I don’t blame her for needing a sugar overload. It’s been a crazy week. I feel like I’ve barely stopped. With the hen do on Sunday and then seeing Jem on Wednesday, now I’m up early and getting on a train back to Kingsley in—I glance at my watch—shit, I need to leave… now.
I pick up my pace, rushing towards the front door of the loft. Why the heck is the hallway so bloody long?
“I hate to eat and dash, Cam, but I’m going to have to duck in, grab my bags and head over to the station—or I’ll miss my train. We’re meeting at Beth’s this morning to help her with hair and makeup. I said I’d meet Paige there.”
Cami leans against the wall by the front door as I dig in my bag for the keys, wiping the last of the crumbs from her mouth.
“The new sister-in-law seems to be a hit.”
“She may be my only ally against Josh when I tell him I’ve been shagging his Club brother for months behind his back. I’m keeping her sweet.”
I push the key into the lock and shove the door open with my shoulder. I step inside, Cami on my heels. She barely shuts the door behind us when they appear from around the corner of the kitchen. Men. There’s two of them, burly blokes in jeans and dark brown leather jackets. Not like Jem or the boys wear in the Club. One of them is the man that was watching me.
I reach blindly behind me for Cami and push her towards the door.
“Run,” I murmur and shove her as I latch onto something solid.
We both turn and make towards the door but as we do, another man is standing behind us, blocking the exit. He must have been waiting in the small utility room next to the front door. Fuck. My heart starts to race as I realise the man from the restaurant is sitting on the sofa.
Cami moves close to my back, and I grab her clammy hand in my equally sweaty one. I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared in my entire life. She suddenly shrieks and she’s torn from me. I spin to see her dragged back by the guy behind us, his arm banded around her waist.
What the—
I grapple for her, trying to grab her, but she yells at me, even as she fights against her attacker’s hold, “Piper, run!”
I don’t want to, but the only chance we have of getting out of this is for one of us to get help, so I rush for the door. My fingers hit the latch and pull it down. Then my head slams against the wood. I see stars for a moment before pain explodes through my skull. A fist ploughs into my back, stealing the air from my body.
God, ow.
I try to draw air past the weight in my chest and fail. I try again and manage to get something through.
Then I forget about breathing. Fingers curl into my hair impossibly tight, pulling at my scalp, and I’m dragged back from the door, from our one chance of escape. Cami screams and she’s cut off by what I’m sure is a hit to the face, from the sound of flesh being struck. I want to go to her, to help her, but I’m being pulled by my hair into the main part of the loft. All I can do is go where I’m being directed and when the guy holding me finally releases me with a shove that sends me sprawling onto the floor, it’s actually a relief to slam into the wood. At least the pressure on my scalp is gone now.
Blinking through the haziness in my vision—blood, I realise belatedly—I try to locate my best friend, but as my sluggish gaze starts to move around the room, a blow to the head regains my attention.
“That’s enough, Perkins. Take the photo and send it.”
I sway on my knees, one hand pressing into the wood beneath me. I feel sick and my head is spinning. I can hear Cami trying to say something, but what I don’t know, because my ears are ringing.
“What now?” the one called Perkins asks after he lowers his phone—presumably having shot this beautiful moment of me trying to keep my stomach controlled, trying to keep upright.
“We take her with us.”
“The other?”
“Don’t need her. Get rid of her.”
“No…” I whimper, but my voice is weak, pitiful. I hurt everywhere.
I try to fight, but I’m tugged up to my feet by men who easily overpower me. It’s hopeless. I’m no match for them, and even if I was, my head is spinning and my vision is swimming. I can barely keep my feet under me as they all but drag me to the door.
Cami fights like a wild cat. I can see her through the cascade of blood running into my eyes. I wish she wouldn’t. They hurt her. Hit her, slap her, but she fights them to get to me. The last thing I see as I disappear through the door is one of the men slap her so hard she goes to the floor. Bile rises in my throat at this. She should just let me go.
