Bound

by Leah Holt

  This must be the guy in charge.

  Shaking my head, I snarled. “No, should I?”

  “I suppose not, but you will now. Marcos Disesto,” he said, resting a hand on his chest. “And you must be Emery.” His feet clicked against the hardwood floor as he walked through the room. “Porter finally had something that made all of the shit he put me through worth while.”

  Swallowing hard, I didn't say a word. I let him talk, he looked like a man who enjoyed hearing himself.

  Tall and slender, his hair was bright blond and his eyes were green as grass. He was dressed in a charcoal gray suit, with shiny black shoes that looked like they were made from some sort of snake skin.

  “I run things around here, and your boyfriend, well he owes me for fucking shit up. He cost me time, money, and my fucking reputation. He made some really big fucking mistakes, and he needs to pay for them.”

  “How is that my problem?” Arching a hard brow, I glared down the bridge of my nose. “I have nothing to do with any of that.”

  “Didn't you hear me? Porter owes me.”

  “What did he do?” Flopping down onto my ass, I stretched out my legs. “What could have happened that you'd go through this much trouble?”

  “You mean he didn't tell you who he is?”

  “He told me a little about who he used to be, and I know it isn't good.”

  Standing above me, the man rested his arms behind his back. “Isn't good. . .” Looming over me, his body cast a shadow over my face. “Porter is a killer, he used to be one of my best. He killed an entire fucking family. Women, children, it never made a difference to him. He's a cold-blooded killer, and he always will be. There is no used to be, you're in until the day you die. Porter wanted out, and I'm trying to give him that, but there's only one way. My way.”

  Flaring my nostrils, my lids thinned. “Is that suppose to scare me? I don't believe a fucking word out of your mouth. He wouldn't kill innocent people! And he wouldn't kill children!”

  He could try and frighten me all he wanted to. It wouldn't matter what he said, nothing out of his mouth was true. Porter had told me killed men, but did I think he could kill kids? Not a chance in hell.

  “You're a fucking liar, he wouldn't do what you're saying.” Shaking my head, my lips pursed tight.

  “No?” Stepping to the coffee table, he sifted through some papers, and pulled one out. Holding it up in front of his face, he started reading. “Police are putting out a massive manhunt for Porter Blaise. He's wanted in connection with the deaths of two adults, and two children.” Throwing the newspaper across the room at me, it floated down, landing on the floor at my feet. “Here, read it for yourself.”

  The words were there in black and white, big and bold, and undeniable. I couldn't even find the strength to reach out and touch it.

  No, no, he wouldn't do that.

  It's not possible.

  “It's not true, I don't believe it.”

  Desperately, I wanted to force myself to believe my own words. He had been too kind to me for him to be that evil. Porter couldn't do that. . .

  Could he?

  Tipping his head back, he laughed hard. “It's all right there, but it doesn't matter what you believe, because now you belong to me.”

  Pinching my lips, I snapped. “Fuck you, I don't belong to you. Porter's going to come for me, he won't let you keep me here.”

  “Porter is dead, sweetheart.”

  My heart stopped, there was no beat, no movement, just silence.

  “You're lying.” I said the words before I had time to really challenge him. The guy that took me there said if I listened they wouldn't shoot him. That they would just walk away, and leave him on the floor.

  And you believed him?!

  How fucking stupid are you?!

  “I'm not.” Taking a step back, he stalked across the room, and sat down on the couch. The leather squeaked as he lifted his leg to rest it on his knee, and leaned back, letting his hands settle by his sides. “I wouldn't lie about something that makes me so happy. I've wanted him for a long time, and now I got him.”

  Tears filled my eyes, turning the surface to glass. I could feel the water as it balanced on the edge of my lids, ready to drop if I made any sudden move.

  “Awe, are you going to cry?” he asked with a sick smile on his face. “Go on, you can cry, I won't stop you.”

  “What did they do to him?” It was a question I wasn't sure I wanted an answer to. I wanted to know what had happened, but the truth could break me apart.

