I see a bandage creeping over the top of the nightgown and freeze. That wasn’t there before.
“What did they do to you?” I demand. She shakes her head but doesn’t look up. “Please talk to me,” I plead. We go through this every day, and she won’t talk, she won’t cry, she won’t do anything. I don’t know what else to do, so I do the same thing I always do; I fill the silence. It seems to relax her. “Do you remember the time we almost got caught by my dad?” I say. “I thought our secret was over then.”
She takes a shuttering breath, relaxing her shoulders a bit.
We started getting brave and snuck off to the pool house while her dad held meetings in the main house. I had her bent over the kitchen island, thrusting inside her, when we heard the front door open. We had never moved so fast in all our lives than at that moment trying to hide.
“I had to put my hand over your mouth so Dad wouldn’t hear you laughing,” I reminisce; I always remind her about our good times.
We were hiding in the closet in the hallway. Her panties were somewhere in the kitchen since I had just pulled them from underthe skirt she was wearing. The skirt she was wearing was the whole reason I ended up dragging her in there in the first place. “That’s the moment I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, Beautiful,” I say, getting choked up. “You always made me so fucking happy.” I wait it out to see if maybe today is the day she might say something.
“I wish you would talk to me. I miss your sweet voice,” I say finally.
She shakes her head again, still not looking up.
I lay my head against the pole and feel utterly useless to her. I can’t do a damn thing for her, and it’s eating me up inside.
I think back to what Jay said about Ryder and wonder if I should warn her. I might hate that asshole, but he doesn’t deserve to die too. If Jay does succeed in taking him out, it’ll kill Les even more. That’s twenty-five years of friendship and a relationship they were building before all this shit.
She would never survive it.
Chapter 3
Alessa
“Il mio sole,” Ryder whispers, “I need you to fight.”
“I can’t fight anymore,” I cry, tears streaming down my face. “I don’t have any fight left!”
“You have to, Baby girl,” Dex says, stepping beside me and rubbing his tattooed knuckles down my cheek. “Come back to us.”
I shake my head miserably. “There won’t be anything of me left. You need to move on.”
“Never, Bright eyes,” Holden says forcefully with his newly found courage. “We won’t ever leave you.”
“We’re looking for you, Baby,” Leo says. “Don’t give up on us.”
Hearing Zane shift snaps me back to reality. I let Zane’s voice lull me into a peaceful place, just like it always did. Sometimes I would daydream about our time together, or I would conjure up my guys. I never saw Gage’s beautiful face in these dreams. Jay beat it into my head every day that Gage is dead; this world should not be able to keep spinning without Gage.
The day we got here, and they took Zane from our holding room, I didn’t see him again for a while. Then one day, they shoved him back into this room and tied him back to that pole. He told me something about pneumothorax and a chest tube when we were alone.They would come in once a day after that and shove him full of antibiotics, telling him he needed his strength for what was to come.
Neither of us figured out what would come until it was too late. It didn’t take long for us to figure out Jay was the sick fuck stalking me. He waited until Zane was back in our holding cell to take advantage of me. He came in, jerked the curtain closed, chained me to the bed, and told me how good he would make me feel. All the while, Zane had to listen.
I fought and threatened, and Zane yelled and threatened, but it was useless. When he was done, he jerked the curtain open, leaving me to stare into Zane’s eyes. I’ll never forget the look on Zane’s face. Tears were streaking down his face, and his whiskey-colored eyes were tortured. That repeated daily until I didn’t have any fight left in me. It was better to hope he would eventually get sick of my silence and kill me. Every time he comes in, he takes a little piece of my soul; I don’t think I have much left.
When they took me away last night, it didn’t surprise me. It was part of the routine. They would shove me into a bathroom with Jay. He would chain me in the shower to clean me up.
Yesterday something changed.
He still washed me, but he chained me to another softer bed in a room full of windows. He said that’s what I can have if I just gave in and accepted that we are meant to be together. When I didn’t answer him, he got pissed off. He roughly rolled me to my stomach, ripped my nightgown open, and carved something into my back. It’s where the bandage came from.
When he got up this morning, he was sweet, tended to the wound, then said he had stuff to take care of today before disappearing. That was worse than when he was rough with me.
Zane shifts again, making me finally look up. He has his head back against the pole, and he’s just staring at me.
I want to talk to him and give him what he wants. I can’t, though. If I let myself feel what’s going on, I’ll get sucked into being thirteen again. That isn’t a place I can go to and come back from if we ever get out of here. I need to accept this is my reality. I need to accept that Gage is dead. I need to admit that I’ll never get to hug Ryder again, bewrapped in Dex’s arms, run my fingers through Holden’s curly hair, or look into Leo’s blue-green eyes. I need to accept I’ll never get to experience Zane’s love ever again.
One by one, their faces flash behind my eyes, trying to lend me strength. I just don’t know how much I have left. Micah’s face pops up, causing tears to spring into my eyes. He has to be a fucking mess right now.
