“Liar!” I yell back, equally as loud as he. He hates it when I fight back. I don’t think he’s used to non-compliant girls. “Jamie,” I holler in spite. He would never, could never replace me with another girl. I’m it for him the same as he’s it for me.
“Okay, Wild Cat.” He takes a step away from me, his black combat boots retreating. I hate when he calls me that pet name. I hate when he calls me by the name I’ve gone by my whole life. I hate when he says anything at all to me. Pain—emotionally and often physically—soon follows. “I guess I’ll just have to enlighten you then.”
Seconds later he’s back in front of me, tossing six by four photographs at me, hitting me in the face, the arm, my lap, all of people—a couple. I pick one up, seeing the face of the boy I long to see again. My love. My Jamie.
Only he isn’t alone in the photo. Jules is in it with him and they’re . . .
Oh, my God, I think I’m going to throw up. Bile rises in my throat.
I drop the photo to my lap and pick up another. They’re . . . kissing.
I throw it down, grabbing another and then another. It’s an intimate shot. They’re having sex and I know for sure I’m not going to be able to stop. I turn my head, my body trying to puke, only nothing comes out because I haven’t eaten or had anything to drink in I don’t know how long. A day, maybe two.
“No.”
“Yes,” he counters. I turn back around, my butt inching backward. The thin, now dingy, long tank top I’m wearing does nothing to damper the bite of the cold metal pole that my chains are attached to when my back comes in contact with it.
He wouldn’t do that to me, to us. He wouldn’t. There has to be a mistake. It has to be fake. He loves me. He’s only ever been with me and I him. We were each other’s first and we are supposed to be each other’s last.
“You’ve been in this dump—my form of Hell—with me for seven weeks and all this time he’s been fucking your best friend. He doesn’t miss you. He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t love you. You were replaceable.”
“No,” I bite out. “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. You kidnap girls. You’re a sick freak.”
“Most of that, yes. A liar I am not. His small, teenage dick is probably deep inside her cunt right now, Wild Cat, fucking the memory of you away. Everyone is replaceable. Everyone is forgettable. Even you.” He firms his stance, crossing his arms over his large chest. “Are we going to have a good day or a bad one?”
His cell phone rings from one of the pockets of his black denim jeans. He could be beautiful if he wasn’t so vile. Even so, I have to admit, his features are nothing like you’d think if you imagined what the boogie man looked like. Josh has honey-blond hair, light crystal-blue eyes, and a rock hard body. He’s someone you’d picture on one of those muscle or fitness magazines, or even a famous actor in action movies. His features are what’s most deceiving about him. Looking at him, you’d never imagine he’s a human trafficker.
Snatching his phone out of his pocket, he eyes the screen and then purses his lips in annoyance.
“Fuck,” falls from his pouty, full lips. “I’m busy,” he answers. “What do you want? I’ve told you repeatedly to stop calling me. I bought her. You don’t get to know anything else about her, where she is, or what kind of condition she’s in. She’s mine to do as I please, to sell to whoever I want.”
Chills ripple down my spine. Sell? I never considered he’d sell me. Kill me? Sure, but never sell.
I never even knew this was a thing. Selling people. Who the hell does that?
“I’m sorry. What was that?” His voice becomes low, lethal. His crystal-blue eyes bore into mine so hard that I think he can see straight behind me to the pole my back is leaning against. “Pregnant. You sold me a pregnant bitch? What the hell am I supposed to do with some pregnant cow?”
Oh no! He knows. But how? Only one other person knew. I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell Jamie before I was abducted. There is no way someone else could have known.
“Oh, you’ll be sorry. Maybe not today. Or tomorrow. But very soon you’ll be sorry you ever contacted me in the first place, little girl.” He pulls the phone away from his ear, his eyes still on mine. My chest pounds, fear mounting with every heavy breath I take. “Something you want to tell me, Elise?”
I shake my head from side to side, fearing what he’ll do, fearing what he won’t do.
He takes two steps back, reaching for something underneath the table. I can’t see what’s in his hand. He’s keeping it hidden behind his back, but I know whatever it is, isn’t good.
“Please don’t,” I plead, unsure of what I’m pleading for. My life? My unborn child’s life?
I haven’t allowed myself a second to think about the baby I found out about only hours before he took me. I couldn’t let myself think what could happen to him, or her. It’s a miracle he hasn’t found out before now. I haven’t gained any weight. In fact, I’ve lost pounds. I haven’t had the morning sickness I’ve only heard about. But what I haven’t had, that even he should have caught, was my period. I’m fairly sure I’ve missed two of them.
With his free hand, he pulls the remote from his pocket that controls the raising and lowering of my chains. Panic starts to set in, taking root inside my chest. What is he going to do?
“Don’t worry, my defiant little Wild Cat. After I’m done with you, I’m going for her next. She’ll pay for deceiving me. I’ll even let you in on a little secret. The man I sell her to won’t be near as nice as the man I’m going to sell you to. That’s a promise.”
Her? Does he mean Julia? Is that who he was speaking to? Surely not. It can’t be. If she knew I was here, she would have told someone. She would have had me rescued. She’s my best friend. We’ve been best friends since her first day of ninth grade when she started as a new student at Thatcher High School, nearly three years ago.