  Had they shot him, had they ended his life quick and painlessly?

  Or did he suffer?

  I didn't want to think about it, but it gnawed at my insides, making me feel ill. We didn't drive off right away after they put me in the trunk, and that small frame of time, those few minutes where the world was quiet, and I was all alone, that would have been enough to silence Porter forever.

  “Porter got what he had coming to him, that's all that matters. I'm not a man to fuck with, Sweetheart.”

  My entire life flashed before my eyes. It had been one horrible thing after another. The only good that had come from any of this was meeting Porter.

  I didn't care if he was considered a bad guy. I didn't give a shit if he had a past that was riddled with death and destruction.

  Because I had fallen in love with a different man. I had fallen for the man who tended to my wounds, who swept me off my feet, and made me feel whole.

  He had stolen my heart and made it his.

  Even if he was gone, my heart would belong to him.

  There was nothing this man could ever do or say to change that.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Porter

  A loud voice yelled in my ear, familiar and firm; it was my father. “Porter, wake up!” Slowly, my eyes began to open, but I couldn't see his face.

  Where is he? I know I heard him.

  He wasn't there, it wasn't even possible for him to actually have been there in the first place. That's happened to me a few times over the years, where I thought I saw him in a crowd or heard his voice in my head.

  When it happened the first time, I was four years old. It was a year after he had passed, my mother and I were at the St. Patrick's Day parade, and I thought I had seen him walking past us. I called out to him, abandoning my mother to chase him down.

  It wasn't him.

  I remember crying, I remember feeling like all my hope had been crushed, and I had lost him all over again. My mother swept me in her arms, hugging me tightly, and brushing her hand down over my head.

  That was the last memory I had of crying, I hadn't shed a tear in sadness since.

  Shaking my head, I grabbed my temples and groaned. The worst headache I'd ever felt was hitting me right then, and I couldn't understand where the hell it came from.

  My lungs burned as I tried to breathe in air that was hot as fire. Coughing hard, I rolled onto my back, swallowing the taste of ash and metal. Touching the back of my head, I pulled my fingers away to find them covered in blood.

  What the hell happened?

  An intense pinging pierced my ears as I pushed myself up off the floor, and sucked in another wave of burning oxygen. Blinking rapidly, the air was smokey and gray. A thick haze blanketed the kitchen, so I rubbed my eyes to try and make it go away.

  I wanted to make sense of what was happening. My thoughts were a mess of past and present, hidden memories and lost images.

  Emery. . . Where's Emery?

  Is she still here?

  I could picture Dean's face, another soldier just like me, sent here by the boss to remove a problem. His eyes, his gun, the fear in Emery's stare, it all glowed bright inside my mind.

  How the fuck did he find me?

  Crackling and snapping filtered into my ears, forcing my brain to wake up, and see what was going on around me.

  Fire! The house is on fire!

  Rolling over, I pushed up onto my hands and knees. I could see the bl
aze as it crawled across the ceiling and down the walls. Scrambling on all fours, I started to yell.

  “Emery! Emery!”

  There was no answer. I wanted to hear her voice so bad, to have her call for me so I knew she was alright. The house was filled with the voice of flames as they crackled with delight. Walls screamed as they turned black, paint melted as it was eaten away from the heat.

  Where is she?! I have to find her!

  I tried to crawl into the living room, but the fire was too much. I couldn't make it past the threshold. I could feel the skin on my face heat up and my brows start to sizzle. I had no choice, I had to get outside.

  Feeling the floor, I used the tiles to guide me to the back door. Yanking the handle down hard, the door swung open, exposing the fire to hoards of fresh air. A loud whoosh whisked past my ears, and I looked up to the see the fire snaking out the door, and up the side of the house.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, tumbling out the doorway, and onto the patio. “Emery!” Turning over, I looked up at the house, screaming at the top of my lungs. “Emery!”

