“Oh, Eden, you know you love it, really. I bet you take half of your clientele behind closed curtains and fuck their little brains out, so why not me?” He pinches one clip over my erect nipple before moving to stimulate the other.
“Why?” I scream at him. “Why couldn’t you just leave me the fuck alone? It’s been six years!”
He clasps the clamp to the other nipple and gives it a tug, making me cry out.
“Oh, sweet, naïve Eden. Did you really think I didn’t know where you were all along?”
My blood runs cold at his words. He has to be bluffing. Oh, god, please be bluffing.
“Well, I gave you a year’s head start because I’m a good sport like that, but I’ve known exactly where you’ve been for the last five years. I’m a cop for Christ sake.”
He misses my relieved exhale that he wasn’t following me from the start.
“That sweet old lady, Molly, that you helped out? The one that approached you in that greasy little café you liked so much, who offered you a place to rent cheaply in return for running her errands, is a dear old friend of the family. You see, I’ve been across from you more times than you can count. I’ve been inside your apartment, hell I’ve jerked off to you sleeping as I stood over the bed watching you.”
“You sick fuck! Why didn’t you just kill me then? It’s been months since I got my inheritance.”
“Oh, I know, but I get bored easily and needed a new game. Besides, I had to make sure I had all my ducks in a row. I had to give my—shall we say—helper time to find a patsy to take the fall. When poor old Raymond made bail today as I anticipated, I took my chance. He’s currently awaiting his fate, much like you, only he’ll go down in history as a murderer who took his own life in guilt and you’ll be just another dead whore.
“Now I just have to decide how I want to do it. The method in which I wanted to kill you has changed over the years. At first, I was so angry I wanted to pummel you until you were nothing more than a bloody mess on the floor but you becoming a stripper inspired me. You see, there are so many things I’ve fantasised about doing to you that I figured I could have some fun first.”
He walks back to the bed and picks up the ball gag and the dildo before turning around and grinning at me. I thrash about as hard as I can but the rope won’t budge. Why won’t it just fucking break?
“You won’t get away with this,” I sob. But even as I say it, I don’t believe it.
“Oh, of course I will, Eden. Isn’t that why you ran in the first place? Because I always win in the end—” he cuts off whatever else he was going to say when something beeps from his pocket.
He pulls out his phone and curses. Walking up to me he pinches my nose until I’m forced to open my mouth and suck in a lungful of air. He seizes his chance and shoves the ball gag into my mouth and secures it behind my head. His phone beeps again, making him sigh. He tosses the dildo back onto the bed and I swear I have never felt so relieved in my life.
“It seems I have company approaching. I have to go and act natural, whatever the fuck that means. Then I think I will leave you to stew for a little while, give you a chance to think about what’s going to happen as I have a couple of drinks and secure my alibi.”
He laughs like my life is just one big expendable joke as he tightens the screws on the clamps, making me scream into the gag. The sounds of a car approaching has him turning and hurrying back up the steps.
I listen as someone knocks loudly against the front door. The relief is immense as I hear the police enter but it’s nothing to how I feel when I hear Noah’s booming voice a few seconds later. I can’t make out any words as they drift further into the house, but I can hear the sound of feet moving around as they search, presumably for me. There is no clock down here so I have nothing to gauge the time, but I think it’s been about thirty minutes when people start heading back out the door. It starts to get quiet upstairs and I can feel myself panicking. What’s going on? Why haven’t they come downstairs for me?
“Fuck you, you piece of shit. I know you have her. I will find her and when I do if one hair on her head is damaged, I will fucking kill you.” I hear Noah shout before Karl responds.
“Threatening an ex-police officer is a stupid thing to do, son. I’m not the villain she has painted me out to be. You are just seeing Eden under rose-tinted glass.”
“Fuck you.” He storms out of the house, his feet stomping against each step in anger.
