My reaction time was completely eradicated as I felt something hard slamming against my head. I grunted in pain as I felt a pair of hands dragging me into the alley. I was trying to regain my surroundings, the smell of piss and garbage ruminating around me as I felt another pair of hands constricting my arms tightly behind my back.
As my eyesight stopped wobbling from the previous assault, I was able to make out a dark figure with wavy blonde hair. I tried fighting against whoever the fuck was holding my arms, kicking out with my legs to try and make sense of what was happening, hoping I’d connect with something and was able to break free.
I stared into the green eyes of my gorgeous assailant as my vision stabilized. It was a women in all black, wearing leather gloves as she gave me a wicked sneer as she cracked her knuckles.
“What do you want?” I managed to say, my voice raspy from the struggle.
“You.” She said, dripping with disdain as she reared back her fist. “Preferably out cold.”
And then her fist smashed into the side of my nose harder than I could have ever imagined she was capable of, and the darkness of unconscious found me and swallowed me up.
Chapter 19
Wakingup to a massive headache wasn’t the best way to regain consciousness, but considering the fact that having a headache meant I wasn’t dead, I’d take it.
It felt like I had about ten hangovers stacked on top of each other as my eyes fluttered toward the light of wakefulness. A chill slithered up my spine, feeling the brisk temperature thriving around me as I tried rebooting my system. When I finally lolled my head from its backward tilting position and straightened out, I saw two women standing through my blurry vision. I squeezed them shut tightly, willing my vision to clear so I could try to identify my assailants.
I recognized the one donned in all black as the woman that had knocked me out in the alley. She had the same wavy blonde hair that skimmed past her shoulders that I vaguely recalled before my impromptu nap. Her green eyes shone with wickedness, the crossing of her arms as I came to more evidence of her malignant feelings toward me.
To her left was her exact mirror. The blonde woman next to her shared the same face, same alabaster skin, same green eyes that told of disturbing tales they’d effaced from memory. Butwhile the wavy one was wearing her hair down, this one had hers pulled back in a ponytail, and it was more straight than her mirror’s. Her apparel was different as well, wearing a dark green leather jacket and matching shirt as well as pants that stole the shade for itself. Even the leather gloves she was wearing seemed to color match.
The wavy one stepped forward, leaning down so that her face was hovering inches away from mine. She had a tiny mole on the right side of her face. With a quick glance at her mirror, I saw that the green one had one on the left side of her face.
I scoffed to myself. What were the chances that I’d get kidnapped by twins when I was one myself?
“It’s about time,” Wavy scoffed, rearing back to her previous stance, crossed arms and all. “I thought we’d actually have to wake your ass up.”
Taking the reprieve of her speech, I looked around me now that my usual sense of self was coming back to me. We were clearly in some type of abandoned warehouse, long forgotten machinery laying on their sides with layers of dust blanketing them. Other than the fallen equipment, the only thing other than us in the vast room was the chair they’d tied me to, flexing my arms and confirming the restraints I’d assumed were already in place, and at the end of the room there was something that looked like a manager’s office.
I couldn’t feel my phone in my jeans so I figured they’d either trashed it or, if I was lucky, it was lodged in that manager’s office. If I had any hopes of getting the fuck out of this situation, that was my perceived destination. But first I wanted to know why the fuck I was here.
“What’s going on?” I started, switching between staring at both of the twins. “What’s this all about?”
“You knowexactlywhat this is about.” Wavy uncrossed her arms and sauntered over to me, clutching my jaw in her palmand jerking it upwards to stare at her intentionally. “But I like the long hair. Nice touch.”
The fuck? I pondered on her words, but Ponytail sighed deeply and took a few steps forward.
“I want to get this over with. Just tell us what it’s going to take to get the family money back, Troian. And then we’ll let you leave with your life.”
“The fuck we will.” Wavy protested, throwing my face back so I rocked in the chair, grunting at the dismissal of physical contact. “Warren wants him fucking dead. You know that.” She gave her twin a stare that could have killed an army.
I wasn’t sure if it was the concussion or what, but I was struggling to keep up. Clearly they thought I was my brother, but I couldn’t quite grasp who the fuck these women were and why the fuck they’d dragged me off the street in broad daylight.
“I don’t care what Warren wants.” Ponytail sighed again, crossing her arms and shifting her stance from one foot to the other. “I’m tired of this bullshit.”
“Just tell me what this is really about and we can part ways.”
They both stared at me at those words. Wavy gave me an incredulous glare, like I was the stupidest piece of filth she’d ever come into contact with. Ponytail just looked at me like she’d rather I stop talking, but realized that I had to speak for things to be finished.
“Enough bullshit, Troian.” Wavy cracked her leather gloved hands again, just like she had in the alley. I was liable to tell her anything she wanted to avoid those fists again. She looked like she was barely five foot five, butfuckif she didn’t have a mean hook on her. “You’re going to give us back the Rhodes family money that Alec left you. And then we’re going to make sure you never have another chance to convince Madison that you deserved it at all.”
Well, that cleared up a lot. Troian had told me that Madison, the mother of his late husband, was the only one in the familythat wasn’t crazy and thought he deserved the money Alec had left him upon his death. He’d told me that Madison warned him to be careful just in case they tried something, that they weren’t going to let up. Clearly, the Rhodes family had decided to play their next move.
Which brought me to these two assumed Rhodes twins. They thought I was Troian, and I could play this one of two ways. I could pretend to be my brother, buy myself some time to play with the restraints binding my arms and hands and hope that I’d find an opening to dash toward the office in the back and pray that my phone, or any working phone, was in there so I could call for help.
Or, I could tell them how fucking stupid they were and they’d nabbed the wrong twin. Which would either end with their anger over their mistake leading to them discarding the spare twin and trying to go after the real Troian. Or, just maybe, it’d cause enough disturbance between the two sisters for me to also work on my restraints. I was getting the indication that Ponytail wasn’t as dedicated to their mission as Wavy. Judging by the fact that one of them was earnestly bloodthirsty and the other was indifferent was something that I could work with to make sure I walked out of this nightmare alive.
A third option appeared in my head as a fleeting thought, but I held on to it as the best option. Why choose between two viable alternatives when I could combine them?
