Captive

by Trevion Burns

  Then he’d have his daughter in his arms, hugging her for the first time.

  Linc knew Malik wouldn’t call the police when he realized his wife was missing. The race for mayor was far too close, and he couldn’t afford a scandal. But he also couldn’t win without Mia, London’s sweetheart, by his side at every turn. If even a whiff of her abduction were made public, it would cost him the race. He’d do anything to bring his wife back quietly, and in time to win the election.

  Even if it meant surrendering Emma. The innocent girl he held captive in his own home, doing God only knew what with.

  Linc bared his teeth as Mia’s screams amplified. Not because he felt particularly sorry for her, but because the reminder that she’d slept in that house—the same house his daughter was being held captive in—for years and had done nothing, was boiling his blood to the point of agony.

  Before he could stop himself, he threw open the door of the bathroom, so hard the handle punched a hole in the plaster wall, and stomped across the hallway.

  ——

  Linc threw the bedroom door open with the same violence he just had the bathroom’s, making the door slam against the wall.

  And only then did Mia’s screams die down. Only then did his ears, which he hadn’t even noticed had begun to ring under the abuse of her shrieking voice, resume operating. Only then did her long legs—previously failing on top of the white sheets—come to a complete halt from where they were still bound to the footboard of the bed.

  A section of bedhead still lay over one of her eyes, and the other eye was blackened with makeup that had run while she’d been passed out. Regardless how ridiculous she looked, when her eyes met Linc’s eyes across the room, chest heaving, for a moment, he was frozen.

  “I have to pee!” she cried.

  Linc’s eyebrows jumped. He reminded himself, once more, that he didn’t care why the brown skinned goddess before him was so broken. Why she had yet to cry or beg for her life like most women in her situation would. Why she’d spent the last hour screaming, not because she was scared, or hurt, or even unhappy with her current state of affairs, but simply because she had to piss.

  He nearly laughed at her. She was a fighter, that was for sure.

  Clenching her teeth, visibly infuriated at his maddening silence, Mia shimmied on top of her bed while yanking at the binds on her hands and wrists. The sheets rustled under her hourglass figure as she glared at him. “I’m sure whatever you put in my drink—whatever you did to me—is the reason I’m about to piss myself right now. The least you could do is let me maintain my dignity allowing me to go to the toilet.”

  He nearly laughed.

  Dignity!

  The same dignity that had allowed her to offer him her body without a moment’s hesitation earlier that evening? The same dignity she had refused his daughter by keeping her locked away in an attic? The same dignity that had allowed her to marry a depraved lunatic just because that lunatic could afford to buy her sparkly designer dresses like the one clinging to her every curve right then?

  Linc bit his tongue around every question, but he felt the anger his thoughts set alive in him burning his cheeks, tightening his fists, and rolling his stomach.

  “This dress,” she breathed. “Is so tight. Please, it’s torture. Do you really want to wash the urine out of these sheets after I pee myself?”

  He held her eyes. How had she not yet realized that her being tormented was good news to him, not bad?

  When he remained motionless, Mia threw her head back and screamed at the top of her lungs once more, causing Linc’s ears to close up for the second time that evening.

  Unable to take another second, he crossed the room to the bed in two long strides, yanking at the ties at the foot of the bed, releasing her feet.

  Mia’s wails died a rapid death once more, leaving the room drowning in nothing but silence and the sound of both of their strangled, frantic breathing as he undid her hands as well.

  Once Mia was freed, she still didn’t move, keeping her willowy arms up over her head and her legs stretched, so far out they seemed to go on for miles.

  His eyes ran her body. Then he stood tall and motioned to the door with his eyebrows raised high, clearing the way for her to go to the bathroom.

  “I’m scared to move.” She gave him a soft frown. “I need you to carry me.”

  “You gotta be fuckin’ with me.”

