Bleeding Hearts: A Dark Captive Romance (Heartbreaker Book 1)

by Stella Hart

  But he did exactly that. He took me.

  I let out another moan as the thoughts processed in my mind. I had to take an intro psych class once as part of my criminology major, and I remembered learning about something called the Halo effect. It was a cognitive bias which involved people naturally tending to assume that if someone was well-groomed and attractive, then they must be a good person. We all knew that wasn’t true, but at the same time, we couldn’t stop our subconscious minds from immediately jumping to these assumptions.

  My body was suddenly racked with a bone-chilling fear. This man, stunning as he was, could get any woman he wanted for a date. There must be something else he wanted that he couldn’t get from simple wining and dining. Something terrible. Something predatory. My mind immediately filled with images of my body tied to a tree, being used as target practice. Sliced up and wrapped in plastic. Stuffed in an acid bath.

  The man smiled at me. No, not a smile—it was superior, confident, smug. A cruel smirk. “You’re being very loud,” he said softly. “But there’s no one out here. You’re wasting your energy.”

  When I heard his voice, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu swept over me. I’d seen this man before, heard his voice before… but where? My mind was too woozy from the drugs to pick through every memory to recall exactly where I’d encountered him. I shook my head and moaned, trying to speak through the tape. “Plllssh….”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Please?”

  I nodded frantically. Surely this was all some sort of misunderstanding. He could be a government agent, and he’d been sent to apprehend a dangerous terrorist target. He’d somehow confused that person with me, and I’d been taken as a mistake.

  Yes, it was all a terrible mistake, and he was going to let me go. He had to.

  Please, please, please.

  The man smiled again. “You’re stronger than I thought. You need more of this than I calculated.”

  He reached into his black jacket pocket, pulling out a hypodermic needle. I screamed internally, and my eyes bulged as despair crashed down on me. The beautiful stranger leaned down and stuck the needle in my neck again. “Happy birthday, Celeste,” he whispered.

  My whole body went numb and weak, and I vaguely wondered about my captor again. Where the hell had I seen him before? Oh… maybe… maybe it was….

  Then the drugs took effect again and washed me away on a wave of cold, dazed denial.

  9

  Celeste

  I was awake again.

  This time I was unbound and on a bed. Well, a cot, more like it. It was a narrow metal frame covered in a thin mattress with a scratchy blanket.

  My head pounding and my shoulders burning with agony, I sat up and glanced around through heavy eyes. I was in some sort of room. Cell would probably be a better description, though—everything was gray. The floors, the ceiling, the brick walls, even the uncomfortable cot.

  All gray. All depressing.

  There was an old light hanging overhead, and though it was dim, it made my head ache. Wincing, I rubbed my temples and got up. My legs were wobbly, my body still feeling the after-effects of the drug my captor gave me. Animal tranquilizer, no doubt.

  The unwanted taste of fear scratched at my throat as I glanced over to the left side of the room to see a set of bars. Yes, this was definitely a cell. I hadn’t noticed this before either—my mind was so damn hazy—but there was a tray on my side of the bars. I stepped over to it and crouched down. It held a plastic cup of water, a small bowl of what appeared to be muesli, four Lyrica capsules still sealed in their silver packet, and a note with instructions.

  Take your painkillers

  Eat

  Do your exercises

  Drink

  I frowned as I read the note, then dropped it like it was on fire. What the fuck was going on? How the hell did this guy know what medication I was on, and how did he know I had PT exercises to complete every day? Why the hell did he even care? Was it all part of some messed up psychopath’s game where he made me think he cared about me somewhat, only to strip away that small ounce of hope when he raped and murdered me? I suppose that could be amusing to a fucked up person, whoever the hell he was.

  My mind flashed back to all the times I thought I felt someone watching me when I went about my daily business. I used to think I was paranoid, the hairs on the back of my neck rising for no reason, but now I realized my instincts may have been right all along. Someone had watched me. Someone had decided to take me. That same someone had seen me take my medication, seen me go to my appointments.

  I tried to remember where I’d seen my captor before to no avail. I still felt too woozy to recall anything.

  I looked up at the bars again. There was a door—locked, obviously—and beyond that and the rest of the bars, there was a narrow passage running between my room and another smaller cell on the other side, directly across from me. The passage must be the way in and out of this prison, and the door had to be on my left, because when I craned my neck to look, I could see steps leading up to darkness on that side. On the right, there was nothing but a wall at the end of the passage.

  “Hey! Hey!” I called out, my voice echoing in the small enclosures.

  No response.

  “What do you want from me?” I shouted again, pounding my hands on the bars. “Did you seriously bring me here to make me fucking exercise?”

  Nothing.

  I kept going anyway. I screamed and shouted till my voice was hoarse and my throat was dry and sore.

  No one came.

  I finally gave up on that and looked around again. Across from the cot, there was some sort of grated drain with a plastic packet of wet wipes sitting nearby. I guess that was where I was supposed to go to the bathroom. No enclosure, no flush, just a hole in the floor.

