“Hold him tight.” She got down on her knees, her face looming above him.
“Stop!”
“It’s you who should be stopping.” Trevor held him tighter. “If she sticks it in the wrong place, you’ll die in less than a minute.”
He didn’t know if that was true, but fear stopped his struggle. He anxiously watched Kim raise his sleeve and lower the syringe to his arm.
“Stupid boy,” she snarled. “So ungrateful. I told Robert to be stricter with you.”
Hot tears slid down his face. His hatred toward these people was strong enough to scorch the earth.
Kim stuck the needle deep into his flesh. He gasped at the sudden pain. The liquid inside the syringe quickly flowed into his vein. In a few minutes, he’d be a vegetable, sure to wake up hours later locked and bound.
The entrance door opened. “Stop. Let him go.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kim snapped at her husband, absently jerking the needle inside Daniel’s flesh. The pain made him nauseous. Beads of blood slid down his arm.
“That woman has brought two of her coworkers, and they aren’t going anywhere. Let him go.”
Kim pulled the needle out with half the substance already inside Daniel’s body. But it would take a bit of time for the effect to take over, and he only needed a minute. He slid away from Trevor and Andy, then clumsily got up to his feet, hurting all over.
He was about to reach the entrance when Robert grabbed his arm. “If you tell anyone about your time in this house, I’ll end you. There won’t be anywhere for you to hide. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
Robert let go. “A fucking disappointment you are.”
He opened the door as Andy cried from behind, “Don’t go, Daniel! Mom, he’s leaving!”
The car waited at the end of the short path, with Susan watching in concern from the driver’s seat. The sun felt too bright, hurting his retinas. He hurried toward the car as the sedative sent sneaky fingers into his brain, making the edges of his vision blurry and the ground unstable.
But he was going to make it.
He would leave this hell behind.
He would start a new life.
And he would even change his goddamn name.
11
CHRIS
Now…
Mickey massaged his chin from the other side of Chris’s desk. “Molested you? Hmm, interesting. And years later, you threatened to expose him if he wouldn’t pay you off and put you in his will?”
“That’s what Benji and I are thinking, yes.”
“Do you have proof of any money transaction between you two?”
“No, but I can likely fake old conversations between us.”
“Well, that’s something, I suppose.”
“I could also get Trevor and Andy to support that story.”
Mickey shook his head. “They want the inheritance, so their testimony won’t come across as sincere.”
