“I didn’t and the others didn’t mention anything about doing so.”
“The driver of a black limo is here, and he says that he was instructed to pick me up.”
“It wasn’t me, babe.”
“Who sent you?”
Pause.
“No. Stop. Let go of me.”
“Lorna. What’s happening?”
No reply.
“Take your hands off of me!”
“Lorna?”
No answer. Only the sound of a struggle and then screams.
“Lorna… Lorna!”
No reply from Lorna, only unmistakable female screams, and there’s zero thought process happening in my brain. I’m operating purely upon a lifetime of Fellowship training, perfected by an innate instinct to protect the woman that I love.
In a fraction of a second, I’m out of my office chair and on my feet, sprinting toward Sin, Jamie, Mitch, and Kieran. Adrenaline surges through my veins, speeding up everything, including my perception of time. It feels like time is moving in rapid speed and I can’t get to my brothers quick enough.
“Something is happening to the wives. I don’t know what.”
“Slow down. What are you talking about?” Sin says.
“I was speaking to Lorna, and someone got out of a limo and approached her. And then she stopped talking to me. I think someone was trying to take her.”
Within the next two seconds, Sin’s phone rings. But not mine.
Fuck. That can’t be good.
Slow down.
They didn’t say what they wanted?
You don’t have any idea who took her?
How long ago?
Which direction did they go?
Sterling is following them?
The one-sided conversation that I’m hearing between Sin and Bleu confirms exactly what I don’t want to hear: Lorna has been taken.
“The women were waiting outside of the restaurant for Sterling and a limo pulled up, parking at the curb. Two men got out and pulled Lorna into the back of the car. Bleu said that they were entirely focused on her and didn’t show any interest in the other wives.”
“Why Lorna?”
“I don’t know but Bleu said that Sterling was a few cars behind the limo. She believes that he must have seen what happened because he didn’t stop for the women. He drove past them.”
“Call Sterling. Now.”
Chapter 14
Lorna Frazier
“Is this her?”
A light shines on my face, and I realize that the man who just dragged me into this car is FaceTiming with someone. “Is this his whore?”
“That’s her,” a woman replies.
I’m forced to kneel in the back of the limo. My face is pushed into the seat by a tight grip on the back of my neck while my hands are being tied behind my back.
“Who are you? What do you want?” My voice is muffled because my face is being squished against the leather seat.
“Don’t recognize me, huh, bitch?”
I’m obviously not dealing with the brightest kidnapper. “It’s hard to know if you remember someone or not when you can’t see his face.”
The grip on the back of my neck tightens, and it’s used to yank me upward. I fall onto my back, but my bound hands behind me take the brunt of my fall. A bearded man leans over me, his face only inches from mine. “Take a good look. Remember me now?”
He’s familiar. Or at least I think he is, but I can’t be certain. “I feel like I’ve seen you before.”
“You have. Keep thinking about it. Maybe it’ll come to you.”
I can’t place who he is, but given the current situation, I believe it’s reasonable to assume that any prior encounters between us weren’t good.
“What is your name?”
“Gordon Acheson.”
“Are you from The Order?” I’ve never been more terrified in my life, but my voice somehow manages to come out steady.
“Aye.”
“The Fellowship and The Order have an alliance. You can’t do this.”
“I never agreed to an alliance with The Fellowship.”
“Maybe not but your leaders did.”
He points his finger at my face. “I’ll never make nice with the bastard who killed my brothers.”
“Who killed your brothers?”
“The man you were planning to marry tomorrow.” Past tense.
“You’re mistaken. My fiancé is a bartender, not a foot soldier.”
“He’s a bartender who killed my brothers.”
I study the man’s face and it slowly comes back to me. “You came into the bar and tried to kidnap me and another barmaid.”
“It’s all coming back to you, aye?”
Despite having been trained by Bleu for a situation like this, my entire body is trembling. A metallic taste washes over my tongue, and I realize that I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood.
No amount of training really prepares you for something like this.
“What did you think would happen when you came into Fellowship territory and tried to take two of their women?” That’s straight up asking to be killed.
“Doesn’t matter what I thought. Your almost-husband is going to be sorry that he killed my brothers when I’m finished with you.”
This man means to hurt me in order to hurt Leith.
Order men rape, mutilate, kill.
Which one does he have planned for me? Perhaps all three?
I need to make him nervous. Reconsider what he’s done before this goes too far. “Do you know who Leith is with tonight?”
“No, and I don’t give a fuck.”
“Sinclair Breckenridge. Mitch Breckenridge. Jamie Breckenridge. And Kieran Hendry. Four brothers total. Two leaders, one from The Fellowship and one from The Order. Your leader. I was with their wives when you took me. What do you think that those four brothers are doing right now?”
He stares at me, perhaps surprised to learn what kind of company Leith is keeping tonight.
“You didn’t plan for that, did you?”
The two men in the back seat with us tense, their grips on their weapons tightening.
“You look worried. Are you afraid of what will happen to you when they come for me? Because they will come.”
