I drive to the store under the dark nighttime sky, parking out front and hurrying inside. Our guests will be with us in an hour, and I want everything perfect for when they arrive. It will be my first time meeting Demi, and I’m keen to make a good first impression. She and Charlie have reunited after the sad passing of her father. She hasn’t felt like going out, so I’m delighted she has decided to come to our pre-Christmas Eve bash.
Rushing out of the store with my purchase, I make a beeline for my car when someone grabs me from behind, shoving something heavy and dark over my head. Panic blasts through me, but I remember my self-defense training, reaching my hand down between our bodies, grabbing the guy’s balls and squeezing tight while I simultaneously lift my knee and slam my boot into his foot. He curses, releasing me, and I stumble forward, reaching for the bag over my head as the screeching of brakes and slamming of doors confirm this dude isn’t alone.
I whip the bag off my head and run, swatting at the hair covering my face. Something or someone hard and heavy crashes into me from behind, knocking me to the asphalt. My lungs compress under the weight pressing me down, and the instant my head thuds against the solid ground, I black out.
_______________
Drip, drip, drip.
Muted sounds of arguing greet my ears, mixing with a steady dripping sound, as I slowly come to with a groan. My body aches everywhere, my limbs are throbbing with pain, and my arms feel like they’ve been wrenched from their sockets. Alarm shoots through my veins when I slowly blink my eyes open, taking in the dank, dark, dirty room I’m in. Although, calling it a room is generous. The space is small, almost claustrophobic, with bloodstained brick walls, a low ceiling with a solitary low-hanging light fitting that casts scant illumination, and a dirty asphalt floor that looks as if it’s never been swept or cleaned.
My body jolts involuntarily as the two men in the corner come into sharper view. Fear, thick and cloying, blankets me from head to toe, and I shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the dampness seeping into my bones.
Fuck. This is bad. Real bad.
My butt is numb, my bare feet are like blocks of ice, and it’s no wonder I can hardly feel my arms—they are stretched over my head at an awkward angle and my wrists are bound, tied to a steel bolt on the wall. One side of my face hurts, and the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth. My lips are dry and cracked, and the pounding pain in my skull suggests I might have a concussion.
But nothing feels broken, so that’s a plus.
“Did you scan her for tracking devices?” William Hamilton asks, staring at me as he talks to Denton Mathers. Both men are dressed in expensive tuxedos, so they’ve either come from some event or they’re in the middle of it.
“She’s clean now. We disposed of her bag, her cell, and her shoes back in MA. Those were the only trackers on her.” Denton slaps him on the back. “Don’t worry. They won’t find her in time.”
Feeling the weight on my ring finger does little to contain my panic. I have no idea how long I was passed out, what has been done to me during that time, or where the hell I am.
“This would not have been necessary if you hadn’t baited Lauder at the ball.” Hamilton’s jaw clenches as he continues staring at me.
“Come now. It’s not like this is unwanted,” Mathers coolly replies, his eyes raking over me. They are both talking like I’m not even here, but I don’t interrupt, letting them discuss me like I don’t lie injured and chained to the wall across from them.
“Right now, it is!” Hamilton barks. “The media and the authorities are still breathing down our necks. If the cunt had talked to the media about your little tête-à-tête in the bathroom, it would bring too much heat on us. We can’t afford to fuck this up, and your actions were out of line!”
“You’ll give yourself a coronary with all this stress.” Mathers squeezes his shoulders. “I’ve rectified the situation.” He pins me with a sick grin, and a shudder works its way through me. “This is a win-win. No PR nightmare to deal with, and we send those meddling kids a warning.”
Hamilton kneads his brow, shooting daggers at Mathers. “Remind me again why I got into bed with you, because I’m failing to see the benefits of partnering with a fucking idiot!” Hamilton shoves Mathers into the wall, baring his teeth as he snaps at him. “Those meddling kids almost brought our organization to its knees. She just married that prick Lauder, giving them another vote. Wake up and smell the roses!” He shoves Mathers again before taking a step back, rubbing his smooth jaw. “They are a threat. One we must deal with, in the right way, at the right time.” He prods him in the chest. “This is not the right time. You’ve poked the beast and forced our hand. That is not what was agreed.”