I think someone will stop them from taking me. I live in a big building. There are sixteen flats in it. Okay, it’s early in the morning, but surely someone will be around, right?
Wrong.
They get me outside without hindrance and I’m put in the back of a van without being stopped. It’s dirty inside, the floor metal and covered in dust and debris. One of the men sits on the back of my thighs as he pulls my hands behind my back and roughly binds them with thick ropes. I try to kick out, but my legs are held firm under him and I can’t move my top half either. So, all I can do is squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the inevitable.
I twist my head to the side, my thoughts racing as the van doors are shut behind us, the dawn light disappearing with it. Material is pulled over my eyes and my sight is taken from me, heightening my fear further.
With only four of my senses to rely on, I feel hyper alert, even through the haze of dizziness, and when the guy behind me tugs the ropes to check them, I jolt.
You’re okay, Piper. Just relax. Keep breathing. If they wanted you dead, you’d be dead already…
“Get up front, fucker,” another voice barks from somewhere overhead. It’s hard to tell.
Then the weight lifts off and I’m aware I’m alone in the back of the van—at least I think I am. I can’t sense anyone, anyway.
I’m in trouble. Maybe the most trouble I’ve ever been in. No one knows where I am, where I’m going, because I never told anyone what was going on with Grant—no one but Cami, who could very well be in trouble herself. My stupidity, my arrogance may have very well got my best friend killed.
At least, I assume this is because of Grant. The man on the sofa was the same man in the restaurant and the man I saw earlier in the week. I assume this is all to do with my stepfather, but in reality, it could be linked to my brother and his Club dealings too. It could be linked to anything.
Face down in the back of this dirty, smelly van, all I can do is lie here and wonder what the hell is going on. Fear grips me. When I don’t turn up for the wedding, Jem will know something is wrong. He’ll come for me, right?
Oh God… will he think I got cold feet about telling Josh about us?
The van rolls as it moves and I jiggle about. I wish I could see. I’m terrified. I don’t know where I’m going or why, but the fear clutching my heart has the power to stop it in my chest. I try to calm myself because I need to be level-headed, but I’m so dizzy I’m struggling to maintain even a loose grip on anything right now.
By the time the van stops, I’m barely clinging to consciousness and when the doors open, I don’t even have the strength to fight when I’m pulled out.
I can’t see anything through the blindfold and the two men holding me up set a ruthless pace as they march us forward.
I try to make sense of my surroundings, but it’s next to impossible. I know we move from outside to in by the change of acoustics and the lighting I can make out through the blindfold. Plus, the temperature drop. It’s cooler inside. The men talk about some football match last night, like they haven’t just abducted me and beaten my friend. It’s so surreal. I can hardly believe this is happening.
Finally, they stop walking and I hear the scraping of a lock and the whine of hinges as a door is opened. Then I’m pushed inside what I assume is a room. One of the men drags me in and pushes me down. I hit something softer than expected—a mattress I realise. A cot,
of some sort.
“Hope you enjoy your accommodation, Miss Hollander. You’re gonna be here for a while.”
I don’t correct him on the name. It doesn’t seem like the right time to be throwing my weight around about being an Ellis and not a Hollander or Ellis-Hollander or whatever the heck Grant wanted me to be. He’s also confirmed my suspicions that this is because of my stepfather, which means I really am in trouble because my brother and boyfriend have no idea I’m in deep shit, and the only inkling they’re going to have that there’s a problem is when I fail to turn up for the wedding—a wedding that neither of them are going to be able to leave to come looking for me.
I hear the squeak of the hinges again and then the scrape of the lock being re-engaged. And I realise I must be in a cell. He’s locked me in a cell.
I’m totally fucked.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I’m frozen, so frozen I can barely breathe. I wish I’d worn jeans, because my bare legs are like ice, but like an idiot, I put on Jem’s favourite skirt when I left the house, thinking it would drive my guy a little crazy when I got to Kingsley. I’m regretting that now.
