“Child locks,” he said with a sneer, ruining my fantasies of having been able to escape the moving vehicle even if I’d tried.
A good thing I didn’t make an attempt since it’d have surely given away my motives.
The two men ushered me up onto the large front porch and into the cabin. I stopped beside the door and let my eyes take in the space before they forced me to the living room couch. I fell into a seat and glared at both of them, still too angry to form threats coherently.
Even though the home was a log cabin on the outside, I expected something different once I passed the front door. Rather than walk into a room with drywall and pretty pictures, the logs greeted me on the inside. It was just so much wood. Like someone had gone out to the forest and chopped the trees themselves. Their own little Paul Bunyan. I’d never been in a space that screamed “woods” so loudly. The owners really loved wood.
I also wasn’t a person to pay particular attention to my surroundings, but I stared at every angle, trying to come up with my second option for an escape. I had self-defense training, but I was also aware that Westley’s men had guns. The big unknown was whether they would risk shooting me if I made a run for the door.
Silent contemplation led me to believe my best options were to pretend I was no longer angry with my cousin for his barbarian behavior and hit him when he dropped his guard.
“What’s the plan?” I crossed my legs and patted the top one as if removing imaginary dust and settling back in to my regular life.
The two men looked at each other. Jason wasn’t always the smartest man on Westley’s payroll, and judging from the way the two of them appeared absolutely clueless, I guessed the new guy wasn’t either. Westley must’ve left his right-hand man in Chicago while he came to rescue me himself.
Shiloh from a few weeks ago would’ve been honored, thrilled really, that Westley had left his empire to come and bring me home safely, but at the moment all I mustered was annoyance.
Annoyance and a deep-seated desire to ruin his life the way he ruined mine. Anger seeped from me, but I refused to let it show on my features. Instead, I portrayed the perfect unsuspecting woman they both assumed me to be.
“Our job was to get you to safety,” Jason said, taking a stance in front of the main door and hindering my ability to escape for at least the foreseeable future. “We’ll spend a few hours here and then fly out of Portland early tomorrow morning.”
I nodded, pretending as if I agreed with his plan, but I didn’t answer verbally, too worried I wouldn’t be able to maintain my composure if I opened my mouth.
I’d never allow it to happen. Screw Westley. I wasn’t going anywhere except back to Pelican Bay, with or without Frankie.
Jason glanced out the front door as tires kicked up gravel from the unpaved driveway. He stepped to the side, waiting for the door to open. I tensed, pretty sure of who would walk through the door when it opened. I tucked my hands underneath my legs on the couch, so I didn’t jump up and take his life as soon as I saw his face.
CHAPTER 25
Westley walked in the front door to the cabin they were using as our hideaway with a smile stretched across his face. I used to love seeing him wear that look, but now I wanted to wipe it off with one of my fists.
I paused, holding everything, including my breath, and waited. Westley got his feet into the cabin and the door shut behind him with no one else entering the premises. Frankie was not with him. They didn’t have some stupid male argument on the side of the road, decide they were friends, and walk in together. My heart tumbled. The last of my hope that kept me going crumbled.
My family, the one person I knew always had my back, betrayed me in the worst way and now smelled of dirt and grass. His jeans, a staple of his attire when he was in crime boss mode rather than trying to wine and dine those who believed him to be nothing more than a businessman, had grass stains at the bottoms of his left leg.
My fingers dug into the fabric of the couch—a cream monstrosity that took up too much space even in the open floor plan. I counted, trying to get my anger under control before I did something rash, but only made it to three before another scream broke free of my lips and I lunged.
Westley’s eyes widened, and he stepped back, but it wasn’t far enough away. I aimed for his throat, my hands outstretched, ready to tackle my newly created enemy, but I never made it. My cousin, the man I’d forever referred to only as the dreaded Grandmaster, caught me around the waist and flipped me around his side.
“Damn, what is your problem?” he asked, holding my back to his chest.
My nails scratched into his arm, doing my best to take as much skin with me and draw as much blood as I could. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough, but I needed to hurt him the way he hurt me.
“How could you?” I demanded as I struggled for my freedom from the Grandmaster, turning on him in the next second. “Damn it. I told you I was staying,” I yelled with a finger outstretched, inches from his face.
I rushed him again, beating at his chest, but rather than hit back, he wrapped his hands around me and brought me close so I couldn’t get enough momentum to make my strikes hurt. “You were out of your mind. We live in Chicago.”
Worst family member ever.
I pushed away from him, taking a step back and faltering as one of my feet landed incorrectly. Paint pulsed up my leg. “I hate you! I’ll never forgive you for this.”
He stared at me as if the man didn’t recognize his own family. I’d changed in the last few days, morphed into something more than he’d ever seen.
“You’ve been brainwashed!” he yelled back at me, throwing his hands up in the air, almost catching the side of my face.
My ears rang with his screams, his angry yells causing a headache unlike any other to form as I fell to the floor. My face dropped to my hands as I allowed myself to truly cry.
“I want to stay.” I lost the words in my hands.