Mathers straightens his bow tie, smoothing his hands down the front of his jacket. “You forget who you’re speaking to, Hamilton.” His eyes narrow. “You would not be where you are now without me. I can withdraw my support and the support of others like that.” He clicks his fingers in the president’s face. “This will be handled, and we’ll handle the fallout in the same thorough manner.”
Hamilton fumes, his hands balling at his sides. I can tell he’d love to lay Mathers flat on his ass. “Have your fun with her tonight, because I want her on a transporter first thing in the morning,” he spits out. He runs a hand over his hair, flattening it back into place. “I’m rejoining the party, and I expect to see you shortly. Your absence will be noted, and we can’t invite suspicion.”
“I’ll save the fun for later when I won’t be interrupted. I just want to have a few words with Ms. Montgomery first. I’ll rejoin you in due course.”
“Very well.” Hamilton shoots me one last look before exiting the dungeon. The steel door clangs shut, and I startle, jumping as Mathers stalks toward me, slightly dragging his right leg behind him.
Crouching in front of me, he lifts his hand, brushing matted strands of hair back off my face. He tips my head to the side, probing my sore cheek with his fingers. I flinch at his touch, unable to stop my body’s natural reaction. His evil grin sends shards of fear shuttling up my spine. “Thankfully, the damage isn’t permanent. Our clients prefer their whores in pristine condition.” His hand sweeps down over my body, pausing to cup my breast through my shirt. “We’ll pretty you up before we place you into our auction.”
I gulp over the panic clogging my throat and the painful knots twisting and turning my insides.
He squeezes my breast hard, tweaking my nipple, and tears spring to my eyes. “I’ve fucked a lot of women and young girls in my time, but your pussy was one of the sweetest.” His hand drops from my breast to my crotch, and he cups me through my jeans. “I can’t wait to taste you again. As soon as my guests are gone, and my wife and daughters are in bed, I’ll come to claim what is rightfully mine.” He rubs his palm back and forth against my groin, pressing the denim against my sensitive flesh.
I pray Jackson gets here soon before they send me away and I’m lost to him forever. But I fear it may not be in time to save me from ruination, because if that monster puts his cock inside me again, I won’t survive it a second time.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Vanessa
“AARON KNEW ALL along who you were,” I surmise, hoping to deflect the wild lust in his eyes. I know what he just said, but I don’t trust him not to rape me now. Maybe, if I can keep him talking, and feed his ego, enough time will have passed and he’ll be forced to return to his party.
“Of course, he did, but he had no idea who you were.” His dark chuckle reverberates off the walls. “Christian sent me to keep an eye on you.”
My eyes startle at that admission.
“Ah, Christian never told you he found out about you when you were thirteen.”
I shake my head. “He told me nothing about how he knew my mom or why he didn’t come looking for me.”
“Your mom was living rough on the streets when Christian found her at fifteen.”
That must have been shortly after Mom�
�s parents died in the plane crash and after she’d been sent to live with her aunt and her husband. Mom doesn’t speak about her childhood often, but I know she was happy with her parents, because she speaks fondly of them.
“He took her in, cleaned her up, trained her as an elite whore.” Mathers licks his lips, and I’m sickened at the sight of the bulge in his pants. “She almost tasted as sweet as you, but she was weak, crying and screaming, even when doped up. Ruined fucking her for me.” He drags his thumb along my lower lip. “She wasn’t a good girl like you. You just shut up and took my cock up the ass. What a trooper.”
I school my features into a neutral line, not wanting to think about how he tore into a part of my body that had been untainted until then. Or the fact I cried rivers of silent tears as they abused my body for their sick pleasure.
