Chapter 19
Charlotte
I woke to darkness and pain.
My head throbbed with a vicious, pulsing ache that seemed to radiate from somewhere behind my eyes. My sinuses burned. My mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton—dry and thick and all wrong.
And my hands and feet were tied.
The realization sliced through the fog of unconsciousness. I tried to move and found I couldn’t. My wrists were bound above my head to the sides, my ankles secured at the corners of whatever I was lying on. Spread-eagled. Vulnerable.
Something dark covered my face. A bag, rough fabric that pressed against my mouth with each breath, triggering a primal spike of panic. Can’t breathe. Can’t see. Can’t—
I forced myself to slow down. To think.
The fabric moved when I inhaled. Air was getting through. I wasn’t suffocating—it just felt like I was.
Beneath me, something soft. A mattress.
Low voices murmured somewhere nearby, then one of them spoke louder, cutting through the haze.
“I think she’s awake.”
The voice was familiar. Smooth and cultured, with an undercurrent of amusement that made my skin crawl. The bag was pulled off my head and light flooded my vision, temporarily blinding me.
I blinked. Squinted. And when my eyes finally adjusted, Vincent Calloway stood over me, impeccable in a charcoal suit, smiling like we were old friends.
I’d never met him in person before this moment, but I’d seen him plenty of times—at charity galas, on local news segments, in the society pages I’d skimmed while researching his empire of legitimate businesses that masked something far darker.
He was handsome in the way wealthy men often were: polished, confident, utterly certain of his own power.
Right now, that power was aimed directly at me.
I glared at him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing fear. My mouth was too dry to speak, and I didn’t trust my voice anyway.
“Glad to see you’re awake,” Calloway said, his tone almost jovial. “Charlotte—may I call you Charlotte? I feel like we already know each other so well, given how much time you’ve spent investigating me.” His smile widened. “And we’re about to get to know each other much more intimately.”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I let my gaze sweep the room, cataloging everything.
A bedroom. Massive. Modern. All silver and charcoal and stark white, like something from an architectural magazine.
The windows opposite the bed stretched floor to ceiling, and through them I could see the Las Vegas skyline glittering in the afternoon sun, along with other high-rises reaching toward the sky and the distant sprawl of the Strip below.
A penthouse. One of Calloway’s properties, no doubt. We were dozens of floors up, in the heart of the city, surrounded by millions of people who had no idea I was here.
Near the door stood a cluster of men. Most wore identical dark suits with skinny black ties—bodyguards, clearly, their faces blank and watchful.
But one stood apart from the others, dressed in all black, his clothes more tactical than formal.
He had the look of someone comfortable with violence.
The one who’d grabbed me in the safehouse, probably. A professional.
I memorized every face, even knowing I might never get the chance to tell anyone what they looked like.
Because you’re here to die , the rational part of my brain whispered.
Except... I wasn’t dead yet.
Why wasn’t I?
The question nagged at me. Why go through the trouble of kidnapping me when a bullet would have been a simpler way to silence me and my story?
I looked back at Calloway, and the appraising way he was watching me—like a collector examining a new acquisition—made the answer crystallize with sickening clarity.
“You’ve been quite the thorn in my side,” he said, almost admiringly.
“I have to applaud you, Charlotte. You came close. Too close to being a serious problem for me.” He clasped his hands behind his back, pacing slowly along the edge of the bed.
“Obviously, that had to be addressed. And believe me, my first instinct was to have you killed.”
The man by the door—the one in black—shifted impatiently.
“But then you disappeared,” Calloway continued, “and while my people were searching for you, I had time to reconsider. Killing you seemed like such a waste .” He stopped pacing and turned to face me, a predatory gleam in his eyes.
“A smart, capable woman like you. Beautiful, too. It would be a pity to simply... dispose of that.”
Bile rose up in my throat and I forced myself to remain calm.
“You know,” Calloway said, his tone conversational, “we probably never would have found you. We knew you went to Noble and Associates for security, and that Kane Adair was assigned as your detail. But that safehouse he took you to was well hidden. Your bodyguard did an admirable job of keeping you off the grid.” He tilted his head, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“But then he made a phone call. He called his brother, of all people.”
Calloway gestured toward the man in black—Kohen, I realized with dawning horror. Kane’s brother.
“It made things so much easier for us.”
Kohen didn’t react. Didn’t flinch. Just stood there like a statue, watching me with flat, emotionless eyes.
“We’d been hoping Kane would reach out to him eventually,” Calloway continued, clearly enjoying my distress.
