by M Dauphin
These fucking games Diaz is playing are getting old.
I’m ready to the put the man in his grave.
Z
“Everything set?” I stare into the screen, watching the two fuckers that have officially ruined my day, walk away from the house.
Mother fucking Tatum Savage and Edward Roe decided to grace Honduras with their presence today.
Apparently, I don’t have a good enough team working for me to keep all of my shit under wraps. I know I’ve been lax on following them these last few weeks, but seriously! The fact that they are here tell me they know exactly who has her and where she is.
The fact that they aren’t barging through those front doors and blowing this place to shreds tells me they have something else up their sleeve.
Well, boys. I’m one step ahead of you again.
“All is ready to roll. We have the car loaded. The girl is still in her room, unaware of the situation, but if you want I—”
“That’s enough. She’s not to know anything. Get in the car. I’ll grab her and we’ll leave. The minute we get twenty or so feet away from the house you hit the button. We want no trail left.” And I want him to sweat, thinking that wife of his is dead.
“Yes, sir,” Nathanial nods, leaving the room as quickly as he came.
This place will be a pile of burning coals by the time the sun rises, and those two boys outside will no longer have any leads on where I’m keeping his wife.
I just have to take more drastic measures now to keep it that way.
Gwynn
“What the hell was that?!” I shriek, out of breath and scared. He fucking blew the house up! Right after we got out of the goddamned garage! “Zeke, what the hell is going on?!”
“Silence,” he growls, hands tight on the steering wheel. It’s just us in the car. I have no fucking clue where the rest of the men are but I can say in all positivity I hope they blew up with the goddamned house.
A fucking explosion.
“Did you do that?” I growl, pointing back in the direction of the house.
The direction of the phone.
FUCK! The only way I had to get in touch with the outside world, my only chance, is fucking gone.
“I said silence!” Zeke bellows, slamming his fist on the steering wheel.
I huff and turn in my seat, the scenery dark and boring as we fly past the city we were just in. I fucking hate this man. I mean, I hated him before tonight, but this just solidified my fucking hate for him. Who just blows a fucking house up?!
“You’re fighting tomorrow night, you may want to get some rest,” he growls, hitting the accelerator.
“I can’t fight! I can barely move without pain right now and you just blew up the only place I was comfortable sleeping!”
He turns his head and narrows his eyes at me… without his eyes on the road at this speed I’m surprised we aren’t flying into a tree but he has more control over this car than any other driver we’ve been with since we’ve been here.
“You’re going to want to stop talking to me like that, Gwynn.” His voice is an eerie type of collected. Like… he’s too calm for this.
“Tell me what’s going on, Zeke,” I demand. “I’m not fighting for you until you fill me the fuck in.”
He chuckles, shaking his head.
“There’s so much you don’t know, Gwynn. There’s so much you will never know. All you need to do is fight. Fight and win. That’s it.”
I roll my eyes at him and curl into the seat, resigning to the fact that he’s not telling me shit tonight. I feel like being ripped out of bed, wearing only the sleep shorts and tank top he left for me, and being thrown into a car just before the building I was just in blows up, is good enough of a reason to tell me what the hell is going on.
Good God this man is so fucking hot and cold. One minute he’s defending me against his father and the next he looks like he could feed me to the wolves and it wouldn’t matter.
I curl up in the seat and try my hardest to drift off to sleep. If I could just get back to a better place… a happier one.
***
“Red!” Eddie’s voice carries down the stairs as I’m trying to set up the entertainment system in the basement. If he’s going to be addicted to his video game, I need somewhere to watch whatever I want to.
“Yea, babe?” I holler up, trying to figure out if the piece I’m holding is a ‘C’ or an ‘O’.
Damn cheap Ikea furniture.
“She’s walking!” he screams, and I immediately drop everything and run up the steps, taking them two at a time.
“She did?!” I smile at him as we stand on opposite sides of the room with Angel in the middle. Just over a year old and she’s already got her own little personality. She’s currently standing at the small side table we have next to the couch, grinning back at me, her chunky thighs poking out from under her cloth diaper.
“She fucking walked, babe. She took two steps, no hands, across the damn room.” He shakes his head and smiles.
“Shit,” I huff. “I fucking miss everything.” I plop on the floor and smile at her. “Come on, Angel… walk to Mommy!” I hold my arms open towards her and smile at her as she stands and stares at me.
Stubborn. Just like her father.
“Walk to Mommy, Angel,” Eddie is trying to help but it only distracts her.
“Come on, baby girl.” I wiggle my fingers at her and she hesitantly drops her hand from the table and looks down at her feet before moving one pudgy foot, and then the other.
“Eddie, you better be getting this on video,” I whisper, trying not to break Angel’s concentration.
“You better believe I am.”
She makes it to me in five steps and I wrap her in my arms and can’t stop smiling.
“Mommy’s so proud of you, big girl,” I tell her over and over again. “So proud.”
***
“He was there,” I hear Zeke growl from the darkness of the moving car. We’re still driving, and I have no clue how long I was out but I know we have to be far away from where we left. Refusing to open my eyes from my rest, not willing to accept that it was just a dream and I’m not home with my babies, I sit here frozen, listening to his words.
