Page 54 of His Kidnapped Irish Mafia Virgin

Someone had stopped the bleeding, but they hadn’t taken me to a hospital. I tried to sit up, and a wave of dizziness washed over me. I held onto the edge of the mattress until the room stopped spinning.

Then the memories came rushing back.

My mother lying on the floor. Victor Hale standing in the doorway, gun in his hand. The loud gunshot, the sharp pain in my arm. I covered my mouth with my good hand as the truth hit me. Victor had shot me. He’d hurt my mother. He’d taken me.

I wasn’t safe. I looked around the room quickly, searching for a way out. The walls were rough and unfinished, and the floor was covered with dust. A small window sat high above me, too small for me to climb through. The only door was made of heavy metal.

Damn, I was trapped. I’d come to my old house thinking I could protect my mother and face my past on my own. Instead, I’d walked straight into Victor’s trap.

I felt someone watching me before I turned my head. The feeling crawled across my skin, cold and heavy, and made my stomach twist with fear. Slowly, I looked toward the corner of the room.

Victor Hale was sitting there. He was leaning back in a chair as if he had all the time in the world. His hands rested calmly on his knees, and his face showed no anger, no surprise, and no guilt. He was simply watching me. His eyes were cold as he looked at me the same way he always had, as though I belonged to him.

“Finally awake,” he said. His voice was calm. That shit frightened me more than if he’d shouted.

I tried to move away from him, but the pain in my arm made me gasp. I pressed my back against the wall beside the mattress, keeping as much distance between us as I could.

“Where’s my mother?” I asked, my voice shaking.

He didn’t answer immediately. He studied me for a moment, then gave a small shrug.

“She’s alive,” he said. “For now. And if you want to keep her that way, it’s your choice.”

The words made my chest tighten. “What did you do to her?”

“I did what I had to do,” he replied. “You forced my hand when you ran away all those years ago.”

I stared at him, unable to believe how calmly he spoke about ruining people’s lives.

“You shot me,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said, as if admitting something unimportant. “And I stopped the bleeding. You should be grateful.”

A wave of disgust rose inside me.

Victor leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. “You think you escaped me, Nora,” he said. “You took my money and disappeared, and you thought that was the end of it. But money isn’t something you steal and forget. You owe me a debt.”

I shook my head. “I took that money so I could survive.”

“You took what belonged to me,” he said. “And I’ve spent years waiting for the right moment to collect your debt.”

“What are you talking about?”

Victor smiled, but there was no warmth in it. Fear spread through me like ice.

“I’m talking about value,” he said. “You owe me more than money now. You owe me for the years I spent searching for you, for the trouble you caused, and for the humiliation of being stolen from.”

My hands trembled. “What do you want from me?”

His eyes hardened. “To sell you. To recoup the amount you stole and pay for the other damages you caused. There are people who will pay very well for someone like you.”

For a second, I couldn’t breathe. The room seemed to close in around me, and the weak yellow light suddenly felt too small, too far away. I looked at Victor Hale and finally understood the truth.

He didn’t see me as his stepdaughter. He didn’t even see me as a person. He saw me as property. I was just like a piece of furniture, something he believed he owned.

Fear filled my chest, but after a while it changed into something harder. I was still terrified of Victor Hale. My arm still hurt badly, and my body felt weak from blood loss and exhaustion. But I knew one thing clearly: if I gave up now, I would never leave this place alive.

I forced myself to breathe slowly and look around the room again. The small window was too high and too narrow for me to climb through, especially with my injured arm, so that was out of the question. The metal door looked heavy, and I could already tell it was locked from the outside.