“A long shot, I’ll admit. The brothers haven’t exactly been close.
But as one of my men on the inside, Kohen’s phone has been equipped to trace incoming calls for years now and who would have guessed that Kane would want to reconnect with his brother? ”
Calloway chuckled softly. “Sentiment. It’s such a vulnerability, isn’t it? Kane wanted to trust his little brother, wanted to believe family still meant something. And that faith led us right to your doorstep.”
My stomach lurched as realization crashed over me. Kohen was one of Calloway’s men. A cop on the take—a plant, a mole, someone positioned on the inside to be useful when the time came. And Kane had trusted him. Had called him, asking for help, hoping to rebuild their fractured relationship.
And Kohen had betrayed him in the worst possible way by kidnapping me and bringing me straight to Calloway.
I thought about Kane’s face when he talked about his brother. The complicated mix of guilt and longing, the way he blamed himself for the distance between them. He had no idea that the person he’d trusted enough to reach out to for help had been working against him all along.
Calloway sat on the edge of the mattress, close enough that I could smell his cologne—expensive and strong enough to make my stomach roil. His hand reached out to stroke my ankle, almost tenderly, and I was grateful that I was at least still wearing my leggings and t-shirt.
I attempted to kick at him, but the bindings kept me from doing so.
He laughed like I’d done something charming. “That’s that spirit. I knew you had it in you.”
His hand found my calf instead, fingers trailing up toward my knee.
“It’s no fun to kill someone like you, Charlotte.
Someone with fire. Intelligence.” His touch drifted higher, skimming the inside of my thigh, and every cell in my body screamed in revulsion.
“It’s much more satisfying to break you. ”
I went absolutely still. I knew what he meant. I’d heard enough stories about what happened to women who caught Calloway’s attention. The ones who fought back too hard were punished until they couldn’t get out of bed. The ones who didn’t fight at all were permanently discarded once he got bored.
“I haven’t kept a pet in a while,” he mused, his voice almost wistful.
“Too much risk, usually. But you...” His gaze traveled over me, possessive and cold.
“You’re worth it. Such a tragedy, how you ‘disappeared’.
But I’m sure you’ll be kept very happily occupied here. Especially once you learn your place.”
Every instinct screamed at me to spit in his face. To curse him, to fight, to make him regret ever touching me. But I remembered Ruth’s warnings. I remembered what happened to women who resisted too openly, too soon.
So I let my eyes go wide. Let a tremor run through my body. Let him see what he expected to see: a frightened woman, overwhelmed, already beginning to break.
Calloway’s smirk deepened with satisfaction, then he patted my cheek like I was a dog that had performed a trick. “Good girl.”
I wanted to bite his fucking hand off and instead forced myself to remain complacent.
One of the bodyguards cleared his throat. “Sir, the luncheon gala...”
“And perhaps we can discuss my payment,” the man in black added— Kohen —his voice flat and businesslike.
Calloway sighed, rising from the bed with obvious reluctance. “Duty calls.” He straightened his jacket, shot me one last proprietary look, and strode toward the door. “I’ll be back soon, and then we can really get to know each other.”
The door clicked shut behind all of them and I lay there for a long moment, listening to the silence, waiting for my heart rate to slow.
Think, Charlotte. Think.
Kane would know I was missing by now. He’d be looking for me—I had no doubt about that. Even before we’d reconciled, even when he’d hated me, he would have searched. It was simply who he was.
But I couldn’t count on him finding me in time. Not before Calloway came back.
I had to get out of this bed.
I tested my restraints, rotating my wrists and ankles to gauge the give.
The ropes were tight but not expert—nothing like the careful, consensual bondage Kane had used at the club, where every knot was designed for safety and release.
These were hasty but functional. Whoever had tied them wasn’t experienced with restraining someone who actually knew how to escape.
Fucking amateurs.
The knots would take time to work loose. And it would hurt—I could already feel the rope biting into my skin as I twisted my wrists, the first sting of friction burn. But pain was temporary. What Calloway had planned for me was worse.
I glanced around while I continued to loosen the bindings.
There was no camera in this lavish bedroom from what I could see.
A man like Calloway wouldn’t want anyone spying on him in his own penthouse, not even his own security.
He’d have a special room for me eventually, somewhere wired for surveillance, but his ego wouldn’t allow witnesses to what he did in his own bed.
That ego might be the only thing that saved me.
Come on. Come on.
My right wrist shifted. Just slightly. Just enough to give me hope.
I wasn’t going to lie here like a sacrifice. I was getting out of here. No matter what I had to do to make that happen.