Well, I have a few choice ones, but none that’ll make a difference. Better to play this smart, not be reactionary.
“And you didn’t think to mention that this was the plan?” Raf bites out.
“There was no need,” Gideon sighs, annoyed. “You wanted her gone, I had a debt to pay. Our interests seemed to align.”
Raf clenches his jaw, the muscle in it ticking. “Does your whore know you sold her daughter?”
“Of course,” Gideon replies easily. “Daphne gave her blessing. She wants her daughter to have financial security, and what better way to ensure that than through a marriage auction to the highest bidder? Now, I’m in the middle of something, so unless you have an issue of actual importance to discuss–”
Raf ends the call with a vicious stab of his thumb, cutting his father off mid-sentence. Silence slams down on the room, heavy and final.
Wes surges to his feet, stabbing his fingers through his hair as he starts pacing, muttering under his breath. “That piece of shit. We should’ve known he’d find a way out of the hole we put him in. He actually fuckingsoldher…”
Raf slowly turns to face me, his eyes gone so dark they’re almost black. “Call your brother back,” he murmurs, voice edged with steel. “It’s time we reclaimed what’s ours.”
CHAPTER 6
AVA
The nature sceneacross from my bed glows with gentle artificial sunlight while I lie curled on my side, trying to pretend it’s real. If I squint hard enough, I can almost trick my mind into believing the lie– that green grass and rolling hills are waiting for me just outside of this room, that the sky beyond those painted clouds stretches on forever instead of ending at a cold concrete wall.
Then my gaze inevitably drifts to the birds frozen in flight against that bright blue sky, and the illusion promptly shatters.
I wish I could roll onto my back, but my butt has been stinging like hell since my tattoo removal session. The first of many, apparently. The skin there still burns, raw and angry beneath the thin fabric of my white pants. I limped all the way back to this room afterwards, and I’ve been stuck in here since, wasting the days away staring at that fake horizon and getting lost in my own head.
I’m staring at the picture so long that my vision begins to blur, the edges of the hills softening as my eyelids grow heavy. Then, just as I start to doze off, everything goes dark.
The picture snaps off. The overhead lights cut out. I’m plunged into pitch blackness so suddenly it knocks the breathout of me, the air whooshing from my lungs as my pulse takes off like a rocket. A strobing red glow suddenly ignites above the door, bathing the room in violent flashes of light while a shrill alarm erupts from somewhere beyond it.
For a heartbeat, I can’t move. My body locks up, nerves blown out by the darkness and the noise and the sudden, terrifying uncertainty. The silence of this room has been suffocating for days, but this chaos is somehow worse. Then adrenaline slams through my system, yanking me out of bed like a puppet jerked on a string.
My bare feet hit the cold floor, and I stumble toward the door on instinct, one hand shooting out to brace against the wall while the red light pulses around me. My fingers tremble as I fumble along the seam where the door meets the frame, searching for something– anything– while the alarm screams in my ears.
Then I hear something else undercutting the shrill. A grinding sound, metal dragging against metal, like something heavy being forced open.
My stomach plummets.
For one desperate second, I think there might be a fire and someone’s here to rescue me.
Then a second thought crashes in, colder and far worse– that this is all just the next stage of hell the Dollhouse has planned for me.
The door grinds open, a wedge of light slicing through the dark and blinding me. I throw up an arm to shield my eyes, shrinking back as a silhouette fills the doorway. A flashlight beam spears straight into my face, the glare so harsh I can’t see anything past it.
My body coils tight, fight or flight instincts roaring to life. Then someone speaks, the voice low, gravelly, and achingly familiar.
“Come with me, Babygirl.”
Ford.
Relief crashes through me so hard my knees nearly buckle. Though I can’t see him, my mind instantly conjures up his wicked smirk, the dark lines of his tattoos, the dangerous gleam in his hazel eyes. But as the flashlight dips away and the glare finally fades from my vision, I realize the man standing in the doorway isn’t my unhinged King come to drag me home.
It’s his brother.
Drew stalks into the room like a phantom, his features a warped reflection of Ford’s. The resemblance is unsettling– those same harsh cheekbones, the same obscenely plush lips, the same striking hazel eyes that almost look golden in the strobing red light. He’s dressed head-to-toe in black, a ski mask shoved up onto his forehead.
For half a second, my panic-fogged brain insists I must be hallucinating. Then he closes the distance between us in two long strides, dropping into a crouch and reaching for my ankle.
I jerk back on instinct, trying to kick him away, but his reflexes are faster than mine. His hand clamps down just above the silver cuff fastened around my ankle, fingers digging in to lock my leg in place. I thrash as fear spikes, but then he looks up at me, eyes sharp with impatience.