  Swallowing hard at the thought of someone seeing me do something so private, I began to hunt around to see if there were any cameras. It made sense that a psychopathic captor might install little surveillance devices to watch me and analyze my behavior and activities. Also, to make sure I didn’t try to escape. But there were none. I was all alone in here, left to my own devices.

  Somehow it would be better if there were cameras watching me. At least then I could amuse myself by trying to piss off my captor. Pull the finger at the camera. Scream abuse at him. Moon him. Small acts of rebellion to make him see I wasn’t going to give up without a fight. But there was nothing. Now that he had me, he wasn’t watching me anymore. He’d thrown me in the cell and left me alone.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in here. There were no windows for me to see what time of day it was, and considering how he gave me a seemingly larger dose of the drug the second time he jabbed me with that needle, any amount of time could’ve passed. It could’ve been two hours or two days. There was no way to tell.

  I sat back on the bed, ignoring the food and water for now. Horrible thoughts crowded my brain as I imagined what might be done to me in this cell. No matter how much I tried to push them aside, I couldn’t. I was stuck here with no escape.

  Unless….

  Maybe this was a test. A game. Maybe there was some secret way out of this place, and I was supposed to find it. I leapt to my feet and began to search everywhere in the room again, tapping on the walls and every part of the floor for anything that sounded different to the rest. Under the bed, behind the grate… everywhere.

  With a defeated sigh, I sat back down after going over the cell at least fifteen times. There was nothing. The place was an inescapable fortress. It was also strangely warm, considering the recent weather.

  A chilling thought suddenly occurred to me. I must be underground. There was some sort of vent on the low ceiling, but it seemed to just be for air, because I didn’t feel any heat blowing out of it, and there was no other type of heating system around. It was always slightly warmer underground, as far as I knew. Also, it echoed loudly when I yelled before, just like it did when I visited a set of underg
round caves years ago on a school field trip.

  At the realization that I might be underground, the full weight of my situation came crashing down on me, making me feel as if the very walls of this cell were caving in. I was trapped so far away from other people that no one would ever hear me, no matter how loud I screamed. No one but my captor, who didn’t seem to care.

  Curling up on the bed and trying to ignore the aching in my back, I tried to think why this man had taken me. Out of everyone else in the world, why me? Was there something in particular about me which screamed ‘victim’? It wasn’t like I was snatched off the streets at random by some thug. No, this man, this insane individual, had targeted me. Stalked me.

  Chosen me.

  I kept rewinding my actions over the last few weeks, picking them apart as I tried to think of what I could’ve done differently. All the things I could’ve done to avoid this. I kept thinking about my parents’ backyard, and how I’d let my guard down out there. I thought that far out of the city would be safe enough for me to do so, but obviously it wasn’t.

  My fault.

  I quickly dismissed the thought. It didn’t do me any good to think like that. My captor chose me, and that meant he would’ve gotten me either way. I couldn’t always be on high alert, and even if I had been out at my parents’ property, there would’ve been another unguarded moment on another occasion. He would’ve taken me eventually.

  I stayed on the bed, thinking and thinking. Questions rushed at me in a relentless torrent. How long did my captor stalk me? Weeks, months… years? Did he get into my house, go through my things? Did he ever call me, then hang up, just to hear my voice and get some sort of thrill?

  And again, why me?

  I could feel the minutes ticking by, slowly, so slowly. Even though I wasn’t looking forward to my captor’s arrival—whenever that would be—part of me wanted him to show up, just so something happened. It was so boring sitting down here with no stimulation whatsoever. No books, no TV, no music. Nothing but my own mind to keep me occupied.

  After what could’ve been two hours or ten hours, I finally stood again. I took the painkillers, then got down on the hard gray floor and did my PT floor exercises. I did them for something to do, not because the note said to do it. Then I ate the bland muesli, because I was hungry, not because the note said to eat it. I would never do what this psychopath ordered me to, no matter who he was.

  After drinking the stale water, I needed to pee. With my cheeks flaming, I pulled my pants down and crouched over the grate to do my business. Even though I knew no one was watching me, it made me cringe anyway. It was embarrassing, dehumanizing, being forced to go to the bathroom like this. Like I was nothing but an animal.

  My mind flashed back to one of my criminology lectures, when we had to learn about how abductors broke their prisoners. The first steps involved seizing the victim and isolating them as soon as possible. Follow that with degradation and humiliation in a cell-like environment, which magnified the victim’s sense of vulnerability.

  That’s what my captor was doing to me. Breaking me. He’d done all the above, or at least the beginnings of it, and he was making me dependent on him for survival at the same time. He was the one who could bring me food, water and painkillers, after all. As sick as it was, I needed him now that I was here, or I would die. Although I might die anyway. I still had no idea why I was here.

  For all I knew, I could be killed tomorrow.

  I curled up on the bed again, my eyelids growing heavy and my limbs turning weak and jelly-like. I probably still had some of the drugs in my system. Closing my eyes, I continued to think about that past lecture, and how the professor had moved on to Stockholm syndrome in hostage situations. Some victims of these situations would begin to feel positively for their captors and even later defend them.

