In the distance he heard his friends rushing into his apartment. Dropping his cell phone, he removed his jacket, pressing it to the wound.
Jay finally moaned. “Fuck me, please tell me I’m dreaming and I’m going to wake up to Temperance about to ride my face.”
“Now is not the time for jokes.”
“I’m not joking. Fuck me, that hurts.” Jay opened his eyes and started leaning against the kitchen sink.
“Colorful language for an accountant,” Lewis said.
“I’ve been shot, and I bet it’s your fault. Pissed off any employees lately?”
“None, but it is our fault.”
“Where’s Tempe?” Jay asked.
“She’s not here.”
“What do you mean she’s not here?” Jay stared at him, sweating. “Fuck, I can’t—did they take her?”
“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Richard said.
“Do you have security cameras around the whole of the building?” Lewis asked.
“Everything is controlled with computers now.” Richard pressed the jacket while trying to think, and not panic. It was fucking hard to do.
Temperance was gone. Jay was shot, and it looked bleak.
“I fucked up,” Jay said.
“What?”
“I didn’t protect her. Someone has Tempe, and I fucked up.”
“Shut up, Jay. We’ll deal with this, and we’ll find her, and we’ll make the bastards pay.”
“At what cost, man? They hurt her, and we’re not going to get the same woman back.”
Richard couldn’t think about that shit right now.
“Got it,” Lewis said.
“Help me up,” Jay said.
“You need to rest.”
“I’m not dead yet, and I have a right to see this shit.”
He had no choice, so with Jackson’s help, he got Jay to his feet. They moved toward the main television where Lewis had hooked up the security footage. He was rewinding it back to the point where the apartment was first broken into.
Richard recognized one man as the guy on O’Brian’s security detail. He didn’t recognize the other guy.
The guards that Richard had assigned were out cold. The only one not there was Curtis, but it was his night off.
“Fuckers came in and started shooting. We didn’t have any time.”
Richard didn’t have security cameras within his apartment, so next he saw Temperance fighting them. She was trying to get away, screaming, kicking, and even biting.
He cursed when he saw one of them slam their fist in her face, and Temperance went out cold. They picked her up and disappeared. They clearly didn’t care about being caught. Richard had never seen anyone do this out in the open, which made him wonder who they had as contacts within the law. Lewis typed, changing each camera angle, and they watched as the men dumped her in the back of a car, and drove off.
Richard thought that would be it, but Lewis was already moving onto the next step, framing the license plate, and running it.
“What are you doing?” Jay asked.
“I’m finding where he went. I’ve got recognition software that I can access.”
“I don’t feel so good.” Jay started to sway, and Richard held onto him, leading him to the couch.
“I’ve got you, Jay. The ambulance will be here, and we’re all going to be okay.”
“You’ve got to protect her. She’s too precious to allow anything to happen to her.”
“Jay, shut up, and stop worrying. You’re going to be fine.”
“If I don’t make it, you’ve got to keep her.”
Richard gritted his teeth. “Shut up.”
“You’ve got to love and cherish her, and you’ve got to go through with it. You’ve got to marry her, otherwise I’ll come down and haunt your ass.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“I’m so cold.”
****
Temperance tried not to cringe when she caught sight of the man coming back. He was laughing, and she didn’t like that. It was terrifying.
“I see you’re still awake.”
“I’m not exactly comfortable,” she said. Her arms were spread out, and her ass was starting to get numb.
She was in an abandoned warehouse used for torturing people and she was more concerned about her numb ass.
Get your head in the game.
The man laughed. “This isn’t about your comfort. Do you really think they will come for you?”
He grabbed another chair and sat in front of her. Her heart was racing, and she was trying to hardest not to let the fear show.
Richard will come.
The BBMC will come.
In the beginning she’d thought the billionaire bikers were a bunch of men who didn’t know what they were doing. They were just playing at being tough men. Now, she saw what they were doing, and she appreciated it more than ever.
“You know, I’ve trained a lot of girls for a lot of men to be their pets.”
“Is that what you do? Train them to be animals?”
“Hardly animals. Some girls, they fight, and it takes killing another to keep them in line.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m thinking if I kill you, it’ll keep everyone else in line. They have Mandy, and she was great for soothing the girls. She played her part. It was just a shame she decided to turn on us.”
“Mandy helped you?”
“In the beginning she fought like a wild animal. My mentor, he found her the hardest to break, which was why she was given special privileges over time. Once she earned enough, he kept her on to help the other girls. He had no idea the whole time she was a traitor. The woman is an expert actress. No other woman is ever going to get that close again.”
Temperance smiled. “That’s what you get for fucking with women.”
He slapped her around the face, once with his right, and then with his left.
The pain was instant, and blood pooled from her split lip.
Closing her eyes, she tried not to cry.
“Do you really think you’ve got a chance of getting away? No one knows where you are. No one knows who I am.”
She had faith that Richard and his brothers would find her. They were billionaires for fuck’s sake, with all the latest technology, and they were geniuses. She just had to stay alive long enough for Richard to come.
****
“You’re going to be okay. You’ve got to fucking live. I’m not having Temperance tell me I failed if you die. Do you hear me?”
“Mr. Bruce, we’ve got to take him now.”
An oxygen mask covered Jay’s face, and the paramedics were working hard to keep him alive. “You keep him alive. Anything happens to him, and I’ll own your asses and your hospital.”
“We will do everything we can.”
Jay removed his mask, looking paler by the second. “Go and get our girl. Now!”
Richard charged for the elevator and made his way back to his apartment. Lewis was on the computer still, using his own technology to get what he wanted.
“Do you have her?”
“Whoever took her is not that bright. They didn’t even mask the fucking car, and he led us right to an abandoned warehouse near a port. It’s thirty minutes out.”
Richard moved toward his office, going into his safe and grabbing out two of his guns. He walked back into the main room. “Call our informant. Tell him everything, and make sure he gets there soon.” He wasn’t going to wait around.
“It’s already done, Richard. A group of SWAT is circling the building. It seems this man, known as ‘the torturer’, was on their most wanted list.”
Richard rushed out of the apartment. He was going to be there when they stormed that fucking building, and he was going to save his woman.
****
Temperance was in pain, in so much pain that an aspirin wouldn’t cure her. She was no longer sitting, but the bastard had started to show her exactly what he did to train the little pets.
This man needed to be stopped.
She was completely naked, and he’d touched her. Just remembering his hands on her made her want to vomit, which she already had done, and it was a struggle not to step in the mess. He’d turned her so that she was facing the wall, and then started to use all kinds of whips, or devices, or something that had made the flesh on her back burn.
“Well, I think you may have turned me to fat women,” he said, moving to stand behind her. He wrapped his fist in her hair, pulling her head back to look at her. He wrapped his fingers around her throat, cutting off her air supply. She couldn’t do anything to stop it. She was at his mercy, her arms bound up. “Such a beautiful body for me to play with. I always thought slender women were the best, but the curvier you are, the more rounded places to hit. You’re a little more durable as well.” He slapped her ass, and finally released her throat. She took great gasps of air, precious air.
Before she’d taken enough, he did the same.
“All you’ve got to do is be good, and you’ll get everything you want.”
Follow the rules to be rewarded, break them, and you’ll be punished.
She squeezed her eyes shut, hating how degrading this was. No matter what she couldn’t let Richard or the BBMC stop their hunt for men like this.
There were women out there being tortured, used, manipulated, and she was going to see that it was stopped.
Temperance didn’t care that for every person they brought down, another took their place. They would just have to keep on fighting until all the men were brought to justice, and it was a mission she was going to fight for.