I’d been so close.
So close to him.
“Fuck!” The word blasted from the guard’s mouth. He raised the phone above his head and slammed it against the floor, shattering the screen.
I lost it, letting my survival instincts kick in. I thrashed and clawed and bit, my teeth finding the soft flesh of his forearm while my nails raked across his neck hard enough to draw blood.
He shouted for backup as he struggled to pin me down. Footsteps pounded in the hallway, reinforcements coming.
“Get off me!” I screamed until my voice turned hoarse, tears streaming down my face, not from fear but from pure, concentrated rage at being treated like an animal.
Two more guards poured through the doorway, and suddenly I was outnumbered three to one. They grabbed my arms and legs, dragging me toward the narrow bed. The first guard was already pullingcoarse rope from somewhere, the kind of rough hemp that would leave burns and scars if I struggled too hard.
“You just made everything so much worse for yourself.” He panted as he looped the rope around my wrists and tied them to the ornate bedposts with skilled knots.
My legs were spread wide and my ankles secured to the foot of the bed. The rope bit into my skin, rough fibers already starting to chafe as I tested the bonds and found them unforgivingly tight.
I lay there, strapped to the bed, and screamed.
I screamed until my voice gave out completely, until there was nothing left but a hollow rasp. Until the tears came. I called them every nasty, filthy name I could think of and threatened them with the most colorful promise of violence and revenge.
I wasn’t crying because I was scared, but terror certainly lived in my chest. I was crying because I was angry. Because I was done being helpless, done being a possession, done pretending submission would somehow make this easier, because even tied down, even with rope burns already forming on my wrists and ankles, even with the taste of blood in my mouth from where I’d bitten my tongue, I still believed in him.
Kreed would come for me. He would.
8
KREED
The phone’s vibration pulsed against my palm, the screen displaying an anonymous number. My thumb hovered over the accept button for half a second before I swiped hard, bringing the device to my ear. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Kreed?” When my name was whispered from the other end of the call, I nearly dropped the phone. It felt like weeks since I last heard her voice.
The world tilted sideways. My free hand shot out, gripping the edge of the table. The voice reached through the phone and wrapped around my throat, squeezing until I couldn’t remember how to draw air.
Her voice. Christ, it was actuallyher.
“Kaylor?” Her name scraped against my vocal cords like broken glass, barely audible through the sudden constriction in my chest, and before I could form another word, before I could tell her I was coming, that I would never stop looking, the world exploded through the speaker.
Crash.
I couldn’t be sure, but something heavy slammed into what mighthave been a door before her scream tore through the connection, raw and terrified and so fucking desperate it carved a hole straight through my sternum.
“Kreed!”
My name bellowed from her lips. It didn’t just reach my ears; it burrowed into my bones, into the marrow, branding itself there forever.
Static erupted across the line, and I jerked. Through the interference came fragments: heavy boots, a man barking orders I couldn’t catch, the distinctive thud of a body hitting the ground. Each sound was a knife twist because I knew, I fucking knew, which body had fallen.
“If you fucking hurt her, I’ll?—”
Dead air halted the rest of my threat, stripping me of any satisfaction. I stared at the phone’s black screen, willing it to light up again, for her voice to filter through and tell me she escaped, but the device sat dead in my palm as lifeless as my chest felt without her breathing on the other end.
“No.” The word strangled its way out of my throat. “No, no, no.”
My fingers flew across the screen, jabbing to call back the unknown number. The dial tone mocked me. Once, twice, three times before going straight to a cold, robotic voicemail. I tried again, my hands shaking so violently I gripped the phone with both fists to keep from dropping it.
This time, the phone didn’t ring but gave a busy dial tone.
