My heart drops. “You’re…you’re going to hand him over to the cartel?”
Leon’s lips curl into a sadistic smirk. “Both of you, if I’m lucky. There’s still hope that your asshole father will come out with his dick between his legs if he knows you’re in danger. No guarantee since he hasn’t done a thing to show his fucking face yet.” He grabs my chin, forces my eyes to his. “But first, I need to get Murphy here. And you’re going to make sure he shows up.”
I jerk away. “He’ll kill you. The second he walks through that door.”
“Maybe.” Leon holds up the phone. “But he’ll come. That’s who he is, a man who can’t walk away from a fight, especially one involving his wife.”
He taps on the screen. The whoosh of a message being sent follows.
“There. Text sent. Now we wait.”
My heart pounds. Declan is coming. Running into a trap. Because of me.
“Now, don’t do anything stupid,” Leon says. “I don’t want to have to hurt you before he gets here. But I will, Marlowe,” he says, his voice rough. “Because I won’t go down for you or your fucking father.”
He stalks away, disappearing through a door on the far side of the warehouse.
Silence remains. Just the buzz of lights and the drip of water somewhere.
Frenzied thoughts loop through my mind. I need to warn Declan. But how? I’m powerless to do a damn thing in this position. My pulse throbs, blood crashing between my ears.
I test the zip ties again. They don’t give.
Dammit, Leon completely played me. He used me, manipulated me, pretended to be my friend. I fucking defended him to Declan over and over again, never seeing the true slimeball behind the bullshit façade.
A frustrated cry escapes my lips. I’m not the same woman who walked into that truck graveyard. I’m not the naïve ballerina who trusted a man because he said the right things at donor events. I’m not the girl who let fear make her choices.
Not anymore.
I’m Marlowe fucking Briggs. And as far as the rest of the world thinks, I married into the Murphy mafia. Nobody knows it’s a sham.
I scan the room with clearer eyes, taking stock of everything in my surroundings. The metal chair bolted to the floor. The pallets in corners. The exposed pipes overhead. The door Leon left through.
There’s a broken edge on one of the bolts holding the chair down. Rusted. Sharp.
It’s not much. But at least, it’s something.
I inch toward the chair, ignoring the pain tearing through my shoulders, the raw burn of plastic against my wrists. Even the slightest movement sends pain shooting through me, but I don’t stop.
Declan is coming.
Leon thinks I’m helpless. He thinks I’ll sit here and wait to be rescued, or traded, or killed.
He’s wrong.
I pant, finally getting to the chair. Scooting close to the bolt, I move the zip tie back and forth against it. It’s slow. Agonizing. The metal bites into my skin and I feel blood running down my fingers.
But I don’t stop. I can’t.
Because when Declan walks through that door, I’m not going to be a liability.
I’m going to be ready to fight right beside him.
Whatever it takes.
TWENTY-FIVE
declan