  The squeal of brakes made me jerk my head towards the driveway. My stepfather's car slammed to a halt, and my mother jumped out to run to my side.

  “Porter! Oh my God, Porter are you okay!?” She hoisted me to my feet, and helped carry me away from the house. Positioning me against the hood of the car, she asked, “Where's Emery? Is she still inside?”

  “I. . . I don't know.” My voice was dry, and scratchy as I tried to breathe. “She didn't answer me when I called for her, I'm not sure where she is.” Sucking in huge gulps of air, I tried to catch my breath.

  The pressure on my chest was insane. I could barely breathe, it felt like I had just drank an entire glass of ash. My throat was dry as fuck, my lungs felt like they had shriveled up into nothing. It didn't matter how much I breathed in, I was struggling to find any of the strength I needed to go back inside.

  “Well she's not out here, where else could she be?!” Frantically, my mother turned and screamed at Franco. “Emery might still be inside! Call the fire department!”

  “I'm going back in to look for her!” Stumbling forward, I clutched my head, trying to focus my vision.

  “No, Porter! You can't!” my mother screamed, lashing out and snagging my arm to stop me.

  “She's not in there,” Franco said, his tone dry and emotionless.

  Flicking my eyes over my shoulder, I watched him as his hands twisted back and forth against the steering wheel, his gaze locked on the house.

  My mother stopped moving, her eyes zeroing in on her husband. “How would you know that?” she asked, warily concerned at how he sounded so sure.

  “She's just not.” Lifting his eyes to mine, I was met with a dead, cold stare.

  “How would you know that?” Her voice was direct and firm. And still he stayed silent. “Franco, answer me.” Scanning his face, she looked panicked and afraid of what he would say next.

  Hanging his head, he rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “Because that wasn't his plan.”

  “What the hell does that mean?!” My mother went into a rage, throwing her arms around as she spoke. “What do you know about this?! What did you do?!”

  Shrugging his shoulders, he kept his face down. “I gave him what he wanted, but it doesn't look like they did what they said they would.”

  “You—you did this?” Her jaw hung open as her arms fell weightlessly by her sides. “You gave them our son?”

  “Your son. They already took mine, remember?”

  Pressing my palm into the hood of the car, I stumbled over to his door. I didn't care that it felt like my chest was going to explode while I suffocated inside, this man had betrayed his family—he had betrayed my mother.

  Reaching in through the window, I curled my fingers around the collar of his shirt and yanked him halfway out the opening. Pulling my fist back, I let it go, hitting him square in the jaw.

  “Where is she?!” I barked, ready to hit him again. Even if he gave me the answer I was looking for, I wasn't sure I'd be able to control my anger and stop myself from beating the shit out of him. I could feel my veins as they thickened, and my heart as it turned to concrete.

  “I don't know.”

  Crack!

  “Where did they take her?!”

  “I don't know, Porter!”

  Thud!

  “Tell me what you did! Who did you talk to?!”

  “Who do you think?” Chuckling lightly, he licked the blood off his lips. “I wanted this over for good, Porter, I wanted my life back. So, I gave them the only thing they wanted to begin with. I gave them you!”

  Smack! Crack!

  Hitting him over and over, my knuckles turned raw, but I didn't care. He deserved every single punch. I wasn't going to stop.

  “Tell me everything, I want to know what the fuck you did.” My voice was deep and hollow. I already hated this man, now I wanted to kill him myself.

  But, I had to find her, I had to get her back. Emery was the only thing that mattered to me. And now she was in the hands of a vile, evil creature who would destroy her very existence.

  “It's not that complicated, it's pretty simple actually. I went to Marcos, he was ready to kill me where I stood, and I thought he was going to. When I told him I had what he wanted, and that you had a really pretty girl with you too, he was more than interested to hear me out. I told him where he'd find you, and I expected to come home today to find you both gone. Then your mother and I could have gone back to living our normal lives. It was supposed to be over.”