He’s leaving? My pulse races out of control when I finally realise they don’t know I’m here. They don’t fucking know I’m here! I thrash until my arms go numb and I can barely lift my head but nothing more than a whimper makes it past the gag.
Please don’t leave me here, Noah, oh god please come back. But he doesn’t, and I can’t hear his footsteps anymore. I sob, struggling to breathe with the gag in the way as my heart breaks with the knowledge that my one chance of survival has just slipped away. Knowing Noah will lose the fucking plot when he finds out I was trapped beneath him all along has me fighting back my vomit yet again so I don’t choke to death.
Manic laughter breaks through my meltdown as Karl makes his presence known. He is loving this. He thrives on making me weak. Well, fuck you, Karl, you piece of shit. If I get even the slimmest chance of getting loose, I will kill you myself.
“See you soon, Eden. Feel free to hang around,” he shouts down to me as he slams the front door behind him but his laughter echoes after him.
I want to pull at my ropes some more, but they haven’t loosened at all and I can barely feel my hands anymore. If I do any more damage to them, I run the risk of incapacitating myself further. As much as my surviving this night is a long shot, I won’t go down without a fight. I have run away for too long. Now that isn’t an option anymore. Now I will give everything I have to survive and get back to my men. Or die trying.
Chapter Twenty
ELI
“I swear to fucking Christ if you don’t get a handle on this, I’m going to knock you the fuck out. I don’t want to sit here waiting for news any more than you do but you can’t just join a fucking police raid will-nilly. Be grateful Noah has a friend that could get him in there. He’ll get her back. Get your shit together, man, she’s going to need you.”
I watch Mason as he keeps pacing, but he takes a deep breath and blows it out before doing it again and again. Eventually, he calms enough to sit while we wait for news. When the door slams open downstairs ten minutes later, we’re both on our feet and charging down there. We were expecting a phone call, but this is even better. This means she’s home.
Except she’s not.
We come to a halt in the kitchen and find Noah braced on his forearms over the kitchen island with his head bowed. He looks to us when we walk in and I can see that his eyes are wet and filled with grief.
“No! No, Noah, don’t you dare do this. She’s okay, right? You found her, and she is at the hospital getting checked out?” I beg him, my legs threatening to give out from underneath me.
His shoulders shake as he tries to rein in his emotions but it’s pointless when mine are running wild and free.
“Fucking tell me!” I shove him, and he stumbles to catch himself before standing and charging towards me. Before he can lay a finger on me, Mason steps between us and with a hand on each of our chests pushes us back, away from each other.
“I couldn’t find her. Is that what you want me to say? That I failed. I couldn’t find her like I couldn’t find my dad and now we’ll be stuck in limbo until her body washes up somewhere in years to come.” Bad move.
Mason steps forward and swings his fist into the side of Noah’s jaw. He catches himself on the side of the island before he falls. We all stand there breathing heavily, nobody speaking because that would make everything real. At least this way I can pretend that it’s all just a bad fucking dream and tomorrow I’ll wake up to Eden singing in the kitchen as she potters around making breakfast. All the things I didn’t think I wanted a
re now the things I can’t live without. I don’t want to go back to the life I had without Eden in it.
“She is not dead and fuck you for thinking it. If she were dead, I would feel it. I would know. So, all I really care about is finding her. What are you going to do now, Noah? Because I, well I’m going to figure out where he would have taken her even if I have to knock on every goddamn door in the country.”
Noah just stares at Mason, not saying anything.
“I’ll pull up all the information I can on any of the properties he might have links to and run a check on friends and family, see what they own,” I tell Mason, both of us staring at Noah, willing him to say something but it’s like he’s frozen in place.
“Oh, come on,” Mason shouts. “It was you that wanted this relationship so fucking badly. God knows I would have happily run off into the sunset with Eden. She is literally the girl of my dreams, I just hadn’t banked on her being the girl of yours too. We agreed not to make her choose, that we loved her enough individually to love her as part of a collective. I thought we were a team, man. Fuck, I thought we were friends. Guess when it really comes down to it—” I cut him off before he says something he can’t take back.