Gordon scoots to the edge of the seat and grasps my lower jaw. His narrowed eyes study me and I don’t so much as blink. I refuse to. My eyeballs will dry up and fall out of my head before I do.
“You have a big mouth, Miss Frazier.”
We play the stare-down game for a few moments before he slides back in his seat and laughs. “Breaking you is going to be so much fun.”
Breaking you is going to be so much fun.
The reality of my situation is sinking in, but I keep my poker face on display for my kidnappers. I won’t give them the satisfaction of seeing my fear.
This isn’t how tonight was supposed to go. I should be in the hotel suite drinking champagne with my friends and preparing for my wedding day. But instead, I’m scared and I’m pissed off.
My wedding. It isn’t going to happen tomorrow. Leith and I have waited to be together all of this time, and we still aren’t going to get to be husband and wife as planned.
“Of all nights, why did you choose tonight?”
“You’ll know the answer to that question soon enough,” Gordon says.
The limousine is speeding down the road, taking me farther away from safety. Farther away from my people. Farther away from Leith. We must be at least twenty miles outside of Edinburgh. How in the world will Leith be able to find me when he has no idea where we’re going?
I’m dragged out of the back seat as soon as the car stops, my hands still bound behind my back. I stumble and nearly face-plant after I’m shoved from behind. “Inside, whore. Now.”
These men have brought me to a charming little cottage in the country. It’s the kind of home that I would love to share with Leith one day. The perfect place for rais
ing our children in peace without the hustle and bustle of city life.
Once we’re inside the cottage, he leads me to a lonesome dining table chair in the middle of the front room. The bindings around my wrists are removed, and I wrap my hand around one, and then the other, massaging the already-chafed skin.
“Too tight?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I don’t have a chance to appreciate the return of circulation in my hands before my wrists are bound again, this time with zip ties around the arms of the dining chair.
“I’d be grateful if you’d leave enough slack for blood to flow to my hands this time.”
“Or enough slack to wiggle yourself free? Nice try but I don’t think so.”
I try to keep my legs together, but he pries them apart and uses zip ties to secure each of my ankles to the front legs of the chair. “Come on now, Miss Frazier. Don’t act like an innocent virgin who’s never spread her legs for a man. Unless that’s what you are—an innocent virgin.”
It’s better if they don’t believe me to be unsullied. I know what they like to do to the virtuous.
“I’m a claimed woman who is getting married tomorrow.”
Gordon chuckles. “Only half of that statement is true.”
I turn at the sound of a woman’s voice and my stomach flips. They’ve kidnapped Greer too.
And then my stomach does another flip when I realize that she isn’t bound to a chair, like me. She isn’t here as a prisoner.
“You’re helping them?”
“I’m helping them… they’re helping me? It’s sort of like which came first? The chicken or the egg?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m in love with Leith and I won’t let you have him.”
“Leith doesn’t love you. He loves me.”
“Maybe he does right now, but he’s going to need comforting after you’re gone. And I think that I’m just the lass for the job.”
He’s going to need comforting after you’re gone. Because I’m in the way of her being with Leith, and she’s going to have them kill me.
“How can you believe that this plan will ever work? Leith will hate you for being a part of this.”
“Do you think that I’m that daft? Leith will never know that I played any part in this. I’ve taken great care to ensure that.”
I look at Gordon. “What are you going to get out of this?”
“My brothers’ killer loses the woman that he loves… after he watches her being tortured.”
“Don’t call her that again, you dumb arse. I’m the woman that Leith loves. Not her.”
Greer comes to me and roughly takes off my engagement ring, placing it on her left ring finger. “This belongs to me now.”
“Leith placed that ring on my finger because he wants to marry me. Putting it on your own finger means nothing, and it’ll never belong to you.”
“Mrs. Greer Duncan.” She turns her hand around to display my ring on her finger. “Looks better on me, don’t you agree?”
“I can’t decide if you’re crazy or simply an evil bitch.”
“Who knows? Maybe I’m an equal mix of both.”
Gordon props a mobile on a stand and adjusts it so that it’s pointing at me. “Are you a screamer, Miss Frazier?”
“No.”
He laughs. “Don’t worry. You will be.”
“It’s showtime?” Greer asks.
“Aye.”
She comes to me and bends down so we’re face-to-face. “I want you to know that I don’t take pleasure in this part. The torture, I mean. It’s his condition for helping me.”
“Leith will never recover from seeing this done to me.” Whatever this is.
“It’ll take time but he will eventually. And I’m very patient.”
“If you truly loved him, you wouldn’t hurt him this way.”
Greer slaps my face. “Don’t talk to me about truly loving Leith. You have no idea how much I gave him because of the love I feel for him.”
Gordon stops adjusting the phone. “We’re ready.”
Greer steps away from me and stands behind the phone. “One mention of my name and this will become so much worse for you.”
The smile on Gordon’s face is heinous. “Time to see how much Leith Duncan suffers when he hears the screams of his almost-wife.”
