by Hanna Peach
“Yeh, baby. Look at you touching yourself. You did fuckin’ miss me, didn’t you?”
His fingers rub harder between my legs and he starts to grunt and thrust his hips against my ass. I struggle not to retch.
“I’m gonna fuck you so good. Like old times, right, princess? Don’t worry, you can be as loud as you want. I’ve told my men to leave us alone. Just you and me, princess.”
I slip my fingers under my bra and find what I’m looking for. My fingers grab the short, thin flat knife. I snatch it out and stab it into his right thigh in one swift move. He lets out a howl and his hands loosen from me. I elbow him aside and run for the window. As I reach it I aim with my left elbow out. My arm crashes through the glass with a shatter. I feel where pieces of glass cut into my skin, but I don’t care. I smash more pieces out of the window and I lift a leg to hoist myself out, slashing my thigh as I do.
Two hands grab my shoulders and yank me back. I scream as my leg scrapes along broken glass and I’m thrown aside. I hit my head against the wall and the world goes blurry. I feel dizzy but I force myself up to my feet. I feel Jacob grabbing me and shoving me again. This time I land on the mattress. Jacob has spun and he’s advancing at me. He’s partly silhouetted against the light, but I can see the deadly scowl on his face and the furious gleam in his eyes. His right thigh is oozing blood from where I’ve stabbed him. The knife has gone. He must have thrown it aside.
“I am going to hurt you for that. I’m gonna make it hurt so bad.”
He launches himself at me. I kick back along the mattress trying to get away. But I’m still dizzy enough that my reaction isn’t fast enough. Jacob climbs on top of me, his heavy weight pressing me down into the mattress and his hot breath panting all over me.
My skin crawls as Jacob forces his knees between my legs. I hear my skirt tearing. I hear screaming and it takes me a second to realize that it’s coming from me. My body starts to claw and thrash. When he gets my hands under control, it’s my legs and knees that are battling him. I’m not giving up. Never. Not this time. I laugh hysterically when I get an elbow into the side of his face. He roars and calls me names but I don’t give up.
He backhands me across the face and my cheek explodes with pain, my head whiplashing to one side. I can feel the sharp sting where one of his rings has cut into my cheekbone. I ignore it. This pain is nothing compared to what I will feel if I don’t get away.
I send a punch to the side of his head and manage to clip him twice until he forces my arm down again. Even though he’s stronger than me I will fight against him. I will fight every second of this until I die.
He pushes my head to one slide and licks a slimy trail against my cheek. I retch in disgust. He’s licking my blood where he hit me.
His mouth grunts in my ear, “Stop fighting me or I’ll have to get my men to come hold you down. Do you really want an audience for this, huh? They’ll probably want a piece of you too. I might have to let them.”
No. I won’t stop fighting.
“Fuck you,” I scream at him. “I’ll never be yours again. Never.”
“We’ll fucking see about that.”
Suddenly the door bursts open. Oh shit. It’s his men. They’ve heard all the noise coming from here. I’m doomed. My skin bursts into goose bumps at what my wild imagination is showing me that they’ll do to me.
Dear God. Please let me die quickly.
“What the fuck?” I hear Jacob say as a dark figure steps to the bed, crowding out all the light. The man grabs Jacob and pulls him off me. My body feels light again and I suck in oxygen to my crushed and starved lungs.
I blink up at my savior. Savior? Is he? Or is he just here to hurt me, too? Before I can see his face properly he whirls around and advances towards Jacob. I sit up and my head spins. Shit, too fast.
The man towers over Jacob, who has gone white as a sheet. I can see this newcomer is bleeding from a hole in his left shoulder. Dear God. His shape silhouetted against the light streaming in through the window is so familiar to me that at first I think I’m hallucinating. Maybe I’m already dead?
“No!” Jacob cries. “It can’t be. You’re dead. I watched you die.”
My eyes widen and I gasp for air. I can scarcely dare to hope…
“Caden?”