“Right, but why the fuck aren’t we a step ahead?!” he bellows into the phone and I try to keep my breathing calm as I listen to a conversation he thinks I can’t hear.
Who was there?
“That fucking Savage has his claws all over this damn world and you know it. How the hell did you not think to keep tabs on them? Mother fucking idiot!”
Savage? Tatum’s here?
If Tatum’s here, that means… that means Eddie’s here! And if Eddie’s here, in this country, that means there’s more of a chance that he’ll be the next one this fucking psycho blows up!
“I don’t care what you have to do, I need you to end them. Fast. Those assholes probably already have Mac, I haven’t heard from him in a week and Jase is going on about three days no contact. Find the house he’s using this time, kill the men he has working for him on the spot, and leave the little punk to me,” Zeke growls. I smile to myself gently at his words.
There’s no fucking way in hell Tatum would let his men be caught. Not when there’s so much on the line.
I take a breath and squeeze my eyes closed, trying not to react to his words.
Not until I feel his hand on my thigh.
“Don’t worry, I have the girl. She’ll be just fine with me,” he croons into the phone, his fingers slowly rubbing up my thigh. I shift, hoping that it would startle him and make him pull his hand away, but that’s not the case. The effect my waking up has on him is vomit-inducing.
He grins at me.
He fucking grins at me, then his hand slides up my leg, touching the hem of my tiny fucking shorts.
I could close my eyes, pretend he’s Eddie, and be done with it. Sounds like an easy way out, right?
No.
No, he’s not going to fuc
king do this to me.
I smile back at him, and lay my head back on the headrest, silently ‘accepting’ what he wants to do.
And when he slides his fingers under the hem of my shorts and makes a beeline to my pussy, I grab his wrist, pulling his hand away and snapping it backwards in the most painful of ways.
He wails, trying to pull it back, but that just makes me twist it even more. He may be bigger than me, but I’m smarter and stronger when it comes down to it.
“What the fuck?!” He slams on the breaks, wailing.
“You don’t get to touch me like that. Ever,” I growl, giving his hand one more tug backwards, making sure I hear the ‘pop’ of the joint, and shove it back at him.
With the car stopped, I open the door and get out.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?!” he wails, half in pain. Well, probably fully in pain and fully flipping the fuck out that his ‘possession’ is walking away from him in the middle of a dark field.
“Fuck you, Zeke,” I growl, picking up my pace.
This is the most free I’ve been since they took me and I’m not about to go back there. I’m shoeless, and not wearing much of anything, but the pain in my feet means nothing if it means I get to be free.
Free.
Fuck yes!
“You’re… FUCK! You’re going to regret this, Gwynn!” Zeke screams after me. I’m not sure if he’s following me or not. The only thing I know is I’m out of his grasp and there’s no way he can find me now.
I keep running, thankful I was in the middle of training when I was taken and had already built up a pretty decent endurance, and when I start to get winded I slow to a steady jog. I can’t tell how long I’ve been running, but I can’t stop yet.
With the sun rising over the horizon, I’m ready to call it quits, but something tells me not to give up quite yet. There has to be something around here that I can use for shelter just to stop and rest.
With sore feet, tired, heavy eyes, and a heat starting to take over this land like none other, I finally see a house in the distance.
I don’t know where I am other than it looks like I’m starting to come into a town. For the longest time it’s been dirt roads and no people in sight. Not that I minded that, no people means no bad people.
It also means no good people, running water, or any of the amenities I’ve grown used to having.
I try to walk around the house first, just to see if there’s any signs of life in it, and notice a light on inside. As far as I can tell there aren’t any gangs of men around like there were in the street last night. There is no fancy car in the driveway, so hopefully this won’t be a house that Zeke owns, but who the hell knows?
I take a breath, and slowly start to walk towards the house.
One knock.
Nothing.
Two knocks.
Nothing again.
Well then… I wonder how good I am at breaking into houses?
Walking around the house, slowly pushing on every window and rapping on the panels, I’ve decided the only way in is a small glass panel window that leads to the basement. I figure by now there’s no one in the house, or else I’d have been found out already. Pulling off my shirt and wrapping it around my hand, I take a swing at the glass as hard as I can and shatter it in one blow. After cleaning up around the edges so as not to cut myself, I reach around and find the lock, unlocking it and sliding it to the side. The opening is tiny, but I think I can squeeze through.
I have to. I can’t let him find me.
After taking forever to find my footing, I slide into the dark room and the minute my feet hit the cold floor I sigh a sigh of relief. It’s musty down here with a faint light coming down the stairs. The sun is starting to warm the part of the floor where it’s seeping in through the window, but the rest of the basement is cool. There’s not much as far as ‘home touches’ going on down here either. Like whoever lives here doesn’t come down that often. Slowly and painfully I climb the stairs and listen for any noise above me before I open the door.
