His mouth fell to the shell of my ear. “We’re nothing like those pathetic street gangs that roam this sorry excuse for a coastline.”
It was the first time I had riled up any of them, and it made me giggle. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I upset you? Poor thing.”
He dropped my arm almost immediately and I turned to face him. But, that was a mistake, because the second I did he wrapped that large hand with those dexterous, thin fingers of his around my throat and lifted me clear up off my feet.
Causing me to grip his forearm just to keep from choking to death.
“Dutch, I—I didn’t--.”
“Put her down,” a gruff voice said.
Not just any voice, though.
Ranger.
The Behemoth.
Dutch dropped me without a second thought before he maneuvered around me, and as I forced myself to my feet, I looked up to find Ranger towering over me. Cloaking the whole of me in his shadow.
Before he wrapped his hand around my arm and yanked me toward him.
“Ah!” I yelped.
He got right into my face. “The harder you make this for us, the harder we’ll make it for you.”
I heard a chuckle from behind the wall that separated the bathroom from the rest of the basement before Trooper’s voice sounded. “My kinda play style.”
“Shut up,” Ranger growled.
The stench of my puke-covered tits didn’t seem to phase them one bit, which only served to terrify me even more. “What do you want with me?”
Ranger tilted his head, but didn’t release his grip. “You’re going to help us get the money your father stole from us. Come with me.”
“What? I don’t know how—ah!”
He dragged me, literally dragged me, away from the bathroom and toward the basement stairs. The more I struggled against him, the tighter his grip became, until my entire hand went numb just from his grasp. I dug my heels into the floor, only for someone to kick them out from beneath me. Whether it was Dutch or Trooper, I couldn’t say. But, when they stumbled out from beneath me, my skin squeaked across the tiled floor of the main floor.
Before Ranger tossed me into a chair.
“Tie her up,” he commanded.
“What? No!” I exclaimed.
No matter how much I fought, Trooper and Dutch made quick work. Before I could fucking blink, the tightness of the rope against the skin of my wrists and ankles shocked me into reality. I didn’t have a choice. I had no options. Gordon hadn’t come for me. Emergency had been too slow in our lazy fucking town. And I was in the claws of the Devil’s Spawn.
Or whatever the hell they wanted to call themselves.
Sounds blurred together as the stench of my own vomit overwhelmed me. As if my body were willing to dehydrate itself on tears alone, they started streaking my cheeks again, and my mouth begged for more water. The slimy, foul taste of dinner stained the back of my throat. My clothes were torn and ragged from being tossed around by a bunch of men who I knew were going to kill me once they were done with me. After all, I knew their names. I’d seen their faces. There was no way in hell I had a life after they collected whatever measly sum of cash they were going after.
Tears dripped onto my chest, finding their death between my cleavage as they slipped beneath the collar of my shirt.
Before a phone got shoved into my face.
“You meet us as the exact coordinates, at the exact time, with theexactamount of money you owe us for the botched transaction, plus twenty percent for our heartache.” Ranger demanded, “Or, she dies, and I put your god damn fingerprints all over her corpse. Your choice.”
“What? No!” I cried out.
“Okay, okay, okay, okay! Fine! We can do it your way! We’re sorry, all right. Just—can you just let her go? Or get her out of there? I’m telling you, we still want the guns, and our boss is more than willing t—.”
