Ryan (Mallick Brothers #2)(34)

"The fuck you doing, getting some action without us?" the driver asked, making me swallow back another sob, jerking back and looking up into his face, seeing nothing but a soul-deep kind of hatred there. But not for me, for the driver.

"I'm trying to keep your bitch ass out of fucking jail is what I'm doing. I don't care how much my brother pays for a lawyer, no fucking way you'd get off on a second kidnapping and attempted rape charge, you fucking moron."

"Your brother."

The words came out when I had only meant to think them, making his gaze fly back to my face, looking a bit more guarded.

His brother was Dom, Bry's boss.

His brother was the one who was ordering people to beat, rob, possibly rape, and kidnap me.

His brother.

Any hope I had of him maybe having a heart, a conscience, a soft spot, of being a possibly reasonable person who I could convince to let me go disappeared.

I felt all the tears dry up in a second.

The rapid heartbeat, pressure in my chest, swirling thoughts, they all seemed to stop completely, leaving nothing but a bone-deep understanding of my fate.

And crying wasn't going to help.

Begging wasn't going to help.



       
         
       
        

I needed to relax. I needed to think. I needed to pay attention for any small possible opportunity for escape.

"You calm?" Albert asked, brows drawn together like he couldn't quite understand how I went from attack mode to hysterical mess to calm and collected so quickly. I nodded tightly at him, not quite trusting my voice to not give away every bit of defiance in me.

I wasn't going to go down without a fight.

I wasn't going to lay there and take whatever they gave to me.

But I was going to be smart.

I was going to bide my time and I was going to think of something and I was going to get myself the hell out of this ridiculous situation.

And right that moment, years, a lifetime, generations of DNA coding seemed to get reversed. Because my instinct wasn't to simply panic and flee. My instinct wasn't necessarily flight.

It was fight.

I was going to fight.

"Don't make me hold you down again," he added as he pushed back, releasing my wrists.

I pulled my arms down from above my head, wincing at the sting, seeing bands of purple already forming from his hands.

Seeing me looking down at them, he exhaled hard, drawing my attention. He didn't say the words. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to, but he didn't because he couldn't because it would make him look bad. But his finger moved down and touched one of the bruise bracelets forming and gave me a look that said it for me.

Sorry.

But sorry wasn't good enough.

Sorry was weak and sad and empty when it didn't have an action behind it.

So as I slowly sat back up, I pointedly looked away, and I didn't give him acceptance.

It went against my normal nature and I almost felt bad about it. But the fact of the matter was, I couldn't be creating some kind of emotional bond with my kidnapper because I intended to do whatever the hell I needed to do to get away. If that meant crawling over his dead body to do it.

I had spent way too much of my life hiding away, being scared, not experiencing things. And I had finally, finally started getting a life outside of that.

I wasn't losing that.

I wasn't going to go down without a fight.

The car ride seemed to stretch on forever, long enough for a heavy feeling to settle in my stomach, something akin to dread, with nothing but my thoughts and some ear-aching, poorly recorded street corner rap to listen to.

Sights passed, familiar, but hazy with how long since I had seen them.

I could feel a cold sweat start all over every inch of skin as we crossed into a place I had only ever been once before and then only because they housed Jersey's biggest aquarium. I had gone with my uncle and we had parked close to the doors and got out of town before it got dark. Paranoid? Maybe. But then again, when a town had the kind of reputation that Camden did for crime, it was wise to not take any chances. 

We drove past an area that was busy, people milling in and out of stores, nothing the least bit threatening in sight. But the further we drove, the less people I saw, the more boarded-up, half-dilapidated buildings we passed. Graffiti with varying levels of artistic talent covered some of the empty buildings, some standing out more than others:

Stop the hate.

Raise Camden Up.

Get rich or try sharing.

I almost got a strange, warm feeling in my chest. For all of two minutes until I spotted the image of a woman taking up the whole side of a building, naked, cupping her breasts, a laser beam shooting out of her who-ha and that feeling slipped right the heck away.