Chapter Fifty-Four
One hour ago…
Caden
The minute I’m shoved out of the van I see her, standing alone by the Bugatti I recognize as my own. At first I think it’s a mirage. That she isn’t real. She can’t be. I instructed Wylie to make sure she didn’t leave the house.
What the fuck is she doing here?
Then it hits me.
There’s only one reason she would be here. I turn to Jacob and scream. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare take her in exchange for me.”
My sanity snaps. The next few moments flash by me in a blur as I try to get to her. She’s all I can see. The only thing. I’m knocked to the ground, but it won’t keep me down.
When I see Jacob standing close to her, his proximity makes me insane. He’s touching her. The fucker is touching her. I slip out the knife hidden in my shoe-heel and attack the guy guarding me. I knock his rifle aside and plunge the knife into his belly. I think I’m free. But Garfield grabs me by the shoulders. He’s larger than me and he also has a gun.
“Don’t be a hero,” Garfield says. Then he leans in close to my ear from behind. I freeze when I hear him whisper, “You better make this look good.”
What? What is he talking about?
But I don’t have time to figure his cryptic words out. She’s being shoved into the sedan by Snake. She’s screaming but there’s nothing I can do. There’s fucking nothing I can do but scream back in a helpless rage. I catch the look between Garfield and Jacob and I know in that moment they mean to kill me.
I see her face through the open car door and it almost breaks me. Her face is screwed up with fear. Fear for me. She’s being taken away by the monster who almost destroyed her and she is worried for me.
I’m going to come for you, I promise her as I scream her name.
The car door shuts and her face disappears behind tinted glass. I struggle but Garfield has a lock on my neck, starving my brain of oxygen and making my movements weak.
He shoves me to my knees and I drop, inhaling loudly, as I stare at the sedan taking my love away. The woman I swore to God I would protect.
I failed. Again.
Garfield kicks me and I shift sideways to the car. He raises his gun to my chest. My eyes meet his.
I hear a blast, I watch him recoil from the shot. A pain goes through me and I jolt. My eyes widen and I know what Garfield meant when he said, “You better make this look good.”
For a second I freeze. The shot missed my heart. I can tell because I’m still alive and the throbbing ripping pain is in my shoulder, not my chest. But from side-on, they wouldn’t have been able to tell.
But… why has he saved me?
I let my body go limp, as if I’m dead. And I crumple forward to the ground, the dirt and pieces of rock on the ground poking into my skin. My face is deliberately turned away from her and Jacob so that they can’t see that my eyes are still blinking.
I remain on the ground, still like death, the rumbling of the car roaring away reverberating through the ground and into my body, fading with each passing second. I fight not to run after the car. I fight to stay down.
Garfield kneels over me as the car noise fades. “You better save her. Or I’m risking helping you for nothing.”
“Thank you,” I choke out, my throat dry from inhaling dust.
“I know who you are, Harper Boone. I−”
He’s cut off when a shot rings out. I flinch against the spray of hot blood in my face. Garfield falls heavily on top of me. Dead.
Shit.
I’m trapped under the weight of this huge man. My shoulder wound sears with pain from being pressed into the gravel from Garfield’s weight
. But my chest swells with more purpose than I’ve had in my entire wretched life. I’m alive. I have to get her back.
Footsteps cross the gravel towards me. I hear a shot fire as one of the men fires a bullet into the chest of the other guard that I had knocked out.
“Jesus, you’re not dead.” I recognize Sevastian’s voice. The dead weight is rolled off me and my lungs expand to take in a breath.
“Sevastian, you have the worst bloody timing in the whole world.”
He shoots me a grin and grabs my forearms so he can hoist me up.
“I don’t know about that.” Sevastian grins and his knife slices the ropes from my hands. “What do you Americans say? Better late than never, no?”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The present…
Kitten
In Jacob’s warehouse bedroom, the man that resembles Caden grabs Jacob by the shirt and slams him up against the side wall. Now that he is in profile and away from the window I can see his face.
Oh my God.
It is Caden.
