“Oh, I did. I promise I’m capable of anything when it comes to getting you back, Ayden. Youaremine, and I will not lose you to yourfamily. Now. Let’s go. You can text your?—”
“What did you do?!”
I’m not a violent person. It’s never been in my nature to swing first, but a sharp surge through my arms and legs has me doing exactly that.
Beingviolent.
I charge at him, swinging a closed fist into his face. The shock of the hit leaves him unprepared to stay upright. The instant he’s on his ass, I kneel beside him and strike again. It takes only a second for him to fight back, and suddenly my wrists are in his grasp before I can land another good punch.
I shout through my rage. “You motherfucker, you better not have touched asinglehair on his head or I’ll kill?—”
He throws himself up, and while I fight, I’m not trained to take anyone down. I’m not an officer, not a firefighter. I wasn’t built for this life, tophysicallyfight for a life that’s supposed to be mine without question.
Mine to share with Keoni.
My back hits the wooden floor, and I cough violently. One of his knees drives into my stomach, and I open my mouth to scream, but he clamps his hand over it. The sheer intensity of my agony vibrates against his palm.
I swing and kick, but he overpowers me at every turn. Attempting a physical fight was stupid, but I lost control. The thought of him hurting Keo…
“Such a fucking bitch, Ayden,” he breathes, pressing harder into my abdomen as he slides his knee across my hip to straddle me. The bruising pain sends a shudder through my entire body. “You’re…” he grits out, struggling to grab my wrists. “A fighter now, huh?!”
“Get the hell off me!” I drive my knee into the base of his spine, causing him to curse through his teeth.
“Fucking…”
I see the hit coming, but there’s little I can do. Blinding painexplodes through my head, and my body goes completely limp. Every muscle goes numb from the ache of that blow rattling through my skull.
My face feels tight, especially around my left eye, which refuses to open no matter how much I plead.
“There we go,” he says through heavy breaths. “Here I thought your stepbrother would be the problem for me.” He pauses; the clink of metal sounds deafening over the constant ringing in my ears.
As he lifts one of my wrists, he laughs. “I should’ve just killed you both at that fucking campsite.” My heart stutters. “Broke in here so when you or your sister came back, I could’ve just shot you both and been done with it. Blamed it on your sick stepbrother.”
Cold metal clamps around my wrist. As he moves for the other, I slowly pull it away.
“No…”
“Ayden, babe, stop fighting. You’ll make it worse for yourself.”
I’m still reeling from that hit because it doesn’t take long for him to get a grip on my other one and force it into the same metal binding.
The moment he throws my arms up over my head, my shoulders argue the movement. I try to separate my hands, but they’re bound too tightly by the handcuffs.
Opening my right eye, I watch him place his hands right on my shoulder joint and with a sharp thrust, he pushes downhard. The sickening pops are drowned out by my scream. Hot pain flares like fire, radiating to my fingertips as every muscle in my arm spasms.
“Shut the fuck up.” He grabs a folded blanket from a nearby basket and shoves it into my mouth. Before he can pull back his fingers, I bite down—little good it does. He just jerks them out.
Heat spikes in my temples as I push the fabric out with my tongue, but he covers my mouth with his palm.
“There we go. Quiet. Just like you used to be.”
He rolls his head around his shoulders before roughly sitting on my stomach. I groan as more of his weight presses down on me.
“As I was saying, that would’ve been too messy. I hate cleaning up shit… You know…” He laughs. “I had to miss the holidays withmy family because you were being a fucking brat—a littleprincess. This hadn’t been the plan. The moment your stepbrother went to work, I was going to come and convince you to come home with me.”
Fucking delusional!
“But then I found out you had a PI following me. Tsk, tsk, tsk, babe.”