“Christian got sick of her, sold her, but somehow, she managed to escape. That pissed him off for a long time, so imagine his surprise when he discovered her strolling arm in arm with a man along Main Beach in The Hamptons some years later. She was of no use to us then, but you…” He rubs his thumb back and forth along my dry lips. “You were a beauty. All long legs, blonde hair, and these big trusting eyes. Fuck, men will pay a fortune for you.”
“What did he do?” I prompt, urging him to continue because I don’t want to hear about or think about the twisted perverts who pay for women.
“We watched you for a while. Recognized that Aaron would make a perfect elite member. He came from old money, ran a successful business, and he shared the same desires. Of course, Ruth was an addict by then, but we have ways of dealing with troublesome females.”
I know all about how they deal with females, thanks to Abby’s mom. The things she’s had to endure are truly sickening. Sylvia too. She spent years abused and raped by her husband and others. I cried for a solid twenty-four hours after they shared their stories with me, terrifying Jackson. But it wasn’t all horrid. Their stories give me hope I can overcome what’s been done to me with time, therapy, and love, and I’m already making progress.
“We had no idea you were Christian’s offspring until after I’d befriended Aaron. He let it slip that his whore of a wife had had a kid when he met her. The math added up. We knew an elite had to be your father, so I stole your hairbrush, and we ran a DNA test, which confirmed it.”
“If he knew, why didn’t he rescue me?” I know why, but keeping the monster talking until my husband gets here is my sole priority.
He looks at me as if I’m some stupid naïve kid. “Trent was Christian’s heir. You were female, and he didn’t need you. Aaron was doing a decent job training you, so Christian decided he’d let him continue his good work until he had a use for you. We nominated Aaron for elite membership, to keep him on our side, and it meant I had access to keep an eye on you. We were celebrating the day I fucked you. Aaron’s nomination had just been approved.”
Nausea swims up my throat at his words. There isn’t even an accompanying evil glint or lustful look on his face. He’s telling me this as if he’s telling me what he’d like for supper. He is the classic definition of a psychopath, and the enormity of the danger I’m in hits me full force.
I’ve got to keep him talking, keep him distracted, until Jackson shows up.
“Did my mom know?” If Ruth knew this too, if she turned a blind eye to this as well, I am done with her. She is dead to me.
“We kept her out of it. She was always unstable, and even though she was a shitty mother, we couldn’t risk her going to the cops. That’s why I always visited your father when she wasn’t there.”
Mom was a victim too, and now I understand I am the result of rape, I can kind of understand her. She chose to ignore what was happening to me because she never faced up to what’d happened to her. I imagine looking at me reminded her every day of what she’d been through.
Maybe she blamed me.
But I was an innocent child.
At some point, she must have loved me, because she didn’t go through with the adoption, but I don’t understand why she kept me when she never cared for me or protected me the way a mother should.
“I paid your mother a visit after Aaron died,” he continues, and shock splays across my face. “I filled her in on everything, including how we staged his death to look like an accident. I fucked her until she bled, until she was so scared, she would’ve agreed to anything. She fed you those lies about Christian on my instruction. She sent you to him, knowing what he would do.” Now his grin is downright evil. “How does it feel to know even your own mother doesn’t love you? That she put her other children’s welfare above yours?”
“I stopped caring about that a long time ago.” I reinforce my mental shields, pulling them up around my heart, to avoid the painful onslaught. I can deal with that another time.
“And Aaron hated you too. Especially after you ruined his chances with the elite. Your arrest and mental breakdown caused too many waves. It wouldn’t have mattered if it’d been kept behind the scenes, but everyone at your private school and in the community knew what a wild, reckless, junkie whore you had become. The elite didn’t want the bad press.”
Shocker.
I’m glad I managed to mess up his carefully laid plans even though I suffered for it.
“Aaron kicked you out after I told him Christian Montgomery was your father and threatened to ruin him if he didn’t. Christian needed you weak and vulnerable so he could manipulate you into doing his bidding.”
“Except it didn’t quite go according to plan, did it?” I spit out, unable to stop myself from lashing out.
