by Rachel Ellis
“No,” she quipped, before pulling the trigger.
I shut my eyes and turned away, expecting a loud, ringing gunshot and sharp pain. Nothing happened. Sadistic female laughter bounced off the walls. I slowly faced Kelly, fear and anger boiling under my skin.
She threw herself forward and slapped her thigh as she continued her tearful guffaw. “You should have seen the look on your face!”
“I’m going to kill—”
“You looked like you were going to shit yourself. Right, Damien? She looked ridiculous.”
My ex-boyfriend grunted.“Um, yeah. I’m still not sure if we should be doing this…”
“Stop whining. Man up for once,” Kelly said to him, and then she continued to address me. “The gun isn’t loaded, stupid. But, we have bullets, and we’ll use it on you if we have to.”
I ground my teeth together. “You wouldn’t.”
“Bang,” she mouthed, pulling the trigger one more time.
I couldn’t stop myself from flinching, despite knowing nothing would happen. This woman was a complete lunatic.
She set the gun down on the counter, next to a laptop. “I just need you to transfer thirty thousand dollars into our account. You can use my computer. I even brought it for you.”
Shaking my head, I stubbornly replied, “I don’t have that much money.”
“Fifty thousand. You have no bargaining chips, bitch. I’d think twice before declining again.”
“I don’t believe you’d kill someone so easily.”
She reached into her handbag and took out some bullets. Carefully, she loaded them into the gun. “Who said anything about killing?” My mouth went dry as I watched her. Smirking, she licked her lips. “What use will you be to me dead? You can’t send us any more money if you are. We’ll just torture you until you concede.” The trigger went off, one more time. This time, however, the gun was fully loaded, and a bullet pierced through the air and straight through my calf. I didn’t feel any pain at first—shock had numbed it. “I’m used to getting what I want,” she said.
Seconds later, realization took hold and a sharp, searing pain burned through my leg. “Shit! Why the fuck would you do that?” It was difficult to breathe. I tried to clench my calf muscles, but it only caused more pain. Blood gushed out of the wound. I’d die of blood loss at this rate.
Kelly tinkered with her gun. “So you know I’m serious.”
“You’re crazy! Fucking crazy!” Worried, I looked down at my belly. As long as the baby was safe.
She shrugged. “If crazy scares you, that works.”
“I thought you told me we weren’t going to hurt her,” Damien said, meekly.
“We weren’t going to hurt her if she co-operated, but she’s being stubborn as hell.”
“Oh.”
I moaned in agony as the throbbing in my leg got stronger. I had to stop the blood loss, somehow. I wasn’t ready to die of some stupid reason like that. I breathed in and out in a controlled manner as I attempted to my head leveled. “The two of you are going to hell. You’ll have people to answer to, cunt. There’s the cops. They’ll lock you up behind bars before you even get the chance to blink.”
Kelly crossed her arms.“Which reminds me. I need collateral. Do you mind, Damien?”
“It’s not right…”
“They’ll arrest us if we don’t. Stop being a pussy.”
He paced toward me, wearing the sorriest look I’d ever seen on him. What did she mean by collateral?
“We don’t want you ratting us out to the cops,” Kelly explained. “We need to make sure you don’t. So we need to give you a good reason to keep your mouth shut.” She had her camera out as she talked.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out what she meant. Photos—photos of me undressed and humiliated. That was one method to keep me quiet.
As soon as Damien came onto me with his sticky hands, the camera clicked.
Even with an injured leg, I couldn’t be stopped from fighting back.
***
I’d never get tired of the ‘straight in the balls’ trick. Damien was groaning at my side before he could do Kelly’s bidding. He had one button off my shirt—my uninjured right leg landed swiftly between his thighs before his hands could stray any further. Kelly was yelling at him from the middle of the living room, shouting words like ‘idiot’, and ‘useless’. Remind me again why Damien likes her?
With him temporarily down, I had a small glimmer of hope. But faced with a bleeding calf, bound hands, and an insane woman with a gun, my hope continued to be nearly non-existent. I had no moment to think. Kelly got over her frustration fairly quickly. Leaving her gun on the counter, thankfully, she sauntered toward me with her camera in her hands. “I’ll do this myself.”