My coat was taken from me some time ago, as was my sweater, leaving me only in the thin white top I wore beneath to layer up from the cold. I was also divested of my boots, so my bare feet ache fiercely as the frosty air licks up my soles. I’ve never liked having cold feet, but this is a different level of frigid, one that is embedded so deeply in my bones I don’t think I will ever be warm again. Every inhalation I take is like breathing in tiny shards of ice.
I keep my head tucked down towards my chest, tipped into the smelly, dirty mattress I’m lying on, and take shallow breaths, hoping it will provide some protection from the elements. So far, it has not, but it’s all I can do until my situation changes.
Even though I’m certain I’m locked in a cell with no chance of escape, they have kept my arms tied behind my back, and my blindfold still in place. Considering I’ve seen their faces, I can only assume they keep my eyes hidden to keep me afraid, and it is working because I am terrified. When they first placed me in the cell, I tried to free my hands from the ropes. I worked them until my skin felt raw and I could feel the blood pooling behind them, but they haven’t moved. Whoever tied them did a good job with the knots. I tried to escape, believe me, I haven’t been a passive abductee, sitting quietly on my bed, waiting. I’ve screamed, shouted, cried, pleaded—done all the things expected. They let me, for a while. Then they came back into the room, hit me, hurt me, and threatened to rape and kill me if I didn’t shut up.
I should have fought more, but I was scared, so I shut up. I’m also in so much pain, the thought of being hit again is enough to silence me. Besides, I need my energy because if I’m going to escape, I’m only getting one shot at it, and I will take it.
That was the plan hours ago.
Now, I’m too cold, too exhausted to try anything.
For a while, the terror sitting in my gut gnawed at me like a constant ache, but it’s settled to a dull pain now that I’m mostly able to ignore—unless the door opens. Then it returns with full fury.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here for, or if anyone knows I’m missing yet, but I’ve been brought nothing except water some time ago. I didn’t drink it. I was scared to, in case it was laced with something. One of them held my face and tried to force it into my mouth, but it spilt down me, soaking my top. They seemed to find this funny, but this was a new form of torture. The cold of the water added a whole new level of pain.
If they’re going to kill me, I wish they’d just get it over with. I can’t stand the waiting, the not knowing. Lying here, trying to make myself as small as possible to stay warm, I think about Cami. Did she get out okay? As much as I want to believe she did, I doubt it. The last time I saw my best friend, she was being beaten by a bunch of thugs because of me. Because of my arrogance.
If I had moisture left in my body, I would cry at this, I don’t have the ability to make tears. Even my mouth is an arid desert. I should have talked to Josh, to Jem. They could have protected us. But God, I didn’t think Grant was serious. My stepfather plays the big man in town. How was I supposed to know he was actually not playing the big man for once? And these men he’s pissed off seem like bad news. I have no idea where I am, but this doesn’t seem like it was planned spare of the moment.
I need to think. I need to find a way to get myself out of this mess, because I’m not dying here.
No.
I just found good in my life.
Jem.
He’s an idiot, but he’s my idiot, and I haven’t even told him that. I haven’t even told him that I’m falling hard for him, and that I see a future for us—a future that involves him and me growing old together. I haven’t told him that as well as being an idiot, he’s a good man, a man that I’m head-over-heels in love with.
Yes, I’m in love with him.
I have no idea when it happened. Maybe from that first meeting five months ago in the hospital when I walked right into him and he tried to flirt with me. I bit his head off then and he still wasn’t deterred. Maybe it was when I thought the flat had been broken into and he refused to let me stay on my own. Maybe it was when he tried to kiss me in the lift that night and I ran off.
I don’t know what the turning point was. All I know is I don’t want to be without him.
I was so scared of upsetting Josh that I didn’t stop to look at what I had in front of me.
And Jem’s right.
Josh is going to have to get on board if he wants to be in my life, because Jem’s it for me. My world stills with him in it. Everything is chaotic without him. Jem slows things down. Things make sense when he’s around.
