I’m surprised; I’m not. Then again, I have to be in shock that Shadow’s here in my safe place.
I stop breathing, my heart slowly dying, my skin wanting to crawl right off my bones as I wait for him to make another move.
“I bet you’d do anything for one of your daddy’s guns right now, wouldn’t you? Be a good girl, and I might let you hold one. Unloaded, of course.” He chuckles.
For years every time I heard footsteps behind me or thought I saw someone’s shadow beside my own, I’d catch that laugh. It was one of the many things that haunted me at night. It rebounds in my ears as he replaces his hand with the cold barrel of a gun.
That cannot be my dad’s, can it?
I remain still while my heart bleeds all over the floor, knowing Shadow might have my dad’s guns. An angry realization settles over me, and I can’t help but wonder what else of my father’s things he might have. Does he have some of my mother’s things too? Knowing his mother and sister, they stuffed my family’s things away in storage to rot. Punishing me by claiming they sold everything when they didn’t. I want to claw his eyes out, shoot him with the guns he keeps running up and down my face at least a hundred times, and watch him bleed to death out of every single hole.
“I’ll be right back. If you run from me, I will track you down and kill you.”
My stomach pitches, and the rumble from being hungry surges into a ball of panic.
Maybe I’m not thinking clearly; perhaps my hormones are out of whack. It could be I’m afraid Shadow is going to sneak up on Logan and shoot him. Whatever the reason doesn’t matter, if he leaves me lying here, I’m going to find a way to kill him, to release that final chunk of him from my soul. For me, Logan, and our family once and for all, and then I’ll tear this town apart to find my father’s guns.
I let out a breath, my eyes springing open when he steps over me, pausing briefly before slamming the door behind him.
I always told myself that if I saw Shadow again, I’d fear for my life. I’d run and hide and let it rule me. The last time I saw him, I did. Well, not this time.
There’s no time for fear. Not when Logan is out there unprotected.
Shadow may have stripped my innocence away from me years ago, but he’s meeting a different person this time. A woman who found true love, and that is one thing I plan on keeping. “You will not take another thing away from me or Logan, Shadow.”
I catch sight of him descending the stairs on the deck as I peek over my shoulder. Pushing up, I move as quickly as my body will allow, grab a knife out of the block and my phone off the table.
With shaky fingers, I slide my phone open, hit Gabe’s number and lift the phone to my ear.
“Ellie, Jesus Christ, I’ve been trying to call you. Wherever you are, I need you to run. Do you hear me?”
Excitement sloshes in my veins. He knows, oh, thank God.
“Gabe. He, he, Shadow went outside. Logan is out there. I’m not leaving him behind.” There’s not a chance I’d leave him.
A gunshot plummets my heart into my stomach, and I jump. Everything inside of me cracking.
“Oh, my God, Logan.”
Pins and needles. They prick across my flesh as I wipe away the tears of gloom sliding down my cheeks.
I scream as gunshots go off one after another — boom after boom after boom, echoing and piercing me deeply. I drop the phone and cradle my hands over my ears. My heart rivals with my brain telling me to get down or run for help, to not take a chance by going outside because it’s uncertain of what I’ll find.
I lift the knife, ready to use it and ignore the primitive part of my brain. I’ll sacrifice my life to save Logan’s if that’s what it takes.
Lord knows he’s sacrificed enough of his to save mine.
I propel out the door with a steady determination; no other thoughts run through my mind except to get to Logan.
“God, if this is a nightmare, please let me wake up. I’ve had enough pain by the hands of that vicious beast with no heart to last the rest of my life.”
I barely make it one step when an answer comes for my half-assed prayer, and I’m thrown to the wooden deck boards, the knife slipping from my hands.
Body aching, mind on the verge of panicking, I kick at my assailant who is wearing all black. There’s a ski mask concealing his face. He’s a lot taller than Shadow, making me wonder how many people are here. Are there more in my house? How long have they been here? Do they know what kind of animal they are helping? They must if they are here.
