“Where. The. Fuck. Did. She. Go?” I grate out, my voice icy.
“How the hell should I know? She just ran toward the street.”
I spin, taking Livvie with me. I turn to Luke and shove her at him. “Take her. I’ve got to find Jess.”
He looks concerned. “Where’d she go?”
“She ran.”
His face pales. “Shit, boss, sorry. I thought . . . I thought she wanted to be here. The way she was watchin’ you. Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“She’s played us all,” I grind out, feeling my hands tremble with rage. “But she won’t win. I’ll find her, Luke. I know exactly where she will have gone.”
He looks right into my eyes. “Load the ship?”
“Load the fuckin’ ship,” I growl. “We’re goin’ to sea.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jess
My head pounds as I slowly open my eyes. I can’t see anything for a moment, everything seems to be blurred shapes. I go to reach up and rub my eyes, only to feel that I’m shackled. My heart begins to pound and I blink as rapidly as I can to clear my vision. When it clears enough for me to take in my surrounds, I see that I’m in a tiny cell. It’s not bigger than two meters by two meters. I can only just lie down in it. There’s a tiny, old mattress, which I’m on, and nothing else.
No windows.
Nothing.
I sit up frantically and jerk at the cuffs. They’re tight—so tight that if I’m not careful, and I rattle them too much, they’ll get tighter and stop the blood flowing into my hand. I realize when I move my feet that they’re cuffed too. I’m connected to a large shackle in the stone wall. Sweat breaks out across my skin and I swallow, trying to ease my dry throat. I try not to let fear in, but there’s no way of stopping it.
My nightmare has found me.
I let more tears leak out. They burn my eyes. Roger has me, there’s no turning back from him. He’s got me and Dimitri doesn’t know where I am. Worse, he thinks I’ve run from him. Which means he’s not going to look for me. A sick feeling swells in my stomach and I feel myself begin to shake with panic. This could likely be where my road ends. In a cell, being tortured by a man who should be dead.
I drop my head and sob.
My sobbing comes to a halt when the cell door rattles. I jerk my head up and push myself up against the wall. Fear swells in my body as I stare, transfixed, waiting to see who will come in. The moment I see Roger, everything turns from fear to something so much more. Something so intense I forget to breathe. He smiles at me, satisfied, gloating.
“Well, I bet you never thought you’d be here, did you, Blair?”
“What do you want from me?” I croak. It’s a stupid question, though. I know exactly what he wants from me—revenge.
“You know, I thought of many ways over the years that I could make you pay. I thought it would be fun to just kill you. Then I figured I’d rape you because, let’s face it, that’s where this all started.” He grins at me and I lean over and dry retch. “But that all seemed so . . . cliché. So, I came up with something better. Something that allows me to watch you suffer, all the while making me money.”
I lift my tear-blurred vision and stare at him, confused.
“I can’t tell you right now, but you’ll find out more tonight when I put you to the test. Of course, if my plan is ineffective, I’ll simply kill you.”
God, please help me.
“I’ll leave you with that, shall I?”
“You’re a monster,” I growl, my voice pathetic and low.
He throws his head back and laughs, causing strands of wispy gray to flow around his shoulders. When he’s finished laughing, he lowers his head and stares me dead in the eyes. “You haven’t seen the worst of me yet, Blair. You’ll pay for what you did to my face, pay for the years I spent getting taunted, pay for everything you did to make my life hell.”
“Your life!” I growl. “What about what you did to mine?”
“I was teaching you a lesson. You should have taken it instead of being ungrateful.”
“A lesson.” I laugh bitterly. “Is that what you call it? I’d love to know how ripping my innocence from me at such a young age was considered a lesson.”
He smirks at me. “I got you ready for other men, so when you had a husband he could appreciate a well-fucked woman.”
“A woman!” I scream, jerking on my chains and thrashing my body. “I was a fucking kid. A child!”
He shrugs. “Child, woman, same parts, same feeling.”
I jerk so hard the cuffs burn into my wrists. I scream so loudly my voice cracks and I can hear no more than a strangled gasp. He laughs again, stepping forward and leaning down. He takes my hair in his hands and yanks me forward. My hair feels like it is ripping out of my scalp.
“Felt nice, too. Fucking you slowly, listening to you scream—”
“Die!” I wail. “You piece of shit!”
He chuckles as he turns. “I’m done here. Be ready for tonight. It’s a live or die kind of situation.”
He exits the room without another word.
I want to curl up and die.
Dimitri
“Have you found the phone?” I ask, storming into Luke’s room on the ship.
He’s standing at his desk, but at the sound of my voice he turns and stares at me, his expression compassionate. Fuck compassion. I don’t want compassion. I just want to fucking find her and show her that I’m not the kind of person she fucks with.