Trying to shift on the mattress brings a fresh wave of agony lancing through my back. I don’t know what they did to me, but I’m really hurting there. Every time I move something feels off, wrong. I try to keep still, but my body needs the movement to give reprieve to my aching shoulders.
The door latch squeals and I freeze. I didn’t even hear their approach this time. I need to be more vigilant. I need to be ready for them. I try to rouse myself, but outwardly make it look like I’m out of it. I want their guard down. I need to get out of here. I won’t die in some dank, dark, dingy hole.
“Hmm, rise and shine princess.”
Hands grab my bicep and I’m dragged up. The move from lying to sitting makes my stomach roil and I have to swallow hard to stop bile from spilling out of my mouth. I’m really dizzy and my head is splitting. The blindfold covering my eyes is tugged down and I wince against the dull light filling the room.
“Time to eat.” The voice belongs to the guy called Perkins, the one who slammed my head into the front door—the arsehole responsible for my blinding headache.
He’s not a bad looking guy, tall with dirty blond hair and a hint of a tan. He doesn’t look like a thug, even with the scar running down the side of his neck.
“I’m not hungry,” I deny, even as my stomach growls.
I glance down at the sandwich on the plate on the edge of the mattress. It looks edible, not tampered with. Not mouldy. Not gross. I’m still not eating it. I have no idea how long I’ve been here for, but the gnaw of hunger in my belly is getting hard to ignore, even through the churn of nausea.
“Eat it.”
“How can I eat? I’m trussed up like a bloody turkey.” I shouldn’t snark at him, but I can’t help myself.
Perkins scowls. “You’re a fucking pain in the arse.”
He holds the sandwich out to me, so I can bite it. I don’t. He throws it back on the plate. “Suit yourself. You can just starve.”
I watch as he gets up, grabbing the plate.
“Wait, why am I here?”
“You don’t know?”
I shake my head.
“Your dad pissed off my boss. My boss doesn’t take too kindly to that.”
He must be talking about Grant, since I’ve never met
Curtis. I don’t correct him on the fact that Grant isn’t my father. What would be the point?
“And who exactly is your boss?”
I don’t expect him to tell me, but he surprises me by saying, “Trevor Merrick.”
My blood runs cold. I’ve heard of him. Christ, everyone in Manchester knows that name. He runs a gang out of the north-west part of the city. I know from reading the papers, there’s been a few clashes between him and the Devil’s Dogs—the motorcycle club that has a base in the city centre, not too far from where the loft is, actually.
“Well, I’m sorry Grant annoyed him. He has a habit of being fairly annoying full stop, but if you’d bothered to do your research, you’d realise that he and I aren’t even talking.”
He stares at me a beat. “You better hope that ain’t the case, darlin’, because the only hope you’ve got of getting out of this shit in one piece is if your daddy plays the game.”
He heads for the door and slams it shut behind him. I jolt at the sound. Bugger. Bollocks.
I want to cry, but I don’t let the tears fall. I need to be strong. I need to find a way out of this. Perkins made a mistake. He left the blindfold off. And if he screwed that up, it’s only a matter of time before more mistakes are made. One of those mistakes might enable me to get out of here.
With my eyes unhindered, I take a moment to glance around my prison. It’s a small room. Dirty, damp, exactly what I expected it to look like. The walls are a dark green. I think at one point they were papered with a lighter peach colour, but it’s peeled off to reveal this horrible tone beneath. There’s a window, but it’s boarded up. At least I assume it’s a window. There are slits of light coming in around the edge of the wood board.
Sitting on the bed, I bring my bound hands under my bottom and feed my legs through, so my wrists are now tied in front and not behind. Then, carefully, I push up off the grubby mattress and cross the floor.
It’s some kind of concrete beneath my soles. It’s freezing, but I’m so numb I barely notice as I move over to the wooden board covering the window. With my fingers, I feel along the edge of it. It’s nailed down, as I expect, and it doesn’t move.
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