Page 54 of Blissful Devotion

That’s silly, though; the only one who would come looking for me is Lorenzo, and he’s the one who put me in here.

Shaking the thought away, I finally scrape up the courage to turn the handle. My heart sinks when it hardly budges.

It’s locked.

No. No. No!

I try again, but it still doesn’t budge, and with every failed twist of the knob, the air around me gets thicker and harder to breathe.

‘Kat!’

Maybe I wasn’t imagining it after all.

“Katherine!” The voice is closer this time, and something about it feels familiar. It’s not Lorenzo, and while I can’t put my finger on who it might be, I’m not dumb enough to think I’ll get another chance out of here on my own.

“I’m in here…” my voice cracks, hardly more than a whisper, soft and pathetic from all the time I’ve spent crying, and I groan in annoyance at my own weakness before I try again.

“I’m in here!” I shout, pounding my fist on the door before I stop to listen.

“Kat?” This time the voice is nearly on top of me, the deep, husky sound washing over me, and for the first time since the door slammed shut, I feel like I can breathe.

“In here!”

This time, when the knob jiggles, it’s not me.

“It’s locked,” the voice shouts, and I feel myself deflate. I’d hoped he could open it from that side. “Move away from the door, Kat.”

I listen, scrambling backward, and a second later I hear the wood splinter and the door burst open hard enough to hit the wall, then swing closed again. The man who’d been calling me catches it, and‌ for a moment I’m blinded by the light behind him.

I throw up my arm to hide away, blinking hard to try and see who this man, my savior, is.

Oh…

He’s handsome, tall, and well-built with thick arms. He’s wearing all black, from his tight long-sleeved T-shirt down to his jeans and boots. His hair is short on the sides, with tattoos peeking through. His hair is a little longer on top, darker but dusted with grays in a disguised salt-and-pepper kind of way that is way more attractive than it should be. His beard is short but‌ with the same coloring that gives him a rugged look.

Or maybe it's the gun and the deep frown on his lips.

His eyes are hard as he squints, probably trying to see into the darkness, but even with how intimidating he seems, I don’t feel an ounce of fear; no need to run from his gaze.

Everything about him feels familiar, safe.

“Kat?” He strides into the room, and my eyes land on the gun clutched in his hand that hangs at his side. Despite that, the urge to run to him is all-consuming, the way I expected it to feel when I came down and found Lorenzo back from his trip, and I move before I can think it all the way through.

I hit him hard enough that the air is forced from my lungs, but that doesn’t stop the sob that breaks past my lips when his arm wraps around me, pulling me close.

“Fuck, Little Beauty, I missed you.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling the tears that run down my cheeks. Ten minutes ago I would have sworn I couldn’t have had a single tear left, but now it’s as if I have plenty to spare.

The air’s too thin as I gasp and my chest heaves, but I feel no relief as the room spins, and I want to tell him I missed him too, but the words won’t come out. Clinging to him with the last of my strength, I squeeze him tight and hope he understands what I can’t bring myself to say as the world goes dark and exhaustion and panic get the best of me.

It took too long—weeks of digging, dead end after dead end, before Spencer finally found a lead. It was just a whisper of Trigger, but they found him. Jade and her guys shut him down, but that took time too, and I feared what we might find after so long.

Lorenzo had so much time with her, and every waking moment was spent thinking of terrible things she might have endured at his hands, each worse than the last.

Even years later, I could never forget the state we found Alex in.

Trigger had given Lorenzo up without a moment's hesitation, and we’d started planning her rescue even before Jade was done ‘handling’ him.