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Chapter Thirty-One

Carly

My mouth is painfully dry as I peel my eyes open, squinting at the harsh light above me. My shoulders scream with a searing pain and tingles shoot down my arms and into my hands. Where am I? I try to turn but my body stays rooted to the spot and I look up, fear spiking my heart. My hands are tied above my head, strung up in the air with a thick rope. It’s thrown over a bar before disappearing behind me and my legs are tied to the legs of the wooden chair I’m seated in. It squeaks as I wiggle and I start to tremble as my head pounds. This is all too familiar. The dry mouth and pounding head remind me of that night, or more specifically, the morning after when I woke up in my bed, covered in bruises.

No.

This can’t be happening again.

“Look who finally decided to rejoin the land of the living,” a familiar voice says and I gulp in air as I scan the room, searching the concrete walls for the source of the voice. The damp, stagnant air stings my nose and my stomach rolls as my heart thunders in my ears. “Those drugs knocked you out longer than I thought they would. I’ve been getting impatient over here.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

The voice laughs, a truly evil sound that sends goose bumps racing across my flesh, and Julian steps out of the shadows. The mask is gone; showing the monster I always knew was underneath. “Oh, I think you know what I want, Carly.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I shake my head as a bead of sweat rolls down the side of my face and the hair on my arms stands on end. When I open my eyes again, I pray this will all just be a bad dream. I’ll be at the clubhouse with Chance, safe in his arms, and not trapped in this hell with a demon I know all too well. But my prayers go answered. I open my eyes and Julian smiles at me. I bite my tongue to hold the cry that desperately wants to break free.

This can’t be happening.

“What are you going to do? Hold me hostage until she comes back to you?” I ask. He nods, wagging his finger at me.

“You are a smart girl, I’ll give you that.”

I shake my head, a deep hatred burning away some of my fear. “It won’t work. She won’t ever come back to you.”

A smile curves his lips and I break out in a cold sweat. “See, that’s where you’re wrong.”

He stalks over to me and holds his hand up between us, letting it hover over my skin for a moment and my jaw clenches as I watch him. He leans in closer and trails his fingers over my cheek, his eyes darkening as he bites his lip.

“Once your sister realizes I have you, she’ll come running home because she knows what I’ll do to you if she doesn’t.”

“This isn’t her home,” I bite out as I lurch away from his touch and jerk my hands, shaking the rope above me.

“Ah, ah,” he taunts, pulling a large hunting knife out from behind his back. I freeze, watching him as he takes a deliberate step toward me and a fresh wave of terror blooms in my chest. I jerk again, the need to flee overwhelming my common sense. When he reaches me, he kneels down and moves the knife toward my legs. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to picture this morning when I was in bed with Chance or last night as he made love to me, anything to get me through what comes next. The swoosh of the knife cutting through something fills the air and when the pain doesn’t follow, I open my eyes.

One leg is free of the ropes binding it to the chair and Julian moves to the other, slicing through the rope with ease. I frown. Why would he free my legs? Licking my lips, I study him as he stands and moves behind me, my belly quivering as I twist in my seat. When he gets to the wall, he stops and smiles as he unties the rope from a hook and jerks it down, pulling me into a standing position as I scream in pain.

“God,” he groans, doing it again as pain lances through my body. My toes barely touch the floor and the constant pain in my shoulders is making me woozy. “I love that sound.”

My stomach rolls as I drop my head and suck in a breath. I didn’t understand, not until this very moment, just how deranged Julian is. But I could see it on his face as I screamed… it turned him on. He’s a sadist in the purest form of the word. With a gleam in his eyes, he ties the rope back around the hook and stalks toward me, holding the knife in front of his face.

“There,” he whispers, inching closer to me. “Now we can talk.”

My gaze flicks over to the knife, hovering inches away from my face as light glints off the flat part of the blade. “Okay, let’s talk.”

“You took something from me,” he accuses as he tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes.

“Ivy is not a thing and she left; I didn’t take her.”

His lip curls back in a snarl and his nostrils flare. “She wouldn’t have left. I made sure of that.”

“No, what you did is exactly what drove her away,” I snap and he rushes forward, wrapping a hand around my throat as he presses the tip of the knife to my cheek.

“She knew the consequences for leaving and if she doesn’t come back to me, it will cost you your life.”

A chill blankets me and my chest tingles as I raise my head and meet his eyes. “Go ahead and kill me. It will be worth it as long as she’s free.”

He throws his head back and laughs, releasing my throat as he takes a step back and pulls the knife away.