Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 108709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
How could I have done this to him?
Memory after memory swarms back, hitting me like a blunt blade straight to the chest. Stone taking my hand and running when we first left our foster home together. Stone fending off assholes in the night when we had nowhere safe to sleep. Stone giving up the food on his plate just to make sure I had a full tummy.
Stone. Stone. Stone.
Everything was Stone. My life, my love, my happiness, it was all because of him.
The sound of someone’s heavy footsteps has my head snapping up, and I find two of the men who originally grabbed me outside of the warehouse. Their wicked grins make my entire body tremble.
“Oh, baby. You’re not gonna like this,” he laughs, crouching down in front of me and pulling out a switchblade. My eyes widen in horror as he reaches for me. I try to kick him away, but with both my wrists and ankles bound, it’s useless.
No. No, no, no. This can’t be happening.
“Hurry up,” the other guy mutters. “Get this bitch under control. Talon is waiting.”
Gripping my ankles too tight, the switchblade quickly slices through the thick duct tape that’s keeping me bound, and the second my legs are free, I slam one foot up into his face, knocking him onto his ass.
“Fucking bitch,” he grunts, gritting his teeth as he comes straight back at me, clocking me in the jaw with a heavy fist.
Blood trickles from my mouth as I cry out, and as the pain rocks through my body, he makes quick work of releasing my wrists and the chains holding me to the table. Tears stream down my face, and he grips my upper arm, dragging me across the tiles. I desperately try to grasp onto something to get just a bit of leverage, but the other guy steps in, grabbing my other arm and rendering me useless.
I squirm in their hold, thrashing around and throwing my feet up, bracing them against the door frame of the kitchen to halt their movements, but I’m too easily outmatched. I’m backhanded without warning, the hit coming before I even clock the movement, and I cry out in agony, but I don’t care. They can’t take me from this kitchen. I’m safe here. Unharmed. But I don’t know what waits for me outside this room, and I’m not prepared to find out.
“NO,” I cry, trying again, but the men grow impatient and adjust their hold, grabbing me by my hair and pulling hard. I have no choice but to grip onto their hands to lessen the pressure as I scream out in agony, my body sliding across the old, broken tiles with ease.
They laugh while pulling me along, dragging me through the door and into the main part of the restaurant where no less than twenty sets of eyes watch me, not one of them daring to help.
“Make it quick,” a cold voice says from across the room, the man who’d held the gun to my head outside the warehouse. “I’m growing impatient.”
The two men dragging me don’t respond; they simply turn to the right and head toward a door with a heavy padlock and push straight through it.
There’s a set of stairs leading down into a basement, and without hesitation, they shove me straight down them. As I fall, my body slams into each step on my way to the ground, crying out in agony. My chest hits the corner of a step. My hip. My waist. My thigh. Until I come to a stop at the bottom.
I shove my hand beneath me, trying to push up from the dirty ground, when I find a set of black boots standing right in front of me. “Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this,” the man rumbles as the other two come down the stairs.
“No,” I cry, devastation ripping through me.
He bends down and grabs me, dragging me through the basement as I try to fight free, quickly realizing this is so much more than just a basement. It’s a prison. There are cells lining either side of the room. Chains. Weapons. Men broken and bruised in bloodied heaps on the ground.
What the fuck is this place? The answer comes before the question has even finished forming in my head. It’s a torture chamber. Somewhere for these assholes to conduct their bullshit without getting caught, and Stone and I have somehow fallen straight into it.
We come to a stop, and as I hastily try to find my bearings, I’m thrown down in front of a cell, my face slamming against the metal bars.
I cry out, but the agony turns to horror as I look up and see Stone laying on the ground. “No,” I breathe, my chest heaving. Why isn’t he moving? “Stone?”
Fuck. No. He can’t be dead. “STONE!”