Bastards.
“Get away from me,” I scream and crawl on my sore belly, nearly curling into the fetal position when a shot of pain so fierce hits my lower abdomen blurring my vision. Somehow I make it to the end of the deck before a boot strikes me in the side of my head. An astounding throb spreads across my skull as my already raw and aching frame sails through the air, and I smack my head into the railing, leaving me dizzy and disoriented.
I blink as another wave of shock hits my system. I try to clear the fog as I’m pulled to stand by the front of my dress and flung against the house, but I feel off balance. My ribcage rattles and my lungs struggle to work from the lack of oxygen as my back is pressed hard into the siding, knocking the wind right out of me.
“You won’t get away with this,” I scream and choke and gasp for air, bucking like a wild horse trying to get whoever this is off of me.
“Underestimation will make what Shadow and I are going to do to you so much sweeter. Keep telling yourself I won’t get away with this if it makes you feel better. Now, kneel, or I’ll drag you to that knife and force you.”
There’s something about the way he says force that heats my cheeks with anger.
I laugh. It’s humorless and bitter.
“Fuck you. I’ll die by that knife before I ever kneel for you.” I don’t know who this man is, but I know if I do what he says, my life as I know it will end the minute my knees hit the ground. If by chance I were to survive, I’d never know what happened to Logan, and that thought alone would have me curling into myself and begging to die.
With all the strength I can muster, I lift my leg and knee him in the balls. The surprise has him dropping like the sack of shit he is.
I run, disoriented and feeling so out of sorts as I scramble down the steps begging my tattered body to keep moving. I make it less than ten feet when I realize the gunshots have stopped and the only sound I hear now is coming from Logan as he lies on his back in the grass, wheezing, coughing, and gasping for air. Blood is soaking his shirt, and his eyes are wide open. Shadow is nowhere in sight.
“Logan,” I scream, but before I can reach him, arms wrap around my waist, my body lunging forward, and tumbling into the grass. The crushing weight spirals me into a full-fledged panic attack from not only the familiar smell on top of me but because I’m close enough to see the slight rise and fall of Logan’s chest. The twitching of the muscles in his face and worse, the way he slowly tilts his head toward me.
His eyes are glassed over. Lifeless and looking right through me.
“You can’t die on me, Logan Mitchell,” I whimper, defeat slowly draining out of me as I reach out and take hold of his hand. My equilibrium might be shaken up, but Logan’s hand is warm, that has to be a sign he’s going to be alright. I hope. “I’m right here, Logan. We’re going to be okay, remember. It’s all going to be okay.” Tears fall like a rapid river as I squeeze and he doesn’t squeeze back. Scared-stiff as I watch the life drain out of Logan’s blank eyes.
“No.” I repeat the word over and over until a hand clamps over my mouth.
Please let me wake up. Please. I don’t want to be in this nightmare anymore.
“Take a good long look; this is the last time you will see him. Finally having my hands on you couldn’t have worked out better for me. It’s too bad we can’t stay in the home where we first met. Tell me, should I burn it to the ground before the storm hits? Should I shoot Logan in the head right now and put hi
m out of his misery or should I let him stay here and wonder where you are and what I’m doing to you until he takes his last breath? The choice is yours.”
My vision fades in and out between the present and the past as Shadow grinds his erection into the crack of my ass.
I’m petrified. This is not a nightmare. It’s reality.
There’s something about the word petrified that makes it seem much stronger than fear. We can say that our hair stands on end, or that we are shaking in our shoes, or shaking like a leaf. We can say that our heart is pounding, or that we break out in a cold, damp sweat. To me, that’s fear. But being petrified, that’s when our blood runs cold, our minds fill with chaotic commotion and we either fight or flight.
Fight, Logan, please, I want to say, but Shadow is not only blocking off my ability to speak, he’s also making it impossible to breathe.
Broken sobs spill inside of me.
