“Yes, that’s me,” I answer the delivery guy.
Something strange lights up in this guy’s eyes as soon as I answer. He moves from around the desk. One of his hands slightly opens his jacket, revealing the butt of a gun.
On instinct, I take a step back, but he grabs my arm in a fierce hold. It’s so tight that a jolt of pain instantly moves through my body.
“Don’t fucking move,” he says in an accent so thick that it takes me a few seconds to understand what he’s just said.
The sound of his voice jogs my memory. I saw him weeks ago at the gala, very briefly.
“What is this?” I blurt out, immediately looking around for the security guard.
The guy pulls my phone from my hands and slams it on the ground, crushing it beneath his booted foot. This is the moment my brain registers what’s happening and I try to pull out of his grasp to flee.
But his bruising hold on me refuses to let go. With his free hand he pulls out the gun and points it directly at my belly.
That move instantly kills my fight.
“You’re coming with me,” he says through barely opened lips.
Without another word he yanks me to follow his lead, leaving me helpless to anything but comply.
CHAPTER 48
Alyssia
“Please, I have to go to the bathroom,” I say for the second time to whoever this deranged man is.
At this point, I can’t even see him since he’s covered my eyes with a blindfold. I haven’t been able to see anything since the moment he ordered me to close my eyes once he brought me to a small sedan parked behind the apartment building.
He drove for what felt like an eternity, but was more likely less than an hour. During which time I fought to keep my mind from imagining the worst of the worst.
We stopped somewhere that sounded far away from any city and he, again, dragged me by my arm, up a set of stairs and into a room or a house, forcing me to sit in a creaky wooden chair. From all of that, I assume we’re in an abandoned house.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, squirming in the chair with my hands tied at the wrists behind my back.
“Shut up,” he barks out, pacing. “Shut up!”
I jump at what sounds like a fist pounding against something. The floor beneath me shakes.
“Okay, okay,” I assure him. “I’ll be quiet.”
A beat of silence passes before the pacing starts again. My wriggling has shifted the blindfold, allowing me to watch his footsteps as he clomps back and forth against the cracked, dilapidated floorboards.
Nervous energy fills the room, pressing into every surface of my skin. My breathing shallows as a result, at the same time a streak of pain races across my lower belly.
This pain is sharper than any Braxton-Hicks contraction I’ve had before.
Oh no, please not now!
The man’s muffled murmurs draw my attention back to him.
I can’t stay silent for much longer. Something inside of me is telling me to use whatever I have at my disposal to fight back.
“I r-really do have to use the bathroom, p-please,” I stutter out.
He pushes out a frustrated groan before stomping toward me. My body tenses in anticipation of his response for my speaking again.
He doesn’t hit me.
