When he hears her muffled scream, he stops his trek to the stairs and turns. Their eyes meet and he rushes toward her. Feeling trapped, she does the only thing she knows, prepares to fight. How she’s going to fight is a mystery but one thing is for certain; she refuses to let this man hurt her without resistance. Even when defeat seems inevitable, she’s always ready for war.
Akeem steps toward her, grabbing the chair and her. She tries to free her now more tightly bound hands and wrists. Her tenacity and determination amuses him for some reason and he smirks as he pulls the chair upright.
“Don’t touch me,” she demands through winces. Her shoulder is killing her and the extreme pain throbs down her arm and up her neck. Unfortunately, she’s felt this pain before and knows what it is. “Sss,” she hisses lowly, trying to mask the excruciating sensation.
“It’s your shoulder,” he says before lightly touching the protruding ball of her upper arm bone. It’s clearly out of her shoulder socket, but only partially.
She winces again and tries to snatch away. The movement is unsuccessful and painful as shit. To hide her pain and draw her attention from it, she bites down on her bottom lip.
“Don’t move,” he says sternly. “I’m going to get ice and pop it back in.”
“Why bother if you’re going to kill me?” she spits.
“Because it needs to be fixed,” is all he offers before rushing to the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Who the fuck is he?
As her thoughts and pain collide, she chews on her lip again as a distraction. Her entire arm radiates with pain. When the biting doesn’t help, she surveys her surroundings and realizes she’s likely in a basement. Paneling all around, beams make up the ceiling, and the floors are hardwood. She’s tied up on a chair in a small dining area with four chairs and a table. The entire basement is open. She can see the small kitchen with appliances, the living room, a bedroom on a raised platform, and the bathroom visible through the cracked door off to the side of the bed. Her eyes travel to the lone window with a view of the ground. Seeing it confirms her basement suspicion.
Upstairs, Akeem journeys through the rental. The small ranch is cute, cozy, fully furnished, and decorated with a country-chic theme. Complimentary drinks are in the fridge with a welcome basket on the kitchen island that includes all local goods: mini bundt cakes, goat milk-based soap, a jar of jam, bottle of wine, a gift card to a mom and pop restaurant, menu folder, and a survival kit that luckily contains two travel packs of Tylenol. The two-bedroom, two-bath ranch home with the apartment-style basement has all the amenities needed for a perfect family vacation but this isn’t that. This is a temporary location until Akeem can figure out why Sunjiya’s eyes are so intriguing to him and how he’s getting her back to Miami.
Akeem goes inside the bathroom of the main bedroom and grabs a bath towel. Then he finds a plastic grocery bag in the kitchen pantry and fills it with ice from the fridge. After tying a knot in the bag, he grabs the Tylenol from the basket. The minute he becomes visible on the stairs, Sunjiya looks at him and doesn’t even blink until he’s in front of her.
“Your shoulder is partially dislocated and I’m going to pop it into place,” he tells her.
“Just take me to the hospital,” she snaps.
“Not gonna happen. Either I pop it in or you sit here in pain.”
“Don’t do me any favors. I’m go—” she begins but a sharp ass pain jolts through her arm, cutting her words off. “Shit!” she cries.
“Just stay still,” he says before placing the towel, bag of ice, and pills on the table closest to him. Then he pulls a small utility knife from his back pocket and cuts the zip tie from the wrist of her injured arm. He carefully holds her arm and rests her free hand on her lap. When he stands in front of her, he grabs her arm then leans in close to her. “This is going to hurt, but only for a minute,” he whispers while simultaneously popping her shoulder back into place.
“Fuck!” she cries, then almost instantly, the excruciating pain vanishes. “Oh,” she exhales while slowly lifting her shoulder.
Her grateful but still very leery eyes meet his but she doesn’t say anything and neither does he. He just grabs the bag of ice and holds it to her shoulder. After a few seconds, he grabs the towel, drapes it over the ice bag and her arm, then creates a sling by tying the ends of the towel together over her other shoulder. Their eyes lock again and she tries to figure out this conundrum of a man.
He obviously drugged me and took me from the apartment. He tied me up in this damn basement but he’s doing this. He’s tending to my wound, taking care of me, but why?
Everything about this moment is contradictory. He’s doing the total opposite of what she first thought when she opened her eyes, confusing the hell out of her. A myriad of questions run through her mind. However, only one makes it off her lips.
“What are you gonna do to me?” she asks.
“Make a call so you can go back to Miami,” he reveals.
“Miami? Back? I’ve never been to Miami,” she says adamantly.
“Alright. Bet,” he says dismissively. “We can pretend like that’s true but you’re going back. I was hired to do a job, find you and notify him, and that’s what I’m doing.”
“And you clearly have the wrong fucking person. I live in Atlanta, Georgia and just flew in this morning. The last time I was in Florida was over ten years ago and I was nowhere near Miami then. Either you’re lying or the person that so-called hired you is,” she spits.
“Let’s see,” is all he offers before turning and walking toward the small, wooden, carved table in front of the sofa.
“Just untie me and let me go. I promise I don’t even remember what you look like,” she says, lying.
Of course, she knows what he looks like. He’s handsome as hell. When he was caring for her shoulder, as much as she hated it, she couldn’t help but take him all in. She quickly dismissed his rich chocolate skin and the inked art on his neck visible under his hoodie, his chiseled chin and perfectly trimmed beard, thick, jet-black eyebrows covering his beautiful eyes that slightly droop on the corners. He’s gorgeous but she pushes that fact out of her mind because she encountered many handsome monsters in her past. Outside beauty often masked cold, blackened hearts and souls.
After grabbing the folder from Marcelin off the table, Akeem steps back toward her. Instead of standing or kneeling in front of her, he drags one of the dining chairs closer and sits next to her.