  “Normal lives?! Are you fucking kidding me, Franco?!” My mother squealed as she threw herself forward, pushing me to the side, and grabbing his face with her hands. “How could you do this?!”

  “I just wanted everything to go back to the way it was, that was it. I didn't know how to do it any other way!”

  Throwing his face, my mother raked her fingers through her hair, and snapped a hand to her hip as she stalked in a tight circle. “I can't believe you, I can't believe you'd do this to us.” Whipping back around, my mother slapped him across the cheek. His head snapped to the side and he dropped his eyes to his lap. “You asshole!”

  “If Porter is dead, this would all end. You should be happy,” Franco said, lifting his face to hers. “He thinks he's dead and he's not. You have your son, and now we have our lives.”

  “But he has her, Franco!” my mother screams, slamming her fist on the roof of the car.

  “He thinks I'm dead?” I said it as more of a question to myself than to Franco. This could work in my favor, it could give me the upper hand.

  If Marcos thought I was dead, he wouldn't be expecting me to show up. His guard would be down, his doors exposed and open to me. I could be a ghost, a shadow that could kill him without anyone seeing me coming.

  Pointing at my mother, I shouted at her. “Go get some rope from the garage!”

  She didn't ask me why, she didn't question me at all. My mother took off running without giving me any shit about where my head was going.

  “Porter, you have to understand—” Franco started to say, until I hit him again in the throat, causing him to gag and cough.

  “You can shut the fuck up. I understand, Franco, I always have. You never gave a shit about me or my mother, all you care about is yourself. I get that Zander's death was hard because he was your son, and I'm truly sorry that he's gone. But he was my brother too, whether you like or not. If you don't see it, if you can't understand that I loved him too, you never will.”

  “All these years,” I said, dropping my tone. “All I ever wanted was for you to see me as your son too. You never gave me that chance, you never let me in. You kept me on the outside, and that fucking hurt. You helped do this, Franco. I went looking for a father because you never wanted to be mine.”

  “Please, Porter, don't kill me.” Releasing his grip on the steering wheel, he sat back. “I was just trying to save your mother, to make her w
orld better. I wanted to give her back her life. We couldn't live like this, not anymore.”

  “No, you wanted something else—don't act like you did this for my mother, because she'd never want this. You did this for yourself.”

  My mother ran back to us, and handed me a bundle of rope. “What are you going to do with this?”

  “I'm tying his ass up, I won't risk him fucking up what I'm about to do.”

  “You're not going to kill me?” Franco flicked his eyes up, and I saw more life in them than I had ever seen before. He looked afraid, he looked anxious and unsure of what would happen to him.

  He's afraid of me.

  “You're not worth my fucking time, Franco.”

  “What are you going to do, Porter?” My mother reached out and touched my arm, squeezing me gently.

  “I'm going to do what I couldn't do for Zander, I'm going to save her.” Glaring down at Franco, I snatched his wrists, and tied him to the steering wheel. “But you wouldn't understand what it means to truly love someone. If you did, we wouldn't be here like this. Instead, you hand fed me to the fucking wolves. Look where that got you, you made more enemies than friends today.”

  My mother stood stiff, her fingers plucking and pinching her lips. “What am I going to do?” she asked as her muscles began to tremble.

  “You're going to stay here and make sure he doesn't do shit. Give me a few minutes to get a head start, then call the cops. Tell them everything, I don't care. Whatever happens to me after this, I'll deal with it, but I have to save Emery before he hurts her.”

  “Okay,” she said, wiping her hands down the front of her thighs, and taking in big breaths. “Take my car, the keys are in the front pocket of my purse.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Kissing her cheek, I gripped her shoulders. “I'll be back, I don't want you to worry about me. You won't lose me today, I promise.”

  Shuffling around in her purse, I found her keys, and pulled them out. Giving my mother a faint smile, I jogged to her car and climbed inside.

  I had finally found the only reason to live.

  I wasn't about to lose that before I had the chance to truly appreciate it.