“What Mason is saying, Noah, is now is the time to fight. To prove to Eden just what kind of men we are, that she was right to take a shot on us all in the first place. Eden would never give up on you, man, don’t give up on her.”
He stands up, the side of his jaw is red and starting to swell so I grab a bag of peas from the freezer and toss them to him.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” he says as he catches them one-handed.
“Tell us exactly what happened at the house.”
He leans back against the island as he recalls his story. “We knocked, and he let us in. It was odd, he seemed almost excited. We started at the top, in the attic that has been converted into the master bedroom, and worked our way back down to the kitchen, but she wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
“Basement,” I say, correcting him. Force of habit.
“Huh?”
“You said you searched down to the kitchen not down to the basement.” They both look at me like I have two heads. Right time and place. I wave my hand for him to continue. “Sorry man carry on.”
“The house doesn’t have a basement, it doesn’t even have a garage.”
“None of the houses in that area have garages but they do all have basements.”
“Eli, I’m telling you, we searched every inch of that house. There was no basement.”
I can feel my senses come on full alert and the other guys must sense it too because the room suddenly becomes electric.
“All the houses on that street were built at the turn of the century and each of them has a sub-basement underground with no access from the outside. No windows, no external door. The only way in or out is through an internal door usually located in the kitchen.”
They both gape at me for a second but I shrug it off.
“Fuck you, I like architecture so sue me, but answer me this. If the house has no attic now that it’s converted and no garage, where do they store things such as Christmas decorations?”
Noah tosses the peas in the sink and grabs me by the arms. “Eli, you’re a fucking genius. He has this monstrosity of a double fridge in the kitchen. You know the ones I mean. It’s huge and looks completely out of place in the fifties-style kitchen.”
“But it’s the perfect size to conceal a door,” Mason finishes, catching on quickly. “Let’s go.” He snags Noah’s keys from the counter and heads out the door with Noah and me hot on his heels.
“We’ll call the police but only after we have Eden. I highly doubt they’ll be in any rush to get another search warrant and there is no way they’re keeping me from going in there,” Noah tells us from the passenger’s seat.
We make the forty-minute drive in twenty, which in London is a miracle. We pull up and don’t even bother with knocking as Mason kicks the door in as if it were made of nothing more than paper.
The three of us head to the kitchen to move the fridge out of the way and low and behold there is a motherfucking door. Mason doesn’t need to kick the door in this time as it swings open with a turn of the knob. We thunder down the stairs taking two at a time and walk into a nightmare that will haunt me for the rest of my days. Eden is hanging from a hook on the ceiling with tiny streams of blood running from her bound wrists down her arms and down her body. She lifts her head to the commotion, but it looks like it takes the last of her energy as it flops forward again.
She whimpers and it spurs us all into action. Mason and Noah rush over and remove the gag from her mouth before they lift her as gently as they can up into the air so that they can unhook her. Mason pulls her to his chest and holds her while she cries softly, muttering to herself over and over.
“You came.”
I slip my black T-shirt over my head and walk towards them as she spots me over Mason’s shoulder.
“Be careful where you stand. I wet myself. I’m sorry,” she murmurs, embarrassment and shame turning her face red.
“Nothing for you to worry about, sweetheart,” I reassure her, each of her words stabbing into my skin like splinters.
“No, fuck that.” She whips her head around to Noah as her face pales. He stomps up to her, not caring that she is in Mason’s arms and leans down and places a kiss on her forehead. “You have fuck all to be sorry about Eden, do you hear me? You don’t need to apologise for fucking anything.”
She moves to turn towards him slightly then winces.
“What is it?” Noah’s brow furrows in concern.
She looks away from him, from all of us as she focuses on a blank spot on the wall. I watch the tears slide down her cheeks, making me grit my teeth together to stop bawling like a baby myself. She needs us to be strong now.