“Get up,” Shadow orders as he takes hold of the back of my neck and yanks me to an upright position. I feel the loss of Logan’s touch immediately. “Now walk.” He thrusts me forward. I’m gasping for air, trying to clear my head and the minute we walk past the side of the house is the second I know if he takes me, I won’t be able to get Logan the help he needs.
I rear back my elbow and connect with his stomach, the shock loosening his grip just enough for me to break free.
I run back toward Logan.
“You fucking whore,” he calls out angrily, grabs me around the waist, and carries my thrashing body to the front of the house. I kick, scream, and try to break my arms free, but I’m too weak.
I will myself to hold it together, be strong and pray that Logan doesn’t die, but the minute I see a dark-colored car in the drive, the man with the ski mask opening the trunk, I begin to lose hope.
“Get in,” Shadow demands, releasing me and spinning me around to face him. I begin shaking my head, trying to contain my sobs.
“No, you’ll have to kill me before I leave Logan here to die.” I refuse to look at Shadow, but I feel him staring down at me.
“Say his name in front of me again, and I’ll drag you back there, place this gun in your hand and aim it at his head. Together we’ll pull the trigger,” he roars as his hand comes up and crashes across my face — scorching white light flashes before my eyes.
“You need help, both of you do,” I cry out, my tears drying in an instant. I refuse to cry anymore.
I’ve come too far to give up on hope, on Logan, and I won’t give these animals the satisfaction of watching me break.
“Sweet Ellie. I have all the help I need. You, on the other hand, have none.” Shadow pauses, shaking his head. “I’m done letting Logan take from me. You’ve always been mine. Now get in the fucking trunk.”
In and out I breathe in the damp air, gasping as much of it as I can into my lungs. I hope and pray with everything I have that it doesn’t take Gabe long to get here in time to save Logan.
“I was never yours to begin with, I’ll never be yours.” I try to let out a scream, to turn and run again, but it’s no use when Shadow covers my mouth with his putrid hand and grabs my wrists with the other.
“Don’t fight this. It’s going to happen,” he threatens. “I’m going to take what’s belonged to me all along, and this time, you’re going to watch me as I fuck you. I have plans for your betrayal, Ellie. Plans that will make you beg for my cock just to make me stop. I’m going to make you pay for fucking my enemy.”
I can’t say what my mind wants to because the moment Shadow removes his hand from my mouth, it’s replaced with a cloth, and before I can spit it out, something pricks me in the back of my neck.
My world and my life, it flashes behind my eyes, and I drift into the one place my mind has always been able to hide.
Into the darkness. The one place where Shadows don’t exist.
Chapter Two
Logan
I don’t know how long I’ve been enjoying the rain and the thunder that cracks through the sky, long enough to hear someone’s deep panic-filled voice calling my name.
My insides tremble as the persistent yelling blares through my ears, causing my head to spin. It’s nonstop — a constant fucking chant for someone to hurry up and stop the bleeding. Whoever it is, is shredding the last bit of my sanity.
The pain that once burned like a fire has dulled to an icy numbness. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth, and blackness fills the edges of my brain.
My breathing is coming in ragged, shallow gasps as the rain pelts against my face, and Ellie’s screams pound around that wall of yelling. Both are refusing to be confined.
“Open your eyes, Logan. Goddamn it.”
A rough hand presses against my cheek. It pisses me off that they’ve blocked me from feeling the rain. What the hell do they think they’re going to do, save me? If I could, I’d laugh. Surely they can tell that it’s far too late for me, it’s Ellie they need to save.
“There’s a ring in my pocket, give…” I cough, biting my tongue. Gagging at the coppery taste of blood in my throat. Jesus, that shit is nasty. “If I die, give it to Ellie.” The words barely leave my mouth before my body goes numb, and the weight of someone shaking me starts to piss me off even more.
“You aren’t dying; you’ve lost a shit ton of blood though. Help him, damn it.”
It sure the hell feels like I’m dying. There’s no other explanation as to why the very air I’m trying to breathe in is suffocating the ever-loving hell out of me with every breath I take.