Mathers chuckles. “No, it didn’t. Although, it has worked in my favor. Christian had lost his edge, and his support was waning. Now, it’s all mine, and I’m perfectly positioned to become the next president after we dispose of Hamilton. Guess I should thank you.”
“You won’t get away with this,” I hiss as he stands, straightening out his legs, wincing a little as he rubs his upper right thigh in the place where Abby shot him. She told me what he tried to do to her, and I’m glad she inflicted pain on him and that he still bears the scars of that night. “My husband will gut you to shreds just like he did your friend.”
Mathers laughs, like the very idea is preposterous. “You really are quite delusional. But tell yourself what you need to. It’s no skin off my back. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must get back to my guests.”
“Eat shit and die, asshole,” I shout as he walks off. His limp is more pronounced now as he hobbles away, and his deep voice rumbles with laughter as he exits my prison.
Laugh while you can, dickhead, because you’re about to go down.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Jackson
“HOW MUCH FUCKING longer do we have to wait?” I hiss, shaking my leg to loosen the cramp that’s set in. We’ve been hiding on the grounds of Mather’s Alabama home for the past two hours, and although we have eyes on Nessa, and she’s not in any danger right this second, I’m itching to get her the fuck out of that basement dungeon. I don’t trust that prick with my wife, and I need to get her to safety ASAP.
Thank fuck for Techxet’s new micro-micro-chip technology that enabled me to embed an undetectable tracking device in the band of her engagement and wedding rings. Nessa approved of the idea when I suggested it—there’s one embedded in my platinum wedding band too—and it’s given me some comfort to know she knows we’re aware of her location and that we’re coming for her. However, I know she arrived with facial injuries, and I hate the thought of her in there, all alone, in pain, while I’m out here twiddling my thumbs.
Okay, I know it’s because there’s a right and wrong way of doing this.
The wrong way is to bust into a house full of elite with enough weapons to sink a ship, especially when they loathe our guts.
So, we’ve had to sit it out while the house clears of partygoers.
“Our man on the inside says the last of the guests are departing now. Remember, Math
ers is the only one with a key to the dungeon. We need to wait for him to go to her,” Hunt says in my ear.
We are decked out in Techxet’s latest prototype, an all-black combat ensemble, consisting of cargo pants and molded long-sleeved body-hugging shirts that are resistant to infrared lasers as well as bulletproof, and we are all carrying guns and knives.
It’s just Hunt, Anderson, me, and three guys from the security firm I’m using waiting to ambush that sick fucker as soon as he rears his ugly head. Xavier is in one of the SUVs, stashed in the alleyway at the back of the house, monitoring the camera feeds and keeping in constant communication with our rat on the inside. Charlie can’t leave Demi right now, and Drew was needed to watch over the girls, so they both stayed behind in Rydeville.
After Mathers revealed himself at the elite ball, we worked hard to get a man on his security detail. I don’t know how Dad found this new security firm, but they have eyes and ears everywhere, and they monitored Mathers until he had a vacancy on the team, and they got a man inside.
Pity their guy hadn’t discovered Mathers’s plans to come to Rydeville and abduct my wife in time to stop him and to save his colleague’s life. I don’t understand how Mathers’s men got the moves on Dawson, but we found him locked in the trunk of his Land Rover with a bullet embedded in his skull. Dude was a good dude, and I hate that we’ve lost him. Nessa was fond of him, and she’ll be devastated when she finds out.
We all knew Mathers would come after Nessa, but we didn’t think he’d strike two days before Christmas in our own backyard.
Lesson learned.
“The deranged sociopath is on the move,” Xavier says in my ear, using a deliberately robotic voice. “I repeat, the deranged sociopath is on the move.”
I can’t tell for definite from this angle, but I’m pretty sure Hunt is rolling his eyes at his lover right now.
“Let’s move,” Anderson says, and I know he’s itching to get his hands on Mathers as much as me. He owes him payback for what the prick did to Abby.
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