  “If I move I won’t be able to—”

  Linc bent down before she could finish her sentence, jamming his arms under her body and lifting her off the bed, so swiftly it stole a soft gasp from her lungs as her body settled into his arms. Against his chest. Their eyes locked. She wrapped her willowy arms around his neck.

  Linc waited for her to tighten her arms in an attempt to choke him. For her to lean in and bite his neck right where his aching gash was. He waited for her to do whatever she could to hurt him. To punish him.

  He waited for her the make the biggest mistake of her life.

  Several seconds passed as their eyes searched each other’s, but Mia didn’t give him a fight. All she gave him was the weight of her body against his. The soft underside of her thighs resting atop one of his hands and the plush swell of her side-boob under the other.

  He tightened his fingers.

  She tightened her arms.

  He broke his eyes away with a cringe, turning toward the door, combat boots stomping and jeans swishing as he carried her out of the room. In seconds they were across the hall, at the bathroom door, where Linc set her down to her bare feet.

  Taller than most women, they were nearly eye to eye, but not completely. She still had to look up at him, nibbling her bottom lip.

  Linc’s gaze fell to her mouth.

  Bottom lip still trapped between her teeth, Mia turned her back to Linc, holding his eyes as she did, showing him the zipper at the back of her dress. The zipper just low enough to expose most of her womanly back but just high enough to make it impossible for her to reach, even with her long ballerina arms.

  At the sight of the long lines of her back, ebbing and pulsing as if they were dancing to music neither of them could hear, Linc took a deep breath. His eyes fell down her body, tracing her hourglass shape as her back moved into the deep curve of her ass, fitting into that dress within an inch of its life.

  He took the zipper in one trembling hand before cupping the thinnest part of her waist with the other.

  Her shoulders rose in a soft gasp.

  He froze, watching her for a long moment before removing his hand from her waist, grabbing a chunk of her dress for leverage, and pulling the zipper all the way down.

  The flaps of the dress fell open, revealing the beginnings of her ample ass and the two dimples that dotted it at the small of her back.

  He took a healthy step away, swallowing the lump in his throat.

  Holding her dress to the front of her body to keep it from falling, even though it was so tight Linc doubted it would come off without a lot of convincing, Mia looked over her shoulder and met his eyes once more.

  He hadn’t realized he was still moving backward until his back hit the wall.

  Something flashed across her eyes that made them appear softer as he hit the wall unexpectedly. Then she turned away. Still holding the dress to her body with one hand, she shuffled into the bathroom, clicked on the light, and went to close the door.

  “Open—” Linc cleared his throat when his deep voice broke, dying a slow death somewhere in the hallway between them, probably before it could reach her. “Leave the door open.”

  Mia spun on her heel again. Her eyebrows pulled tight. “I’ll leave it cracked.”

  An expletive took up residence on the tip of his tongue as their gazes locked across the hallway. “Open.”

  “Cracked.”

  He searched her eyes. A smirk nearly picked up the corner of his lips.

  She knew.

  She knew how much he needed her. Not only did she know, and not onl
y was she not frightened, she was defiant. He supposed a woman who wasn’t afraid to die—a woman who’d been begging for it—had no choice but to be.

  As the silence between them grew from seconds to minutes, she seemed to take it as confirmation that she’d won, disappearing behind the bathroom door. She eased it shut, slowly enough to let a long creak ring out, leaving a crack in the frame a little smaller than an inch.

  Linc remained propped up against the wall, wondering if, when he finally stood tall, his knees would still support him.

  10

  All men were terrible people and the ape lingering on the other side of that bathroom door only solidified that fact in Mia’s mind. But she couldn’t focus on the man she found repulsive in every way because for the first time in her life the one phenomenon that had always been out of her reach had shown itself to her like a bright, beaming beacon of light.

  Hope.

  Freedom.