“Please don’t,” I beg again. The cable reel that’s connected to the top of the pole creaks, the chain attached to my cuffs starts to pull upward. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll stop talking back. I’ll be good. Please don’t hurt my baby,” I cry.
I push up on my feet, slipping around to the other side of the pole, using it as a shield. The chain slowly inches up, the slack in them being pulled tighter.
“Please don’t.” I cry harder, tears rapidly falling down my face one right after another. “Please.”
“This is a business, Elise. I thought I’d established that with you already. I can’t sell you for a profit if you’re pregnant. Pregnant chicks aren’t good for business, so . . .” He leaves his words hanging, letting me fill in the blanks. He’s not going to allow me to remain pregnant. And I don’t know how I’m going to stop him when I’ve been unsuccessful for weeks in getting out of these restraints, let alone this room. I haven’t seen sunlight since he tossed me in here.
His right hand falls from behind his back to his side, revealing a bat clutched in his fist.
Horror.
Dread.
Fear.
Those emotions take center stage.
If he thinks I’m going to stand here and take his beating, his murdering of my child, then he’s got another thing coming. In the end, I know I’ll only make it worse, but I have to at least try. I may only be seventeen, a kid myself, but I want this baby. I want it with Jamie. This life inside of me didn’t ask for any of this. Hell, I didn’t ask for any of this. But it’s here, I’m here, and I have to do everything within my power to protect it, protect him or her. Protect me.
I’m able to dodge the first blow. Josh’s bat connects with the pole instead of my body. The chain tightens, pulling my arms up until I’m standing on my tiptoes. When the second hit comes, my left side takes the full force of the wooden bat, the hard, unforgiving material connects with bone.
I scream, not able to hold it in like I usually do. Then again, he’s never been this brutal.
Wrapping my hands around the chain, I hold on for dear life and raise my
legs, pulling them into my stomach, doing the only thing I can think of that might protect my baby, knowing deep inside it’s futile. Still, it’s my only hope. And hope is all I have.
“Here’s how this is going to work. If you say the name Jamie ever again, if you think of his name again, you’ll remember this moment. You’ll remember what I took from you. You’ll remember what every blow felt like. You’ll feel every single hit like it’s happening all over again.”
My other side and my back takes the next hit, this time harder than the first. Another lands, hitting my ankle and making my legs drop. That’s when he’s able to connect with my abdomen, over and over and over again until I can’t hold myself up any longer.
“And so help me if I ever hear his name come from your lips again, you won’t live to regret it.”
More hits follow, a cracking sound with it, making me think for only a second that the bat broke or split in two. That thought goes out the window when a burning, skin-tearing licks across my back has wails I didn’t know I could produce flying out of my mouth. This new, searing pain overtakes the blows he’s hammering to my body and it’s the last thing I feel before everything goes black.
5
— Jamie —
Present
The video ends and I bolt down the hall and into the bathroom, barely making it to the sink before bile catapults up my esophagus and vomit pours out of my mouth into the porcelain basin. I continue throwing up until I’m dry heaving.
Turning on the faucet, I let water pool into my palm and then bring my hand to my lips, slurping the water into my mouth. I rinse and spit into the sink, then I splash cold water on my face.
Glancing at myself in the mirror, Trey’s words from before come rushing back, pounding through my skull. She didn’t betray us, did she? What he really meant was we betrayed her. I betrayed her by not believing her. By not trusting in what we had. I betrayed the only girl—now a woman—that I have ever loved.
My heartache, her heartache, everyone’s heartache was always on me. Never her. I did this to me, to us.
I’m still haunted by the look she had in her brown eyes the night she showed back up, the night she walked in and caught me having sex with my now ex-wife.
The sight before me disgusts me, so I do the only thing that feels right. I let my right fist connect with the glass in front of me, punching through it and through the drywall behind the mirror. It does nothing to stop the memory of my past from assaulting my head.
Eighteen years ago
Why can’t she shut the fuck up?
All I wanted was to get shit-faced, fuck, and then pass out. That had been the plan since I woke up this morning. It’s the same plan as every other day for the past . . . hell, I don’t even know anymore. A month? Two months? Three?
It feels like she’s been gone much longer than the eighty-nine days she hasn’t been here. Disappeared. Left me. No note, or text, not even one damn phone call. She left me. She left us. I was in this for life. Had been in it for life since the second our eyes connected. There was something about Jenna Elise Thomas that I wanted and needed even from an early age.
I loved her. My pathetic self still loves her even though she apparently doesn’t feel the same. I never saw it coming. Was I that blind to what was in front of me? The guys don’t seem to think so. Not even Cole, and he couldn’t stand my girlfriend.
Can I even still call her that if she didn’t bother to break up with me before she took off?
Julia said she’d been planning to run away for a couple of weeks. She’d know. Elise and Jules have been inseparable for the past couple of years. At first, I hated all the time Elise had been spending with the new girl in school. They became fast friends and it was like I lost half of her time.