His eyes are shiny with fury as he slams Jacob into the wall again. “You will never touch her again,” he roars, and I swear the building shakes with the force of him. Jacob yells out for his guards, his voice shaking and quivering with obvious fear. Caden grabs Jacob’s shirt in his fists. “Sorry, Jakeyboy. They’re busy.”
Caden sends a punch straight into Jacob’s face. I hear a crack and I know his nose has been broken.
“Muthafucker.” Jacob scowls and he starts to punch back.
I scoot up further onto the bed as the two men start to tussle around the floor. Blood and sweat flings into the air with every solid-sounding hit. Caden is larger than Jacob, but Jacob is playing dirty.
Jacob sends a punch into Caden’s shoulder. Caden recoils as he roars in pain. Jacob rolls away from him. He lunges for the bedside table. From the drawer he pulls out something that winks with steel. No. I’m not watching Caden die a second time.
“Caden, he’s got a gun!” I scream, and I launch myself at Jacob as he raises his gun towards Caden. I hear Jacob grunting as I slam into him. My arms and my thighs hurt where the glass cut me, but I don’t care. The gun goes off and it sounds like an explosion right in my ears. The wind is knocked out of me as Jacob and I slam hard to the floor.
Through the ringing in my ears I hear Caden calling frantically for me. Thank God. He’s alive. He wasn’t hit.
“Caden!” Shit. Where’s the gun? It’s not in Jacob’s hand. Where’s the goddamn gun? I spot it just as Jacob does. It was knocked out of his hand and slid across the floor near the ensuite doorway. I grab at Jacob to try to stop him. “The gun, Caden!”
Jacob throws a punch aimed at my jaw. Pain explodes on my face and I see stars. He shoves me off him and starts to scramble towards the gun. I fight through the dizziness and grab for him again. No. He’s reaching for the gun. He almost has it.
A heavy booted foot comes down on Jacob’s hand. Jacob lets out a screech as the bones of his fingers crush under Caden’s foot. Caden leans down and picks up the gun. He sends a kick to Jacob’s stomach and Jacob curls himself up with a groan. Caden helps me up and hands me the gun. “Hold this.”
He then turns back to Jacob, his eyes shiny with rage. He grabs Jacob by the torso and picks him up. Caden slams him against the broken edge of the window. Shards of glass cut into his body and Jacob howls in pain.
I’m equally horrified and entranced as I watch Caden proceed to beat the ever-living shit out of Jacob. “This is for Michelle. This is for Lily. And this… is for her.” With each hit Jacob’s body oozes blood and life.
“I’m going to make him pay for hurting you. For every ounce of pain you’ve felt, I’m going to give him ten. Every tear you’ve shed, I’m going to match with his blood…”
The beating feels like it lasts forever. Finally, Jacob slumps to the floor, his body swollen and wet with glistening red.
Caden’s fists are covered in blood and his thick chest is heaving. He grabs at his left shoulder where blood oozes from a small bullet hole and winces.
“Caden.”
Caden looks up at me but says nothing. He grabs Jacob by the shirt and tosses him at my feet like a doll. Then he stands, all glorious six-foot-two of him. He moves slowly, like his bones are creaking, to my side. “Finish him,” he says.
“…And when I’m done with him, I will drag his broken body to lay at your feet. So you can finish him and watch the life drain from his eyes. This I promise you.”
I feel the cold steel of the gun in my hands and look down at the beaten monster at my feet, now quivering like a helpless newborn. Caden has done this for me. He came back from the dead for me. He did as he promised. For me.
My heart swells with feelings of love and pride. I close my fingers around the handle of the gun in my hands. I point down to my feet where Jacob is staring up at me through one eye, his other eye swollen shut and turning purple.
“Kill me and you’ll be a murderer,” Jacob says. “You’ll be just like me. Think about that.”
I pause and swallow as his words filter in. You’ll be just like me.
“I know you, princess, you won’t be able to live with yourself.”
I can hear sirens wailing in the background. Somebody must have tipped them off.
“Kitten, do it. Now, before the cops get here.”