  As she sat on the toilet and did her business, the tinkles rising into the small bathroom and filling the walls, she gnawed her bottom lip. Her fingers trembled as she fiddled with one of the gold sequins on her dress. The very sequin she imagined had put that ugly gash on the neck of the barbarian standing on the other side of that door. Hands still tied, she twisted and wiggled the sequin as best she could, breathing a sigh of relief when she managed to get it dislodged from the fabric of her dress.

  She lifted her bound wrists to take in the sequin, the bright bathroom lights gleaming over it like yet another beacon of hope—yet another lighthouse—a searchlight, assuring her that freedom awaited her just beyond the horizon—even if she had to fight to the death to get it. And fight to the death, she would. She turned the sequin and revealed the long rivets on the other side, one of which had gotten bent, leaving its sharpest end sticking out. This was the rivet that had cut that savage, no doubt.

  It had made him bleed once before.

  No reason it couldn’t do it again.

  This time to kill.

  She hid the sequin in a tight fist just as she finished emptying her bladder, which had seemed hell bent on ripping her insides to shreds just minutes earlier. A sigh of relief relaxed her chest as her eyes traveled over the bathroom’s cheap floral wallpaper and the handicap bars bolted to the shower wall. She wondered whose house this really was because the man on the other side of that door certainly had no need for a handicap enabled bathroom, seeing as he’d spent the better part of the night hauling her around like a rag doll.

  It wasn’t until she flushed the toilet, the sharp rivets of the sequin still pinching at her palm in the most beautiful way, that her eyes moved to the far wall behind the cracked door of the bathroom and landed on a laundry chute.

  “It’s the laundry chute,” Emma whispered. “I think it goes all the way down to the basement.”

  Mia’s heart ground to an instant halt as the memory of Emma’s voice, just hours earlier, floated through her mind. The memory of the laundry chute that had been hidden away behind several thick layers of thick concrete. Layer’s that Emma had been slowly chipping away at as she dreamed of her own escape. Seconds after her heart stopped beating, Mia held her breath as well.

  “You can come too! We can both fit, one at a time. I already checked the measurements.”

  Mia’s eyes grew wider every second, drinking in that small white hatch bolted to the wall across the bathroom, and realized Emma had been right. It would be a tight fit.

  But she would fit.

  And just as Emma had predicted, Mia had no doubt the fall would lead her all the way down to the basement. She had no idea how big that house was, or how long that fall would be, but she didn’t care. All she could see, think, breathe, was the shining beacon that promised hope. The lighthouse that promise refuge.

  The laundry chute that promised freedom.

  She shot to her feet with a soft gasp and wiggled her unzipped dress—bunched up at her waist—back down over her naked ass. As she shimmied, her eyes flew to the tiny crack in the door where the savage still awaited her. He hadn’t made a peep since she’d disappeared inside the bathroom and his patience was surely running low with every second she wasn’t emerging.

  She hurried to the sink, her frantic eyes never leaving that laundry chute’s reflection in the mirror, and turned the faucet on. The sink’s water pressure was strong, so much so that Mia nearly cried out in delight as it roared from the faucet and collided against the white porcelain sink, making more noise than roaring cascades at Niagara Falls. Loud enough to drown out even the most turbulent thunderstorm.

  “Just washing my hands!” she cried into the tiny crack in the doorway, so small she was sure he didn’t notice her move away from the gushing sink, take hold of the silver handle on the trash chute and pull it down.

  The door to the chute fell open without so much as a squeak, leaving a gaping black hole at the top. A gaping black hole just big enough for her to fit through. A gaping black hole to freedom.

  “Let’s go.” His deep voice rang in, slightly muffled, from the other side of the door.

  Mia jolted at the sound, and that jolt seemed to startle her racing heart as well because the shot of adrenaline that zoomed through her moved her body before her mind could catch up. Abandoning the running water at the sink, she shuffled across the bathroom to the trash chute and didn’t even take a second to look down into the cavernous black hole before she dove in headfirst.

