“Welcome back,” he said. His voice had a dangerous note to it. “The drug I injected you with didn’t disappoint. Hope you enjoyed your sleep. It was a long drive from Serendipity.”
The cloth was yanked out of my mouth and I ran my tongue around the inside to moisten it. “What … what are you going to do to me?” I said when I found my words, my eyes welling again.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” His hands slipped around me, and then I was lifted into his arms. From underneath his clothes, his heart pounded harder with each step he took. His evil heart.
“Jude, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hurt me.” I paused and gulped in air. “I’ll do anything you want. I swear it this time.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he tossed me over his shoulder and blood rushed to my hanging head.
My body shook uncontrollably as I listened to him unlocking the door and twisting the handle. Sounds I knew too well.
The door slammed and the air around me changed. It cooled my skin and reeked of leather, musk, and evil. He had brought me back to my gilded cage.
More doors opened and shut. Then the air changed suddenly, from cool to frigid.
I was still getting used to the temperature when he threw me off his shoulders and I landed on the hard floor, on my hands. Pain shot up one of my left fingers to my wrist. I gritted my teeth to control it, but that didn’t help. As if it weren’t bad enough, a hard kick came into contact with my stomach, driving its contents up my throat. I gagged, and on reflex, I curled up into a ball, both to ease the pain and to protect myself. The next kick landed on my face just above my left eye. A bolt of lightning shot upward to my brain. My scream split the silence, the sound deafening even in my own ears. Another kick, then another made me shut up and whimper instead.
He grabbed a fistful of my hair and lifted me to my feet. I was in too much pain to do anything but sob as I swayed. Since my feet were bound, if it weren’t for him holding me upright, I’d have fallen right back to the floor.
The blindfold was suddenly yanked off, and I tried to blink. The pain in my eye stopped me in my tracks. I tried again in slow motion.
Panic welled up inside me when I failed to see anything but darkness. Had the drug he knocked me out with made me blind?
It took a heartbeat for me to realize that I wasn’t blind. We were inside a dark room.
Although I couldn’t see Jude, I could hear him breathe, his alcohol-laced breath hot in my face.
“I’ve been good to you, Haley. I’ve fuckin’ adored you.” His voice was just as gloomy and heavy as the darkness around us. “Yet you betrayed me. Now I’m going to show you what I do to people who deceive me.” He let me go and I dropped to the floor. Before I landed, I balled my fists in time to avoid more damage to my fingers.
All of a sudden, blinding light flooded the room, hurting my eyes. The room was spacious, with white-washed walls, and completely empty from ceiling to floor, a perfect cell.
As he approached me again, he reached into his jeans pocket—I’d never seen him in jeans before—and pulled out a pen knife. On reflex, I kicked the heels of my feet against the floor in an effort to back away from him. But he shot out a hand and grabbed me by my clothes. He rolled me around to my stomach and I heard a snip. My arms fell free, but I could still feel the aches in my wrists from being bound for too long. When he cut the rope binding my feet together, I stretched my legs and cried out as my cramped muscles screamed with pain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I sat in the center of the room, shaking with fear. He leaned against what looked like a wooden sliding door, watching me with piercing eyes, and it finally dawned on me where I must be. It could only be the room I’d discovered the day I raided the safe for money. The day I still believed in hope.
After staring at me for a long time without saying a word or even blinking, he finally got up and left the room. Before he slid the door shut, I caught a glimpse of his office. I was right. He was keeping me in his secret room.
Gathering all the energy I had left, which wasn’t much, and wincing with each move, I crawled to the door and clawed my way up. I pushed on both ends, and pushed against it. It wouldn’t budge. Realizing that there must have been a hidden locking mechanism, I crumpled to the floor in a sobbing heap, sweat, snot, and tears mixing on my face.
When he returned ten or fifteen minutes later, I didn’t lift my eyes, just laid there, my cheek against the cold floor.
I groaned as he pushed me hard with his foot, away from the entrance and back to the center of the room. Then he dropped something next to my head.
I opened one eye, the one that wasn’t swollen shut, and saw a small slice of pizza with a thin, white film coating it, ice. He was offering me frozen pizza? What kind of cruel person did that? My stomach groaned, reminding me that I was not in the position to be picky. I was in an eat-or-starve situation.