I just need to pull the trigger. Just squeeze my finger. Just do it and it’ll all be over. I will have ended my nightmare…
You’ll be a murderer… just like me. My body cringes inward. I don’t want to be anything like him. I can’t do it.
My hands shake as I lower the gun. Jacob smiles and his teeth are covered in blood. It looks gut churning. “I knew you couldn’t kill me. You’re too much of a good person. I guess you’ll just have to let the good ol’ justice system take care of me.”
He’s taunting me.
“You won’t get away this time, Jacob,” Caden says. “You’re already a fugitive. And there’s enough narcotics on this property to put you away for life.” Caden slips a hand on my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“See you soon, princess.”
My skin prickles with fear. No. As long as Jacob is alive, he’ll always own the part of me that fears him. And I won’t live bound to him anymore.
Something snaps in me. It comes out in a rage as I spin and raise the gun. I fire. Again and again and again. The bullets go right through Jacob’s heart, the red stains spreading across his shirt. Until the gunshots turn into clicks.
Caden covers my hands with his and eases the spent weapon out of my hands. “It’s over.”
I fall into his arms. He’s wet with blood and it sticks to my cheek and my hair, but I don’t care at the moment. I thought I had lost Caden, but God has granted me a second chance with him. I am never letting him go. Never.
“Muthafucker.” I slap him on his chest and he winces.
“Ow, what was that for?”
“I watched you die. I fucking watched you die.” I grab his face and press my lips so hard to his that I bruise them. When I pull back I’m crying. And I press soft kisses over his mouth. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
He pulls me closer, not seeming to care about his shoulder. “I won’t.” The sirens get louder. “Come on, kitten. We have to go. I’ll explain everything later.”
I nod and let Caden grab my hand and pull me from the room. We step over Snake’s lifeless body as we make our way down the silent hall towards the stairs.
I glance up to Caden and he catches my eye. “What is it?” he asks.
“Did you kill him?”
He looks embarrassed for a second, then nods.
I smile. “I bet it felt good.”
The sirens are getting louder as we stumble over dead guards and away from the building. There is a trail of dead bodies across the complex. Jesus Christ. I don’t know whether to be horrified or proud.
“Caden, did you do all this?”<
br />
“Most of it. I had help.”
“Wait. How did you kill them all without making a noise? I didn’t hear gunfire.”
“Silencers are wonderful things.”
“But if you had a gun why didn’t you just shoot Jacob?”
He tucks me under his arm on his right unwounded side. “I promised you that I’d make him bleed. I promised you I’d make him hurt. I promised you I’d give him to you to finish off.”
He did. God damn, he did.
“Does it make me weird if I admit that I’m a little turned on by this?”
He chuckles and leans down to kiss my forehead.
There’s a splashing noise to our left. A medium-sized boat, white and sleek, sidles up to the dock twenty or so meters from where we stand. On the deck a man in dark pants and a dark shirt stands, his eyes hidden by sunglasses. “Mr. Thaine,” he calls, as he takes off his sunglasses. “Your ride.”
What the hell?
I raise an eyebrow to Caden as he pulls me towards the boat.
“Explain later,” he whispers.
“You better.”
“I’m Sevastian,” the strange man says, as he helps me onto the boat. “Such a pleasure to meet you.” He is deadly handsome with pitch-black hair, a beautiful, sensual mouth and eyes like a wolf’s. But he doesn’t arouse any attraction from me. I am Caden’s and Caden’s alone.
We pull away from the dock, and Jacob’s warehouse fades from sight as we ride down the river.
Chapter Fifty-Six
There are three other men on board but neither Sevastian nor Caden introduces me. “It’s better if you don’t know who they are,” Caden whispers.
O-kay.
Sevastian takes us to a small cabin in the hull of the boat. “You’ve got a few hours. Shower. Dress. Rest. We’ve got this under control,” Sevastian says and he closes the cabin door behind him.
On the double bed in the cabin are sets of clean clothes in our exact sizes. I hold up the skin-tight black leggings and the black cutout bodysuit. How… slutty-chic. “How did he know what size…?”
