanned them from head to toe. They would have to have something, a weapon of some kind, surely.
“ Always know what you’re up against before the fight begins. At a minimum, they’ll have two arms and two legs. Worst-case scenario, they’ll have something more sinister .” Dad’s words rattled through my mind.
Randy’s disgusting laugh filled my ears, followed by a mocking remark I didn’t deem worthy of hearing.
There .
Tucked into the waistband of his jean shorts, a sparkle of light flickered off the blade. Even with such little light in the room, the knife shone like a fucking beacon.
Well, that was going to present an issue for my escape. So was the gun Talia held in her slim, acrylic-tipped fingers. A thick black tube was wrapped around the end of it.
A silencer? I’d only ever seen those in the action movies JJ chose when it was his pick for movie night.
Guns, being as illegal in Australia as actually shooting someone, were not seen very often around Soggla.
Maybe a shotgun here and there for some of the local farmers.
But hers? Talia’s gun wasn’t like the locals’.
It was shiny—too clean from what I could draw from the little amount of knowledge I had surrounding firearms. The gun had a wispy darkness oozing from it, the kind that drew a certain persona in.
The kind that promised a life of wickedness and corruption to follow.
A life that someone from little old Soggla wouldn’t know.
Behind her slender figure was a pile of rope that explained the burning sensations in my wrists and ankles. The rope was chucked lazily onto the dingy red rug that was half faded, half stained—
The rug.
That rug.
With a wince and an internal scream from every single one of my neck and shoulder muscles, I looked to my left.
There it was, highlighted by the moonlight shining through the skylight above us.
The gigantic stain halfway down the left side of the rug from where I’d violently thrown up on it the night I turned eighteen.
Like some drunken, disgusting shining star to help me escape.
I am in JJ’s fucking house.
It was genius, really. Who would ever think to look here first when they realised I was missing? What kind of kidnapper brings their hostage back to their hometown, let alone their fucking house?
Well, former house … sort of, but close enough.
They continued talking, not giving a single shit that I could have picked up on all of their evil plans … if only the buzzing in my head would stop.
“He won’t be able to resist coming here himself. There’s no way he’d leave it to the cops,” I managed to catch.
“Trust me, baby, I’ve laid it out for him and only him. He’s the only one who can solve the great puzzle of ‘where we are’.” She waved her hands in a rainbow, like she was announcing her name in lights.
Chance .
They were baiting him. They wanted him to come here and … now would be a really nice time for my fucking head to stop pounding.
I had to get out of here. I had to escape before Chance found us and somehow got in contact with them before—
I caught myself falling into a spiral loop of anxiety and dread.
Priority one—get the fuck outta here. They may have been smart bringing me back to JJ’s, where cops wouldn’t think to look for me. But they forgot about one thing—I knew this house like the back of my own hand.
“You’re making quite the death wish here,” I said, clenching my jaw to force the wobble out of my voice. I looked to Randy. “I think you’re forgetting who knocked you out less than twenty-four hours ago.”
I had a grin on my face when Randy slammed his fist into my temple.
~
Randy’s fist drove across my left cheekbone, splitting skin and smashing through what felt like straight bone.
How Chance’s cuts hadn’t been worse from his fight with him, I have no idea.
Randy’s knuckles arched high across his hand, each and every one forming a pointed peak.
I concentrated on the gashes Chance had left on his face when he backhanded me.
I smirked at the fact that he couldn’t draw as much power from his left side, from the switch kick Chance had delivered. That costed me a heavy boot to the gut.
“You should really learn to submit, slut,” his voice whispered in my ear, and I could feel the darkness on the edge of my mind, threatening to take me again. “I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty all over you if you did.”
I held my breath to stop the gag reflex that followed.
He smelled of booze, cigarettes, and blood.
His? Mine? Chance’s? I pushed my teeth into my lip as he grabbed my bound hands and put a foot on my lower back through the gap in the chair.
He snickered, the most disgusting sound I’ve ever heard, and began to pull.
I will not scream.
I will not cry.
I will not please him.
The ligaments in my shoulders began to stretch, begging me to stop and firing off panic signals to my brain.
I bit down harder onto my lower lip, using it as if it were a strap of leather, and pushed away the pain of driving my teeth into the split in it.
I imagined that pain and locked it into a box, deep in the archives of my mind.
A metallic taste filtered into my mouth.
My teeth were sticking to my lip as I withdrew them.
Talia sat in the large, green armchair across from me looking as if she was enduring nothing but a regular, boring day. The armchair I’d cuddled in with Chance less than a week ago. I scowled at her—her disgusting, abusive, evil ass was tainting that goddamn chair.
A fire lit in my gut—that familiar searing hatred. I fuelled it, using it as a shield to block out the reality I was present in. I remembered the words he’d said, the memories he’d shared with me during our secret nights.
“I made weight for my fight eight weeks out because I couldn’t fucking eat …”
“I got home from my contender ’bout and she sucker punched me when I walked through the door. Apparently, a ring girl got too close up on me that night …”
“The first full night’s sleep I’d had in two years was the first night I had you in my bed …”
“You’ll suffer for what you did to him,” I snarled at her, blood coating my lips and drenching my tongue.
Randy paused, and I could have gasped in relief at the halting of pressure in my shoulders.
She sighed, as if it was an inconvenience to bother with a response. “Oh, babe. You really don’t know me well enough to say things like that.”
A knock at the door sounded and I let out the hot, fury-filled air that had been burning in my lungs in a weird combination of a sneer, cough, choke, and growl.
Randy, to my surprise, let go of me and headed into the dining room nearby where the pentagon open windows were. He squinted for a moment, studying whoever was at the door before stalking back over. He nodded at Talia, then stood in front of me, landing a blow that busted my lip farther open.
“Does she hit you too?” It was intended as a growl, one strong and powerful like Chance’s, but it came out a raspy and broken whisper.
Randy stood, studying me with a heat in his eyes I couldn’t read. I didn’t know what to make of the fact that he didn’t punch me again but instead walked out of the room.
“Finally.” She tsked in dismay. Another pound on the door sounded. “I’m coming!”
“Open up!”
My heart sank. My head throbbed and my shoulders were screaming, but I would know that voice anywhere.
Chance .
He’d fallen for the trap.
“Oh, Chance! What a surprise!” She opened the door wide, beckoning him in. “How nice of you to finally join us.”
A hand pushed on her chest, those two golden rings glimmering like North Stars bringing me home.