  11

  The world of darkness that encased Mia should’ve frightened her as she went barreling down the trash chute to God only knew where, but for a girl who’d been encased in darkness her whole life, free-falling was a walk in the park. It didn’t matter that she was plunging headfirst—possibly into a concrete floor—because death was an escape of its own.

  Amazingly, however, for the first time in her life, she hoped death wasn’t the answer. She hoped it wasn’t her only way out. She hoped, once she reached whatever destination awaited her at the bottom of that chute, she could live to see her own liberation. Not just liberation from Malik, but from the green-eyed snake upstairs too.

  Freedom from every monster who’d stolen from her the basic human right to control her own body. Freedom from the fear. Freedom from the pain. Freedom from the hopelessness that had suffocated her for as long as she could remember. Hope eased every bone in her body, so much so that it took her a moment to realize that she’d already fallen out of the chute and landed at her destination.

  Her wide eyes flew in every direction, stunned at the large, collapsible laundry basket full of bed sheets and linens that had broken her fall with the same gentle, downy tenderness of an angel welcoming her into heaven. So plush she hadn’t even realized she’d landed safely until several seconds later, when the pile finally gave in under her weight and tilted to the side, depositing her onto the concrete floor below.

  As she crumpled softly to the floor, it was back. The fire in her heart and the fire in her eyes as they searched what certainly did appear to be a dark basement. When her gaze landed on the only source of illumination in the dark—a small window sitting at the top of the far wall—allowing moonlight to spill in from the night sky outside—the fire in her heart moved to debilitating hunger.

  Knowing she could never outrun the animal upstairs with her hands and ankles bound, her desperate eyes abandoned the window and flew all over the basement. She nearly screamed in delight when she caught sight of a table across the room with half a circular buzz saw exposed on the top, convinced that an angel up above really was on her side that night. Shining a light down on her with their arms spread wide, just as excited about the prospect of her escape as she was.

  Heart pounding so hard it felt seconds from leaping up her throat, knowing the mongrel who had kidnapped her would realize she was gone and come barreling down the stairs any minute, Mia slithered her body across the floor as fast as she could, resembling a wounded centipede as she wiggled a frantic path toward that table. Once she made it to t
he table, she shimmied underneath it, managing to come up to her knees in the dress that was still as tight as hell even when unzipped. She bumped her head on the underside of the table in her haste, her gasping breath filling the quiet air as she craned her neck under the bottom of the saw’s motor, which had been bolted to the underside of the table. She used her teeth to flip the switch, activating the engine, and the whirr of the buzz saw churned to life. The circular saw spun so rapidly its sharp spikes blurred and then disappeared completely—its growling motor drowning out her desperate, heaving breaths.

  She shimmied out from under the table as she sat tall on her knees, guiding the ties around her wrists toward the spinning blade. She didn’t waste time worrying about how easily that razor sharp blade could take off both her hands as she moved the black fabric toward it, pulling her wrists as far apart as she could. In less than a second, the blade sliced through the fabric like butter, freeing her wrists. She bit back a joyous cry, leaning back on her unleashed hands and lifting her long legs on top of the table, taking the same risk with her ankles as she had with her wrists as she guided the binds toward the treacherous saw. Just as quickly, the beautiful feeling of her ankles being freed washed over her.

  She didn’t indulge the tears of joy that burned her eyes as her precious limbs were returned to her, too busy jumping to her feet and racing across the basement, her dress easier to run in since the blade had ripped a sizable hole in the hem as well. She hopped onto the large chest freezer situated underneath the window, using it as a prop to open the latch that, without it, would’ve been too high to reach.

  Acting as its own beacon, its white body glowing in the cold, dark basement, the freezer made it a piece of cake for Mia to jump out of the open window with ease. The nippy night air encasing her and inviting her into a world she’d never known but had always dreamed of.

  ——

  Linc clenched his teeth as the bathroom water continued churning on the other side of the door, checking his wristwatch with a roll of his eyes before crossing the hallway and giving a violent knock.