I clench my hands into fists, arms swinging until I meet flesh, and the rain hits me again.
“Shit, hold him down.” An unfamiliar voice slices through the ruckus.
The air I try to breathe in is dejected by the overexertion from my hands fighting off whoever the hell is trying to hold me down.
“If I’m not dying, then get the hell off of me. I have to save Ellie.”
A flare goes off in the pit of my stomach. It shoots bright, bold shades of red in every direction. Everything I see is a shade of that color.
The rain, the earth, the sky, the dirt, it’s all washing away with my blood. Of course, it doesn’t wash away my sins. They are mocking and laughing, screaming with all they have that this is my fault.
A needle pricks my arm, and I slowly fade. It sends my heart into a pounding frenzy because I’d found a slice of Heaven on Earth, and I can’t see her, can’t feel her warmth around me. Instead, all I see is whoever the out-of-focus person that’s yelling in my ear fades, and as my heart slows, all I see is the smile on my mother’s face.
It’s warm and inviting, and if I weren’t sliding away and entering a dark vortex that scares the hell out of me, I’d laugh at that too — my mother, of all people? I must be drifting to Hell.
How fucking bittersweet.
That would be my luck to see the woman who I always blamed for the man I’d become because Hell was the place for people like her and me: the worthless mother and her whore of a son.
The memories of the day I wished my mother to Hell slink right into my sluggish brain.
My eyes shoot directly across from me to my friend Shadow, who stands next to his uncle with his hands shoved in his pockets. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Shadow was the only one amongst all these people with a smile on his face. It wasn’t a natural smile either, it was crooked, the kind where one side lifts higher than the other. Almost like he wanted to laugh but knew if he did, his uncle would slap him upside his head. A hook smile as my dad used to call them. One that expressed trouble was brewing behind it.
The Devil in disguise.
I wanted to beat his ass as the smirk grew wider when he looked up to catch me staring. I lifted a brow in a challenge and then closed my eyes thinking maybe when I reopened them I’d be wrong. After all, I’d barely slept for days.
When they fluttered back open, I sighed in relief. Shadow wasn’t smiling; he was frowning as his gaze shifted from me to my brother
’s. I didn’t care why he was looking sad rather than happy like I thought. Good thing too because I had bigger things to worry about than figuring out what the heck was going on with him.
I hadn’t known Shadow or his sister Whitney long, and at times some of the shit he said freaked me out, but the two of them seemed alright the few times we’d hung out. Shadow was fun and was always on a rant about the two of us becoming rich while Whitney followed us around sponging up every word that came out of our mouths.
“Big dreams and possibilities,” Shadow said one day when we were shooting a basketball. “One of these days we’re going to take over our families’ businesses. You rule the sex world, and I’ll rule my uncle’s world. When we both get the gist of it, we’ll combine and own it all. From here to New York. Sex and money. We need both to make the world go round and become kings. At least that’s what my mother says.”
I didn’t know what he thought he was going on about, I sure the hell wasn’t taking over my family’s business. There wasn’t a chance in hell. The only way I would is if I had no other choice.
And my dad, he always told me and my brothers we had a choice to become whatever we wanted to be. I wasn’t sure yet, but I liked to draw. A hobby no one except my family members knew about.
Shadow was quite protective of his sister too. A lot like me with my brothers, although I had this sense that hit me in the gut, I needed to protect them a lot more after today. It didn’t have anything to do with Shadow. It had to do with my mother and her downward spiral into not giving a flying fuck she had kids to take care of. Bitch suddenly went off the deep end.
Headfirst.
“I promise always to protect my younger brothers and anyone else who needs it, Dad. I won’t let you down, but Mom, she’s not acting like herself.” I silently vowed and lowered my head. I wanted to talk to him more. I needed to tell him the things Mom was doing, the way she was acting and how she forgot about my brothers and me. The thing is, my dad couldn’t hear me. He was dead, and it was up to me to be the man of the house.
Unbound Trilogy Boxset Page 41