I never complained. I didn’t have the right to. Elise never said one negative thing any time I hung out with my friends—my bandmates. She and Cole were always at each other’s throats, but not once did she ask me to stop hanging out with him or ditch my friends to spend more time with her. She encouraged me more than anyone—my parents, my family, even my band—to practice, to hone my skills as a singer and guitar player. When I wasn’t feeling it, she’d push me even more. Every day we were together she would tell me that I was going to make it big one day. That the whole band would, and she’d be right beside me, watching us in glory.
So why isn’t she here with me now?
Why did she ditch me—us? And for who?
That pisses me off so much that my skin burns to hit something, someone, anything in my path.
According to Julia, she met some douchebag at one of our local shows one weekend back in late April and then up and ran off with him a week before school let out for the summer. I missed my high school graduation because I could barely function. At the time, I didn’t believe she’d just leave without so much as a goodbye. That would have shown I’d at least meant something to her.
I was convinced something bad had happened to her.
When she never showed up at my house that night I felt it in my gut. It was like someone had put a vise around my heart, captured it, and was squeezing the life right from my body.
And although my heart was ripped from my chest, it wasn’t because something bad had happened to my girlfriend. It was Elise’s own doing that broke me. Had she taken a gun and fired a shot through me it would have been less painful than her leaving and not having the balls to tell me to my face.
She got Jules to do it for her, the fucking bitch.
“Come on,” she whines from above me. “Move harder, Jamie.”
The way she says my name has me constantly swallowing back down the bile crawling up my throat.
With more strength than I think I have in the drunken state I’m in, I push up, lifting off the bed and taking her with me. I pull her off my dick, flip her around onto her knees, and then slam back inside her pussy.
“You want it harder?” I bite out through clenched teeth, pissed off at the world and everyone in it. “I’ll give it to you so hard you’ll be screaming in pain rather than pleasure.”
“Yes,” she says, breathlessly, clenching her walls around my cock. It excites her the more I act like an asshole. “Give it to me, baby.”
“Shut up!” I bark and then slam into her harder. I’m not hers. I’m not her boyfriend. She doesn’t get to call me that. No one will get to call me that ever again. From here on out, girls are just there for one thing—the heat between their thighs. It’s all they’re good for, because I’ll be damned if I trust another one. I certainly won’t hand over my heart on a silver platter again to get used and abused and then tossed out like trash.
“So good,” she says, ignoring my order. “You’re the best, Jamie.”
Like I give two shits if I’m the best dick she’s ever had. Her pussy certainly isn’t the best I’ve experienced, and in the last several weeks, I’ve had a lot to compare it to. None of them measure up to the best I’ve been inside. Not even close.
Elise.
I hate her.
I fucking hate her!
“It’s true,” comes a whisper, stopping me, and I freeze on the bed, my eyes locked on the bare, cream-colored wall above my headboard.
She’s back.
Elise is here.
There is a sharp intake of air, followed by another and then another until I think she’s hyperventilating.
Coming to my senses from the shock of hearing her voice, I shove Julia forward and off my dick. I snatch the black top sheet from beneath us, pulling it around me the best I can, and I plant my naked ass on the bed, my eyes meeting hers for the first time in months.
Her fair skin is flushed, red splotches coat her neck and up her cheeks. Tears cloud her brown eyes, running down her makeup-free face. The first instincts that come to mind are to rush to her and comfort her, make the crying stop. But then I remember everything that’s happened in the three months she’s been gone. I remember every moment of hell that her actions have put m
e through. All the anger that has manifested since the day Julia made me realize the truth triples.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” My brows furrow, my jaw tightens, hardening to steel right along with my heart. “Did you think I’d sit around waiting for you to up and return, baby?”
Her hand flies to her mouth, her palm covering it just as a sob breaks loose as her knees buckle and she hits the carpeted floor.
I jump off the bed and yank my jeans up my legs without my boxers.
“How could you?” she asks, her head tipping up to gape at me from where she remains crumbled in the doorway.
Cole’s tall frame appears behind Elise’s.
“Jamie, what the hell?” He nods down in front of him and then his eyes grow rounder when he notices Julia in my bed. I glance over, noting a smug grin on her face as she holds the sheet to her chest. It strikes me as odd, but then Cole’s voice pulls my attention back to the open bedroom door. Back to Elise. The desire to go to her is still there, but I force it to leave. I will not comfort the bitch that did this to me. She doesn’t deserve it. And the horror on her face tells me she’s getting back all of the hurt she’s caused me—and that’s exactly what she deserves.
Hell, I might as well pour alcohol on this wound. I take a step toward my bed, reach for Julia, and pull her into my arms, planting a kiss on her too thin lips. I watch Elise the whole time, unable to look away even though this is hurting me just as much as it’s destroying her.
“Jamie, stop!” Cole yells. I don’t know what his goddamn problem is. He seems to hate Julia more so than he disliked Elise. He’s been against us fucking since I started screwing Julia Montgomery. She was Elise’s best friend. Even Jules declared Elise had left her too. What better way to say fuck you to the girl that damaged my heart than to nail her best friend?
Have Mercy Page 3