“Let’s get this T-shirt on you okay?” I stand next to Noah and hold the neck of my T-shirt open and wait for her to lift her arms, but she doesn’t move or look away from that damn spot on the wall.
“Eden?” Mason says her name softly against her ear. She finally focuses back on us, well, on Noah.
“I need you to take them off.” Her voice breaks over her words
“What’s that, Eden?” he asks, confused but when she tilts her head down, we all track her movement to her chest.
I clench my fist so hard it’s a wonder I don’t crack my bones. Mason is as still as a statue. I’m not even sure he is breathing but Noah, he surprises me. He presses a soft, barely-there kiss against her lips and uses the pad of his thumbs to wipe away her tears. He doesn’t make a big deal out of his actions he just carefully and quietly loosens the screws at the side of the clamps and removes them. Her nipples look raw and painful with red and purple dots where the blood has pooled under the surface of her skin. Her back arches up and she cries out as the blood rushes back in. Mason walks over to the side of the bed and sits with her in his lap, rocking her until her crying lessens to whimpers. I bend down in front of her, ignoring Mason looking at me with his own tears in his eyes and focus solely on our girl. I gently lift her arms one at a time and slide the T-shirt over her head before tugging it down to offer her some modesty.
“Let’s get you out of here, sweetheart.”
“Not so fast.”
We all whip round to find Karl standing on the stairs with a gas can in his left hand, dousing the steps in petrol, holding a lighter in his right.
“Fuck!” Noah explodes, taking a step in front of me, Mason and Eden.
“I wouldn’t bother, Mr Scott. If you come one step closer I will blow this place sky high. Now come here, Eden.”
“Fuck you, asshole, Eden isn’t going anywhere with you,” Mason growls at him, tucking Eden firmly against his chest.
Karl sighs like we’re just one big inconvenience to him. “I really don’t appreciate you guys messing with my plans. Eden, I don’t like being kept waiting. What did I say about plans?”
“You always have a backup,” she answers, sitting up straighter in Mason’s arms, her voice void of any emotion.
“Yes, that’s right, good girl. Now, these are the choices available to you. One, you stay right where you are and I’ll block you in here and burn this place to the ground with everyone in it.” Her eyes widen in horror as she takes in his words. “You, Eden, will get to watch everyone you love burn to death knowing you can’t do anything about it.” He smiles, and I wonder how nobody noticed just how psychotic this guy was before.
“Or you can come with me and we’ll just lock them in. By the time someone finds them, we’ll be long gone.”
She tries to stand but Mason stops her. “You’re hurting me,” she tells him gently. I don’t know if that’s the truth or a ploy, but it has the desired effect when he lets go and she jumps up.
“I’ll go with you. I won’t even fight you as long as you promise that you’ll leave them here safe and unharmed.”
“No fucking way, Eden.” Noah sticks his arm out to keep her behind him. “You take one more step and I will tan your ass when I get hold of you.”
“I have to, guys, I’m sorry. If I stay, we’ll all die anyway. I can’t run that risk. Please, don’t make my last moments on this earth be watching you burn.”
Mason jumps up but freezes when Karl shouts, “Nobody fucking move except Eden. Tick tock daughter dearest, what will it be?”
“If you do this, Eden, I will never forgive you,” Mason tells her, his voice harsh and brutal and painful to hear.
“I have to,” she whispers, her voice just as broken.
“No, Eden, no,” Noah shouts at her.
“Let her go,” I tell them. I don’t raise my voice but they all hear me. They look at me in disgust, like I’m betraying them and maybe I am, but Eden’s right too. If she doesn’t go with him now, none of us is getting out of this basement alive. They are just incapable of turning off their protective natures. Eden takes advantage of their distraction and makes her way over towards Karl. Every step she takes towards him feels like a knife straight to the heart but this is the only shot we have. When she’s close enough, he drops the gas canister and grabs Eden by her hair, pulling her up the steps.
The Promise of Tomorrow: An Inheritance Novel Page 19