  It was a coping mechanism and a survival technique. Even if you knew it was coming, you couldn’t stop it, no matter how much you tried. Your brain could, and would, betray you. You’d even think it was your decision. In a way—a really fucked up way—it would be. It was your own brain making the decision, after all, in an attempt to save you from harm.

  A choked sob escaped my mouth. I didn’t want to feel anything for my captor other than hatred for what he’d done to me.

  With these thoughts still swirling around my mind, I settled back into sleep on the cot, too tired to keep my eyes open any longer. With any luck, I would wake up in my own bed tomorrow, and the man, the hard underground room, and all the shades of dull gray would be nothing more than a terrible nightmare.

  10

  Celeste

  I was in that opulent hallway again, standing in front of the double doors. My breath hitched in my chest as I wondered what lay beyond them. The hall and the doors were so clear, so vivid, yet I had no idea what happened behind it all. All I knew for sure was that I’d been here many times. Still, the other side remained blurry. Out of reach.

  Hands belonging to an unseen person touched the handles, drawing open the doors ever so slowly. Just before I could view the room beyond, everything turned black and I jerked awake.

  For a second, in that semi-coherent state of awakening, I thought I was at home, warm and cozy in my bed. Then the dreamy haze cleared into cold hard reality as I felt the itch of the cot blanket’s texture and the fire between my shoulder blades as the usual nerve discomfort set in, more agonizing than ever. The doctors told me stress made my pain worse by increasing the sensitivity of nerves, and they weren’t wrong.

  It was impossible not to be stressed, though. I’d been trapped in this dank, gray cell for six days now. At least that’s what I had to assume from the number of times I’d woken to more food, water and pills with the same note of instructions.

  I was dirty, tired, and close to giving up. On the second day, I’d used my right index fingernail to scratch a mark in a brick on the wall on the far side of the room. It took a while to do, and it was barely visible, but I wanted to keep track of the days if possible. I did it the day after as well, but then when I woke up the next day—if it even was the next day, I was fast losing track of time—the marks were gone. Carefully buffed out of the wall. I knew why, too. My captor wanted me to have no sense of time, wanted me to start losing my mind.

  I seriously felt like I was starting to do just that.

  I wondered, for what was probably the millionth time since I got here, how many people had noticed my disappearance, and if any of my friends or the police were looking for me. Samara and all my other friends would’ve noticed and filed a report within days of noticing I was gone. My neighbor would’ve noticed I was gone as well, along with my work bosses and everyone at the FBI field office where I did my internship. Surely working with the damn feds would work in my favor. My face could be plastered all over the news and internet, and someone could come crashing in here any day now, coming to my rescue after following whatever trail my captor might’ve left.

  If he left any at all….

  I sighed dejectedly, rolled over, and sat up. My body felt weak, my limbs like noodles. I yawned, looking over to see if any more water had been delivered.

  Tensing sharply, I realized I wasn’t alone in my cell anymore.

  My shadowy captor was standing by the door. He was clad in dark jeans and a black shirt, still handsome enough to make my insides clench. Next to him was a bucket, a sponge and a large bag. I couldn’t see what was in the bag, and I didn’t want to know. I could only morbidly assume the bucket and sponge was there to clean up my blood after he was done murdering me.

  “Hello, Celeste.” He smiled at me. It was a gorgeous smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Typical sociopath’s grin.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said, my voice more high-pitched than I hoped it would be. “Why am I here?”

  He didn’t answer and began to approach me with heavy footsteps. Slowly. Deliberately. I skittered back on the bed. He grabbed me by the legs and dragged me to the end before picking me up and
taking me off the bed entirely.

  “Get away from me, asshole!” I screamed. “Put me the fuck down!”

  I desperately pounded on his back with my fists, but he was too big and muscular to beat. It was like a kitten fighting off a lion. I gave up fast, realizing the futility of my attempt.

  He set me down on the floor, then pulled out a glinting knife from his pocket.

  Oh, shit….

  I trembled and closed my eyes, mentally saying a prayer as my breathing turned harsh and shallow. I’d never been religious, but now seemed like the right time to beg the higher powers—if they existed—to have mercy on me and not let this man slice me open.

  “Stay still.” He sliced my clothes off expertly, shredding them into ribbons. I wondered why he wouldn’t just take them off, but he answered my question only seconds later without me even having to ask. “These are your old things. You won’t wear them again.”

  He tossed the scraps of my old jacket, top, jeans and underwear aside, and I shivered and kept my eyes on the floor. I’d never felt so exposed, so vulnerable. No one else had ever seen me naked, aside from when I was a tiny kid and my parents bathed me, and the thought that it was happening for the first time with a man like this made me want to cry. But I was too frozen with fear to let any tears fall or speak any words of resistance.

  The man tilted my chin up. “Good girl. Keep still.”

  He suddenly lowered his face and pressed his lips to my forehead, planting a kiss there. It was so unexpected that I didn’t have time to realize it was happening before it was over. All I registered during the peck was how good he smelled, how soft his lips were. An unwanted wave of desire washed over me and I let out an involuntary gasp, even though my brain was sounding alarm bells, warning me that this could be the first stage of being raped.