If she thought she’d get anywhere near to getting my clothes off, she was wrong. Using all the strength I had, I knocked the chair I was tied to over, luckily hitting her with its ends and tripping her. I fell face first onto the hardwood floor. Attempting to keep the impact from reaching my womb, I positioned myself so most of the stress landed on my chin and knees. The lack of pain from my tummy region served as a good sign that my child was still safe. I tried to inch away, panic momentarily making me forget about the stinging in my leg. I was probably suffering from a lot of blood loss, but the consequences of that had yet to take effect.
“Fucking bitch,” she uttered under her breath, before getting up. Vengeance painted all over her face, she lifted her heel and pressed it against my bullet wound. An electric shock of misery traveled all the way to my hip. I screamed, unable to stop myself. She displayed sheer satisfaction as she dug the heel of her foot deeper into my calf. I wanted to kill her. I wanted her to pay for every last second of torture she inflicted on me, but my resolve to stay strong wore thin as she continued to give me more agony than I could handle.
“Stop, stop!” I begged, shamed by my own weakness and lack of will. She grinned. Seeing her pleased by the way I crumbled sent disgust to my stomach.
“I will if you promise to stay still.”
“I’ll stay still.” My mascara trailed down my cheeks as tears forced their way out of my eyes. “Just stop, please, it hurts.”
“Good.” She kicked me so I turned over. My mind turned into mush while my leg muscles continue to pulse and ache.
But I wasn’t willing to give up. When her fingers reached for my shirt, I lunged forward and tried to bite her.
Damien recovered too quickly. “Fuck, she’s fiesty.” He grabbed my hands and pulled me backwards, away from Kelly.
Kelly wiped her forehead. “You’re an annoying bitch, you know that? Stop being so difficult. Now, hold still.”
***
These ropes—I couldn’t do anything with them tying me down. I was starting to feel dizzy from the blood loss. My adrenaline had run out and I couldn’t fight back properly. I shouldn’t have quit those judo lessons so early on when I was a kid. Those skills could have came in handy now.
Click. That was the third picture of my bare breasts. My dignity was getting sucked away bit by bit. My hatred for these two people had manifested into the need for pure murder. Damien unbuttoned my entire shirt and was about to peel it off
“Fuck you both. Burn in hell,” I cursed, still struggling. Much to my dismay, my strength was no match for Damien’s, and he held tightly to the back of the chair. The disadvantageous circumstances had made me begin to lose all hope. As the seconds ticked by, my resolve to fight back wore thin, and my energy ran low. Only the bloodcurdling feeling of Kelly’s fingers trailing across my clothes, and Damien touching my skin, gave me renewed reason to fight back.
Smirking, Kelly said, “Take her shirt off.” Her camera was poised and ready for action.
Damn it. Was there really no way out of this? Kelly’s gun was still on the counter. I could try lunging for it, but Damien barely let me move. Since when did he get so strong? Perhaps it was the bullet wound that made me too weak in comparison. My
breath began to run short, and the room spun around my head. The blood loss was getting to me.
Right when Damien reached for my shirt, and when I thought all hope was lost, I heard knocking on my door.
I screamed as loud as I could, before stopping and hesitating to do it again. What if Kristie had returned? I didn’t want to pull her into this mess. She wouldn’t stand a chance against these two, with or without their gun.
But that person wasn’t Kristie, and lucky enough for me, it was someone capable enough to have a chance at handling this situation.
“Ms. Fontaine, are you alright?” a man shouted. Tyrone had arrived. I’d leap for joy if I weren’t so terribly constrained and injured. He had the ability to save me. More than once, he doubled as a bodyguard, removing pesky paparazzi from my vicinity. The twins explained to me he had been in the military before working for their company. He should know how to subdue these two amateurs, right?
I tried to shout back to Tyrone, but Damien muffled my response with a hand.
My lack of response wasn’t enough to discourage my driver. “I’m coming in, ma’am!”