Greer stomps her foot. “Uh, she is his whore. Not the woman that he loves. Not his almost-wife. I’m not going to tell you again to stop calling her by those kinds of names.”
I squirm in the chair, wiggling my wrists and ankles, but there’s little-to-no slack. The zip ties aren’t budging one single bit.
What am I going to do?
Think, think, think.
What would Bleu do in this situation?
Gordon checks the angle of the phone one last time, and then I hear the FaceTiming dialing sound. One ring. That’s all it takes for Leith to answer.
“Lorna.”
His handsome face fills the screen. “Leith.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“A cottage outside of town. I don’t know where.”
“Are you all right? Have you been hurt?”
“I’m fine… but probably not for much longer.”
“Who took you?”
“You remember when The Order members came into the bar and tried to take Greer and me? But one of them got away? It’s him. Gordon Acheson.”
Gordon steps behind me and places his hand on the top of my head, roughly stroking my hair.
“Remember me, Duncan?”
“I remember the two dead Order members a wee bit better.”
Shite, Leith. Don’t taunt him about them.
“They were my brothers and you killed them.”
“After the three of you broke into my bar after hours and tried to kidnap my barmaids. You knew the risk involved with a move like that. Their deaths were warranted by anyone’s standards.”
Gordon grips the top of my hair and jerks my head backward, gripping my jaw with his hand, and squeezing so hard that it feels like he’ll break my teeth off at the roots. “And so is hers.”
“All right, all right, Gordon. Let’s talk about this.”
“I’m not really a talker.”
“That’s okay; I can be the one to do the talking.”
“I’m not really a listener either.”
“You have me right where you want me. That’s what you’re after, yes?”
“Aye.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“To torture her while you watch.”
“What else do you want?”
“That’s it.”
“The thing about revenge is that it’s fleeting. Its intoxication is gone the second that the act of revenge is carried out. It’s like a high that lasts for a brief time—and it’s really good in the moment—but then it leaves as quickly as it came, and you’re left to deal with the consequences of your actions.”
Gordon’s grip on my hair lessens as he listens to Leith. “Do you really think that one second of high is worth what I’ll do to you if you harm Lorna?”
Greer is standing behind the phone, looking at Gordon, nodding her head up and down.
“The expression on your face tells me that you’ve not considered that part—the price you’ll have to pay if you so much as break one of her fingernails.”
“You can’t back out. We’ve come too far now,” Greer whispers.
There’s a slight lift in Leith’s brow. Did he hear Greer’s voice? Recognize it?
“After I capture you, I’ll take you to one of our warehouses where I’ll string you up with your head down and your feet up like an animal at a slaughterhouse. I’ll begin with the cat-o’-nine-tails on your bare back. It really doesn’t take as many lashes as one might think to open your skin and expose the meaty flesh beneath. You wouldn’t believe how fucking loud a man can scream when those open wounds are doused with surgical spirit.”
Gordon releases my hair and takes a few steps away.
“When that’s no longer fun, I’ll begin breaking your bones one at a time. I may or may not make it to your spine. It all depends on how long it takes for me to tire of that. But my favorite thing to do is puncture your lung and watch you gasp for air like a fish out of water.”
One of my kidnappers moves to the window and draws back the drape. “Oh shite. We have company.”
“How in the fuck can that be?” I hear the disbelief in Gordon’s voice.
“I don’t know, boss.”
“Can you see how many vehicles?”
“Three total. Two sedans and a panel van.”
The younger of the two accomplices steps away from the window. “Hey, I didn’t sign on for any of this shite.”
“Neither did I. I have a wife and bairn on the way. I just needed some quick cash,” the bearded accomplice says.
“Would you like to know what’s inside of the van that just parked outside? Fellowship foot soldiers who will surround this cottage, preventing your escape. But that’s not really who you should be afraid of. Kieran Hendry is here with his M24, and he is going to shoot to kill if Lorna doesn’t walk out of that front door within the next thirty seconds.”
“I’m done. I’m out of here.”
“Me too.”
Both of their goons leave the cottage through the back door and Gordon goes to the phone, ending the FaceTiming.
“Fuck, fuck, fuuuck!” Gordon turns on Greer. “This is your fault. You got me into this fucking mess.”
“You’re the one who wanted revenge.”
“I was moving on with my life until you showed up at my door, talking about how I could make Leith Duncan pay for killing my brothers. You’re a dumb bitch with a shite plan. I don’t know why I listened to you.”
“We can’t just roll over after all of the planning that we put into this,” Greer shouts.
“Maybe you can’t, but I can.”
“Don’t do this to me, Gordon.”
“What part of this do you not understand? We’re about to be surrounded by foot soldiers. The Order’s top assassin is right outside this cottage with an M24. He doesn’t miss. Ever. The only way to walk out of here alive is with weapons on the ground and hands in the air.”
“I thought you were an Order member, but you’re nothing more than a pussy.”
Complete Sin Box Set Page 127