When I do, light comes pouring into the basement. The massive window in front of me is enough to brighten the entire room. The room is old-fashioned and doesn’t look like it’s been updated since the seventies. There’s a fucking lava lamp in the corner, a brown floral couch against the far wall, and dusty bookshelves lining the opposite wall. The hardwood floors creak under my feet as I take in the first level of this house. There’s no one here. Absolutely no human.
Whose car is in the driveway then? That’s a relatively new-looking car but the dust on everything in this house tells me there hasn’t been anyone living here in quite some time.
What the hell is going on?
Once I’ve double-checked the entire level is clear and there’s no upper level I need to check, I go straight to searching for a phone. It’s a stretch but I have to try. If I can get to a phone I can call Eddie and everything will be fine again. I can go home, get away from Zeke, and be with my babies again.
Being here with a man that pretty and powerful is doing things to me I don’t like.
Not at all. It’s making me fucking weak.
Living rooms typically house at least one landline, for those families that still have them, but this one has nothing.
I’m not losing hope, though.
When I walk into the kitchen I see it. An older-style corded phone, sitting on the counter near the refrigerator. I run to it and pick it up with shaky hands, only to be met with silence on the other end. No fucking connection.
“FUCK!” I throw the phone across the counter and let it fall to the floor, shattering to pieces.
I stand there, staring at this empty house, and start to realize just how tired I am. Looking around, I grab a knife from the drawer and move to every window and door I can find, locking them behind me before I move to the next.
Once I’m locked in and the knife is safe at my side, I slowly lay down on the couch, allowing all the tense muscles in my body to relax. Even relaxed they hurt, but at least now I am safe and able to sleep.
***
The insistent banging on the front door wakes me up from my sleep. I jolt up, grasping the knife a little too hard and in my sleepy state don’t realize until the blood starts pouring from my hand that I grabbed the blade and not the handle.
Shit.
The banging starts again.
“Open the fucking door, Gwynn! I’d hate to have to break into my own goddamned property!” Zeke’s voice booms through the closed wooden door.
My heart drops and I grip the handle of the knife, hard.
His. Fucking. House?
I freeze on the couch and look around the room, trying to find a way to hide for when he breaks in.
There’s no fucking way in hell I’m letting him in here.
Maybe if I can get to the basement without him hearing me I can slide out the window and get away without anyone seeing.
I stand, and the minute I make it halfway across the living room, the floor creaks, making him pound on the door again.
“Fuck, Gwynn open the door!” The handle jiggles and I break out into a run towards the basement door. Before I make it, though, I hear the front door come crashing down and I scream, turning on him and pointing the knife at the man in black standing in the doorway.
Zeke.
His arm is wrapped and in a sling from what I did to him earlier and his other hand is tightly gripping a revolver, pointed straight at me.
“You’re going to be the death of me, missy,” he growls, wiggling his gun at me.
“Don’t come any closer,” I whisper, feeling weak as the pain in my ribs from last night shoots through my body.
Shit I think it might actually be broken.
Zeke chuckles then smiles at me, the bright white contrast of his teeth against his tanned skin, too pretty for its own good.
Fuck!
“I hate you,” I hiss.
“You want to hate me, but you don’t.
I see it in the way you look at me, Gwynn. Unfortunately, now I have to do something I’m not looking forward to.” He nods and out of nowhere come two men, walking around him.
I stick my knife out, waving it at them, and when one approaches me I swipe it at him, just nicking his skin. He groans and hits me, sending me stumbling back but I’m not giving up my fight. That is, not until I’m backed against a wall with a gun to my head and a seething Zeke in my face. His eyes lock with mine, his breath on my cheek hot, and he grins.
“I’ve always wanted to be this close to you, Gwynn.” He brings his free hand up to my cheek and caresses his fingers down it, resting his palm on my throat and wrapping his fingers around. I can feel his hard length pressing against my torso and want to vomit. He’s fucking turned on by this shit!
“Fuck you,” I spit at him.
He backs up and wipes his face, his men taking a hold of my wrists and forcing me to drop my knife.
I’m sore. I’m tired. I hurt.
I can’t even hide from him correctly. Jesus, I ran to the man’s fucking house!
I’m almost broken.
But not yet. I still have a little fight left in me. I just have to be smart about it.
“How did you find me?” I whisper, staring at him as he paces the room like a caged lion.
“You set the fucking alarm off, Gwynn. You think a man like me doesn’t have property everywhere? I own this fucking city, Gwynn!” he boasts. “There’s not a piece of property within a fifty-mile radius here that I don’t have ties to!”
My stomach drops as I realize how naïve I’ve been.
“Exactly. I saw the look on your face. You know what you did… you fucking ran away from me. You ran, when I was giving you everything you needed. Now?” He chuckles. “Now you’re going to pay. Fucking bitch.” He spits at me and walks out of the house. “Load her up boys. This time let’s make sure she doesn’t get out.”
I put up as much of a fight as I can, but it’s useless when pit against two men this size. They tie my arms together at my elbows behind my back then shove me into the car. It hurts, having to sit like this, but when they zip-tie my ankles together the pain increases to something I’ve never experienced. I groan and try to adjust, then turn in my seat just as Zeke slips into the back seat.