The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(29)

Two more shots were fired and then the footsteps receded into the  distance, until I couldn't hear them anymore. The blood drained from my  face as I hung up.

Josiah Shelton had just been murdered, and I was next. For several  seconds, I stood there frozen and unable to even think, and then I  thought about Ryan. If I'd been ratted out, then what did that mean for  him?

Last night, I'd been too afraid to tell him the truth. I'd told myself I  was waiting for the perfect time, the perfect wording to come to me.  That time and those words would never come now.

I had to disappear, or I was dead. And I only had today, tonight, one  conversation, to convince Ryan to come with me. If it wasn't already too  late.

My survival instinct kicked in and I raced to my room to retrieve my  gun, flicking through the contacts on my phone to Ryan's number. I was  ready to hit dial as I flung the door open.

A hand reached out, grabbed me by the collar and pulled me into the room  hard, sending me falling to the floor. My phone bumped out of my hand  and skidded under my bed.

I scrambled back to my feet, turning to meet my attacker as I arranged  my keys in my fist to poke out between my fingers as quickly and as  secretively as I could.

I saw that there were two men in my room. The one who yanked me in had  his head out the door, looking both ways as if he was going to cross the  street, and the other was holding a gleaming machete.

Satisfied that the hallway was clear, the first guy closed my door and  stood behind the machete-wielder. I folded my arms over myself  protectively, looking as meek as possible but hiding my keys.

The one with the machete spoke first. "Y'know, for somebody with  "Screamer" written on her door, I expected a lot more noise. Doesn't  bother me though, there's still time."

Screaming would probably only put some innocent college student into harm's way.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"The fuck does it matter, bitch? All you need to know is that the Acardi Family sends its regards."

The world slowed down to a pace where my entire life flashed before my  eyes between each heartbeat, and I saw that machete rise as the guy  lifted it for a swing. I leapt forward with every scrap of speed I could  possibly muster, unfolding my arms to cock my own fist back as I went.

He was still halfway through a swipe of the blade that would have cut me  off at the knees when I stepped inside the arc of the swing, too close  for him to hit me, and trapped his arm under my own. With a swift  uppercut, I impaled his stomach on the three short spikes of my  makeshift knuckleduster, then landed another one on his neck, sinking  them in and twisting as I pulled out.

The machete dropped to the floor, sticking into the ground tip-first as  the man fell backwards, with his eyes bulging in shock and clamping his  hands to his throat to try to stem the flow of his lifeblood leaving his  body. He crashed against the wall and sank to his ass on the floor,  gurgling. He couldn't have known that it used to say "Badass" on my  door, before the current nickname.

The man who'd thrown me into the room was wordlessly shocked by the turn  of events. He was fumbling inside his jacket when he saw me reaching  for the machete with my free hand. Judging that he wouldn't be able to  draw his gun before he lost his head, he found his voice and charged me.

"Fuckin' bitch!"

I swung for the fences, but he managed to partially block my punch so  the keys scraped along the side of his head instead of taking out his  eyes. A second later, his forehead connected with my face, just below my  eye, and I saw stars as his momentum propelled us both backwards.

My heel caught on the machete protruding from the ground and I felt a  searing pain along the back of my calf, before I fell against the edge  of my bed with my assailant on top, knocking the wind out of me. We both  fell to the floor.

Gasping for air, I jack-hammered my fist into his torso, stabbing him as  many times as I could while he frantically struggled to catch my wrist,  punch me, smother me, anything to stop the wounds from adding up to  something that would take his life.         

     



 

I swung again and felt his fingers wrap around my arm, holding it fast.  He punched me in the face hard enough to bring the stars back. In a  daze, I felt my fingers pried open and my keys ripped out of my grasp.

My vision cleared again when I felt his hands wrapping around my throat.  The first thing I saw when that haze lifted was all that hate in his  eyes.

I tried to think. I tried to remember my training, but this was real  life. In training, I was never distracted by a brutal assault before a  lesson about self-defense technique. I never fought somebody who had  been sent with the sole purpose of killing me.

You've got about five seconds to remember before you lose consciousness.





Ryan





The van skidded to a halt. The men up front jumped out, then the back  door opened. The huge guy climbed in and put a hood over my head. He  hauled me outside, marching me several steps and into the back seat of  another car.

Somebody opened the trunk, and I heard some groans and weak protests as,  no doubt, the two people who'd accompanied me in the back of the van  were packed in. One of our two masked abductors climbed into the front  seat.

"Don't move, don't try anything."

I shook my head, as much to pacify him as to clear it. Under my fingers,  amongst the trash on the backseat of a generally untidy car, I felt  something that might just have been a paperclip.

Through the hood, I saw the unmistakable light of a fire flaring up in  the direction of the van, and a few seconds later the driver got in. I  heard the sound of wiring being ripped from under the dashboard, then  the car started. Before the fire got bigger, we were off again, though  at a comparatively leisurely pace.

"Don't move, don't try anything," said the driver.

"I told him that already," said the other one.

"Oh."

One of them made a phone call. "Hey …  yeah, we got him …  He's still in one piece …  Yeah …  We'll be there in a few minutes."

"Hell of a day," said the driver.

"Yup."

I unfolded the paperclip and tried to focus on bending it into the right  shape. I'd managed to pick the lock on handcuffs a couple of times  before. When I could see what I was doing. When I didn't have a  countdown to death clock ticking down from "a few" minutes, overwhelming  everything else in my mind.

I worked on my restraints, as the car made a few lefts and rights,  staying below the speed limit. I had no idea how far the van might have  gone at that breakneck pace, but there was no doubt we were still pretty  central.

Finally, it turned off the road, and I felt it go down a steep ramp into  an underground parking lot. A second before the driver turned the  engine off, I twisted the paperclip and felt the cuff loosen on my left  wrist.

Between the time they stepped out and opened the back door, I slipped my  hand out and held the cuff behind my back so it wouldn't be obvious I  had freed myself.

"Out."

I swung my feet out of the car and stood up. One of them put his hands  on my shoulders and moved me to the side, then leaned me against the car  by the rear wheel well so he could close the door.

I took a deep breath, trying to figure out exactly where the two of them  were standing, which way was light and which way was dark. I had one  chance to run, and fucked if I wanted to run straight into a  motherfucking concrete wall.

"You comin' up?" a voice came from such a height that it could only be the huge guy.

"Nah, I'll wait here until Mr. Barlow tells me what to do with these jerk-offs, make sure nothin' happens to ‘em."

I fucking ran, swinging my hands up to rip the hood from my head. I got  maybe ten feet before the big guy caught me, moving at a speed I would  have thought almost impossible for somebody of his size.

I whirled around with a haymaker punch and he blocked it easily, with an  expression on his face as calm as he might have had watching the  weather report. It was a face I vaguely recognized.

The fight drained out of me at the ridiculous hopelessness of the  situation. Not only was he huge, he was Austin Fucking Aquila, the MMA  heavyweight champion. What in the fuck was going on?

I waited for a knockout punch that never came. Instead, he spun me  around and reattached the handcuff before pushing me back towards, and  then past, the car. The other guy had taken off his balaclava too and  was sitting on the trunk, lighting a cigarette.

At least he wasn't the middleweight champion. I didn't recognize him at all.

"No, no, don't get up. I got this," said Austin, sarcastically.

The other guy gave him the thumbs up and the two of us headed for the  elevator. Another car parked right next to the elevator, and the guy who  got out nodded at Austin, before falling into step behind us. As soon  as I stepped inside, I knew this wasn't the Acardi building; it was a  completely different style.