We drove down a narrow street- lined on one side by small, squat storefronts, most of which didn't seem to have any windows, and the other side a graffiti-covered retaining wall. I momentarily wondered what it was hiding behind it until we slowed suddenly and turned into an open gate and drove behind said retaining wall.

And the dominant thought that broke through right then was- a chainlink fence was climbable, a retaining wall wasn't.

Once the gate closed, I wasn't getting back out.

Luckily, it didn't seem to be some high-functioning operation because no one was manning the gates and the two men I saw on the grounds were standing in a corner smoking. They didn't even look up when we pulled in.

My heart went into my throat as the car stopped and the passenger went inside without even looking back. Albert got out of his side and moved around the hood to, I assume, come get me. But the guy in the driver was still there.

The doors were unlocked.

And, without even really being conscious of coming up with the idea, I wedged my arm between the door and driver's seat, grabbed the seat pull, and shoved my feet against the back of his seat. He crashed into the steering wheel with a curse as I flew to the other side of the backseat where Albert had been sitting, grabbed the handle, and jumped outside.

I didn't look to see if I was being followed.

I didn't let myself think that it was a shitty town and anything could happen to me out there too.

I just ran.

I tore through the gates and hit the street, my pulse slamming in my ears, so hard that I didn't hear the footsteps behind me.

I had no warning before the hands grabbed my waist from behind just as I reached the end of the winding retaining wall- just a breath away from a chance of freedom.

"Don't fight," a newly familiar voice said a newly familiar phrase. And, well, I wasn't exactly going to do what I was told, was I? I kicked up and tried to break free, clawing at the arms holding me. I sucked in a breath to scream only to have a hand clamp around my mouth. "Sweetheart, stop," he said, not even the slightest bit out of breath as I suddenly felt myself pulled backward.

But the further he dragged me backward, the more I fought- scratching, clawing, biting, throwing my body weight as far as his tight hold would allow.

I didn't even stop when I was pulled inside the gates and heard them slam behind me, as I was dragged up toward the building I hadn't even been aware of before- low and windowless, looking just as abandoned as many of the others we had passed on the way in. But judging by the small group of men standing in the doorway, it just looked empty for appearances sake, likely to keep the cops from snooping around.

"You stupid fucking cunt," the driver hissed as we got closer, rubbing his chest that had to have been bruised from the collision with the steering wheel. "I can't fucking wait to make you pay for that. Show you what I had planned to do before your little boyfriend saved your ass last time. In fact, me and all the boys here would prolly like a..."



       
         
       
        

"Shut the fuck up and get out of my goddamn way," Albert snapped, making a couple of the others chuckle. "You want me to tell Dom you're the reason we're standing out in broad mother fucking daylight with a prisoner when we should be inside and out of sight from prying eyes?"

At that, the man actually paled and I felt my stomach clench so hard I doubled forward as much as Albert's hold would allow. If that scumbag paled at the mention of Dom's name, he must have been a whole new world of bad.

And my fate was in his hands.

Albert moved to push me forward and I couldn't, I just couldn't think of anything else to do but plant my feet. So that was what I did. Albert's arm on my stomach did a little squeeze, almost reassuring, before it tightened and lifted me up off my feet and carried me awkwardly toward the doorway, the men moving out of the way to allow us to pass.

The inside was as dark as one would think from the outside. It didn't help that the walls were painted a gray so dark that it was almost black. The walls themselves were cinderblock, narrow, leading in a long hallway back that seemed to fork off in three different directions.

I was vaguely aware of the shuffle of footsteps behind us as Albert took the hall to the right and halfway down moved into the doorway of a room. It was massive. In its former life, it might have been used as some kind of rec center or gym or conference hall. The walls were still cinderblock, dark, and windowless. But the ceiling had long strips of overhead fluorescent lighting that made me wince at the unnaturalness of it. Toward the left side of the room against the wall, as if confirming my suspicions about the space, was a small stage maybe only three feet off the ground.