Swiftly, he knocked down the door with one strong kick. It landed on the floor with some of its hinges torn from the wood. Kelly swung her head toward his direction while Damien looked up. They were distracted, giving me freedom to try and roll my shirt over my breasts with my shoulders. It was a sad attempt, and I barely looked decent, but it covered enough.
I despised Kelly, but I had to admit, she was a quick thinker. Without flinching, she dived for the gun. It was in her hands before Tyrone or I had time to do anything about it.
She pointed her weapon at him. “Don’t move.”
Surprised, he stopped in his tracks, but he wasn’t so easy to ward off. He, too, had a gun in his hand. It was pointed straight at Kelly.
The intensity at which they glared at each other seemed as if it came straight out of an action film. Both their fingers were on their triggers. They could be set off at any random second.
“Who are you?” she asked, warily studying Tyrone. She appeared a lot less malicious and more panicky now that the ball had fallen out of her court.
He pulled on the gun’s slide to arm it. “Release her and you won’t come to any harm.” Eyeing me, he took a step forward.
“Don’t fucking move! Tell me who the hell you are.”
“Her driver.”
She snorted, “What the fuck is a stupid driver doing here?”
“And her professional bodyguard.”
That stopped her from being condescending. She pulled her face back together. “Hired by the Crawford brothers?”
“Yes.”
Kelly narrowed her eyes. “Well, tell your fucking bosses that I’m not going to let her go until they deposit fifty thousand dollars into my bank account by tomorrow.”
“I can’t do that.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” Swiftly, she pointed the gun at me instead. “I’ve shot her once. I can shoot again.”
He didn’t answer. I observed the two of them as my pulse quickened. With both of them fully equipped, this could play out any way. They were at an uncomfortable standstill. I didn’t think it’d last very long, or anyone was going to walk out of this uninjured.
And Tyrone was outnumbered. I caught sight of Damien walking out of the shadows wearing a nervous look. He was creeping up to Tyrone, a sharp, glinting knife gripped in his fist.
“Behind you!” I shouted to my driver. Damien jumped toward him as soon as he heard me. Luckily, Tyrone was agile and quick. He whipped around, caught my ex-boyfriend’s arm and threw him over. The knife swung across the room, stopping right next to my hand—my chance to free myself.
A gunshot rang as I tried to cut my ropes away. It was Kelly. She had tried to shoot Tyrone, but the stupid bitch wasn’t as experienced at using a gun as she’d like to think, and in the heat of the moment, missed. As soon as he heard her gunshot, he leapt toward her before giving her a chance to take another aim. I nearly stopped trying to cut the ropes away as I watched them, fearing for Tyrone’s life. He had jumped straight toward the gun.
Finally, I was free, but I sat there, paralyzed by fear and confusion.
Attempting to disarm her, Tyrone fought to get her hands in his grip. Their movements blended together into a blur.
The third gunshot of the day sounded.
And then another.
It took some time for me to get past the shock and numbness. My lower lip quivering, I bent my head down to look at my stomach. A gaping hole was torn through my clothes. Red was spreading across my shirt, getting everywhere. My hand shivered as I brought it to the wound. Dazed, and unable to grasp what had happened, I looked at my bloodstained fingers, speechless.
Kelly had shot me again. This time, in my stomach.
My child, please let it be okay.
The background noise turned into a buzz. I heard Kelly shouting, but I couldn’t decipher her words. Damien’s voice soon echoed beside my ear. What is he saying?
My eyelids fluttered down. They were getting too heavy to keep up. My life was slowly fading away and the slithering tendrils of death got closer.
The last thing I remembered were two strong arms lifting my body up. All I could think about was how they weren’t Ryan or Riley’s.
The unpleasant smell of medicine and disinfectants hit me before I even lifted my eyelids. My head swirled around. Was this the scent of heaven? If so, heaven wasn’t leaving a good impression.
As my eyes fluttered open, it soon became clear that I’d woken up in a hospital. It took me some time to recall how I’d landed here, but not long. My mind was still functioning well—a good sign. I shifted my gaze left and right, until they came into view. The twins. Ryan was sleeping in a corner, while Riley laid at my bedside, one of my hands in his.
