“Of course,” he assures me. “Nothing to be concerned about. It’s standard protocol to change our routine in events like these.”
“Where’s Nicky?” I ask.
“He’s dealing with the breach himself,” the guard explains. “I’m Max. You met me briefly before your honeymoon.”
“Right.” I force a smile.
When the elevator arrives on the ground floor, Max escorts me to the service entrance. Four of my usual guards are already outside, and I breathe a little easier when I see their faces. One of them opens the door to the car for me.
Before I even make it there, I hear the sound of screeching tires and turn just in time to see a van pulling up. It happens too fast for me to grasp—one second, I’m beside Max, and the next, four men in black tactical gear and balaclavas surround me.
Someone yanks me back and drags me toward the van. I try to fight, and I think I manage to scream, but it’s a wasted effort. A moment later, I’m facedown on the floor of the stripped-out van.
My wrists and ankles are restrained with leather cuffs and linked together before someone slips a blindfold over my eyes. When they stuff what feels like a rubber gag into my mouth and strap it around my head, fear grabs me by the throat.
I can’t move or speak. All I can do is lie there and wait for whatever comes next. The men don’t talk or make any noise at all. It only amplifies my anxiety.
This can’t be happening.
How long will it take for Angelo to realize I’m gone?
I think about the guards we left behind and wonder why they didn’t help me. For a while, I struggle against the restraints, but I get nowhere. All I’ve managed to do is exhaust myself. I haven’t been eating or sleeping well, and now I’m paying the consequences.
After what feels like the longest ride of my life, the van pulls to a stop. I hear the back doors open, and there’s some shuffling before one of the men picks me up. He bands an arm around my torso and pins me to his chest, leaving my feet to dangle as he carries me like a ragdoll.
He jumps from the van, the movement jarring, but he doesn’t loosen his grip. When his boots slap against the floor, they echo around us, indicating we must be in some kind of cavernous space. My first thoughts are a warehouse or parking garage.
I decide it’s best to preserve what little energy I have rather than fight him now. There are any number of reasons I might be abducted, and until I know what they want, I need to stay as calm as I can.
A door opens, and I hear a woman’s low voice as the man carrying me pauses briefly before continuing. The scent of vanilla perfumes the air, and as we move further into the unknown space, I start to hear other things.
Things like…moaning. Flirtatious laughter. Soft music. The low chatter of multiple conversations. Wherever we are, there are a lot of people.
I try to speak around the gag in my mouth, but all that comes out are indecipherable noises, and even then, nobody seems to notice or care.
After a long walk, I hear another door opening, and we turn, entering what must be a different room. The door shuts behind us, effectively silencing all the other noise.
This room is painfully quiet, and from what I can tell, it’s just me and the man carrying me now. His footsteps are the only ones I hear as he lays me facedown over what feels like a bolstered cushion on an elevated platform. He pulls me back, readjusting me so my torso lays flat over the cushion and my bended knees rest on the platform below.
It’s at this point I start to panic and try to rear up, but he presses me down with little effort on his part.
He unlinks the leather cuffs restraining my ankles and pries my legs apart. Then he inserts what feels like a cold, metal bar between the cuffs around my ankles, securing it there. Once it’s in place, he pulls my cuffed wrists behind my back and locks them together, effectively immobilizing me.
He removes my heels, and I start to tremble, pleading around the gag. Then I feel something slice through the fabric of my skirt, and I freeze. In one swift motion, he splits the skirt in half and tosses it to the floor, followed by my blouse.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember how to breathe. He pulls on something that sounds like a roll of tape, ripping off a piece before he winds it around one thigh, then the other. He obscures Angelo’s name, and does the same to the tattoo on the back of my neck.
After he removes my gag, he stands there for what feels like the longest minute of my life. Even blindfolded, I can feel his gaze moving over me. The only scraps of clothing shielding the intimate parts of my body are a bra and a thong.
My mind is racing through a dozen different scenarios, wondering how this will play out. As I consider the guards’ lack of reactions when the van pulled up, and the fact that nobody here seemed to care that I was restrained, I have to believe this is Angelo’s doing.
What he asked me on our honeymoon is at the forefront of my thoughts.
Do you want me to terrorize you, cara?
You should know it will always be me who catches you.
He asked me if I wanted him to capture me even when I didn’t know it was him, and I said yes. I know with bone-deep certainty, he’d never allow another man to take me like this.