“You’re awake,” Riley said.
For a brief second, seeing him pleased me. Then I recalled our unresolved misunderstanding. “Hi.”
“Thank God.” He rested his forehead onto my hand. “We thought we might have lost you.”
“I thought the both of you were mad.”
“We’re sorry.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but after some silence, I realized that was it.
Then, it suddenly occurred to my mind—I was shot in the stomach. My baby! “How is it? Is the baby safe? Please tell me it’s okay.” I’d been so excited for it to arrive. I didn’t want to lose my child.
Putting a hand onto my shoulder to try and calm me down, Riley replied, “It’s fine. It was a close call. The bullet missed your womb, but we’re not sure how the blood loss is going to affect it. We need to visit the gynecologist.”
My heart took some time to stop its erratic pounding. “That’s good. Oh, my God. I wouldn’t know what I’d do if…” My voice trailed out. I didn’t want to say it out loud. It’d be ominous.
Riley gave me some time to recover before saying, “There are so many things I need to tell you, Scarlet. It’s funny. I was thinking of all the things I’d say, and now nothing is coming to mind. I’m just so happy you’re here, safe. The doctor told us you might not make it.”
Riley seemed haggard. A light stubble had grown around his mouth and jaw, and dark circles framed his eyes. Even his eyes looked duller. The shimmering sparkle they used to carry wasn’t there. “How long was I out for?” I asked. His condition couldn’t have worsened this much within a short time-frame. Yet, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the incident with Kelly had happened only yesterday.
“Two weeks,” Riley said. “You slept so soundly. We thought you’d never wake up.”
I glanced down at the sheets. “Two weeks? That’s a mighty long time.”
“Felt like an eternity.”
Fidgeting, I pointed out, “Weren’t you guys done with me, though? After the pictures.”
Ryan woke up, perhaps because our conversation disturbed him. “Hey, Riley.” He wiped his face with his hand
.
“She’s awake,” Riley announced.
His mouth parted. Surprised, he tilted his head up and stared at me. “You’re awake?” He ran over to my side and bent down. Then, he continued, “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
I tried to shift my body up so it wasn’t so awkward to talk to them—it wasn’t a good idea. A sharp pain on my rib stung. “Ouch.”
Ryan leapt into action immediately. His hands came to my sides.
“I’m okay,” I answered. “I just want to sit up.”
“I’ll give you a hand.”
Gently, he lifted me up. The stinging lessened into a numb ache.
When I sat up, I studied the two men, uncertain about what to say. I had so many questions. I started with the simplest and most obvious. “Why are you here?”
Riley sighed. “We came here as soon as we heard the news. I took over with most business dealings, but I visited every day. Ryan never left.”
I raised my brows. I thought they wanted nothing to do with me? “Why?” I was touched by how worried they were, but my last memory I had of them was them kicking me out of their house.
He scoffed, “What do you mean why? We were worried, Scarlet. We didn’t know what to do. You were in critical condition when you went into that operating room. Even the doctor didn’t think he could save you. We thought you were going to… to… die.” He kissed the back of my hand. “I’m so happy you’re safe. You were so pale when you went into that operating room. There was blood all over the place. I thought I’d never see you again.”
Not remembering any of that, I sunk into my bed. “Oh.” An unsettling pause permeated the air. I didn’t want to bring their rejection up, the memory of it cutting deep, but it left too many unanswered questions. “After the photos… you guys made me leave.”
Riley groaned softly. “We’re sorry. We should have trusted you.”
I imagined this confession from him to be much more fulfilling, and that I’d embrace it with as much haughtiness as I could. But I wasn’t smug about it. Instead, it made me happy. I had been angry about their lack of trust before, but after a while, I stopped blaming them. The evidence, splayed out in front of their desk, looked too real. Anyone’s trust would be faltered by it. What I was angry about, though, was how they were so quick to ask me to leave and not talk about it. Still, I tried to find it within myself to forgive them. They finally were on my side again. I didn’t want to lose them a second time.