Meanwhile various thoughts raced through her mind. The most prominent of which, she had to keep fighting no matter how much angrier he became, because she was pretty certain that if he got her into that car, it would be the end of her. And once again, Louis popped into her mind. Could he be behind her abduction despite the fact that this was so not his style? If he had really wanted to take her, she pictured him pulling up in a dark limo, two goon-sized guards grabbing one of each of her arms and walking her toward said limo, and the car door opening to reveal Louis sitting casually inside with an arrogant smile on his face. Perhaps then this was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If only she hadn’t stayed two hours late after work today, it would have been someone else playing the role of a helpless victim. She then immediately felt bad about wishing her fate, whatever it may end up being, on someone else.

  Helpless victim. Emily thought about those words and decided that, yes, she most certainly is a victim, but helpless … no. She was angry. She would not go down without a fight. Be more trouble than you’re worth, she thought. Isn’t that what all the self-defense classes and police officers who lecture safety at schools teach you?

  The Shadow’s hand reached for the handle to the backseat of the SUV and in her last ditch effort to free herself from his clutches, she head butted him with the back of her skull. She thought she heard a crunch underneath and she definitely felt something hot and wet on her neck.

  “Mother-fucking fucker!” He shoved her hard against the car. “You bitch,” he said in her ear, sounding like it was through gritted teeth.

  She had hurt him. It seemed that not only had he pinned her against the car, but that he was leaning on her for support. Still, her plan amounted to completely nothing except for the satisfaction of causing him pain. His hold on her never even wavered slightly, which scared her even more. Emily wondered if he was some kind of pro at kidnapping. Oh god! What if this is some kind of sex slave thing?

  “I’m not even that pretty,” she cried out. She had been so busy with work lately that she’d been skipping her yoga classes. Sure she had a decent body and considered herself attractive with her mid-shoulder length curly blonde locks and sea-foam green eyes, but her thighs were meaty, her stomach soft and round, and she could definitely use a haircut, and further grooming everywhere else. There was nothing about her that should have stood out, not even to a man like Louis.

  “What?” He sounded surprised before his ire returned in full force. “Do that again, princess and the next time I hit back. Consider yourself lucky it’s not broken.”

  His threat made her body tremble. She could only imagine what a hit from him would feel like. If his iron hold on her was any indication of his strength, not to mention the fact that he barely flinched when she head butted him despite how badly it must have hurt, she knew his punches would definitely not feel like love taps.

  “I’m s—sorry. Please, just let me go.” Fighting didn’t work. Maybe begging would.

  “No. And I said shut up!” He pulled her against him, opened the backseat door, and shoved her inside, face down on the back seat. “You need to start following instructions, princess, or things will go far worse for you.” The car door slammed before he finished his sentence.

  “She got you good, didn’t she?” another man’s voice came from the front seat with a chuckle. “Try not to get any on my leather.”

  Fuck, there were two of them!

  “Drive,” ordered her Shadow. His tone was completely cool despite the fact that she still felt his blood trickling against her as he tied her hands firmly behind her back. He must have been a Boy Scout, too, she pondered, with how expertly he tied her hands in some sort of intricate knot. The rope he used felt thin and surprisingly pleasant as if made from some soft fabric. She managed to turn her head to the side, but had no time to take in her surroundings when he blindfolded her. Her legs were pushed further into herself to make room for him in the back seat.

  This was it, she thought. She wasn’t the praying type, but if begging didn’t work on her emotionless abductor, perhaps a higher power might hear her and intervene. She couldn’t help the whimper that escaped her. “Please,” she whispered.

  “Hmmm.” Shadow seemed to be pondering something. “I didn’t think I’d enjoy you tied up and begging, but surprisingly I do.”

  Another chuckle from the peanut gallery had Shadow’s slightly softened tone hardening again. “You just can’t follow simple instructions, can you, Cal?”

  No, no, no, no, no. She hadn’t seen their faces yet, knew nothing about these two men. There may be some small chance of survival if she couldn’t identify them. But Shadow carelessly using the driver’s name meant only one thing—they were going to kill her. Surely, he would have been more discreet if he had planned on letting her go.

  “I said drive!”

  Chapter Two

  The car pulled to a stop. Emily had no idea how long it took for them to arrive at their destination. She remained terrified of what actually waited for her there and was too consumed with horrific scenarios to take note of time. In any case, fear tends to often make time seem prolonged.

  The engine cut off, two car doors opened, and Shadow pulled her to him. Within seconds she found herself being thrown over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, her hands still tied behind her back. She heard gravel crunching beneath his feet before he must have stepped on a smoother surface. She heard the driver, Cal, go ahead of them and open a door and then Shadow carried her straight inside, the winter chill turning into warmth. Another door opened and down the stairs Shadow carried her.

  Emily’s heart thumped loudly in her chest as he set her down on a bed. He undid her coat, took off her hat and gloves, and redid the ties on her hands, binding them in more intricate knots to the bed. She was lost in the darkness, pondering just how hazardous her Shadow would turn out to be. He kidnapped another human being and yet remained steady and cool like he did this every day. Which he probably did. He breathed heavy as he tied more intricate knots, this time binding her ankles together. Yet again, the ropes felt surprisingly pleasant. Maybe now was not the time though to discover that she had a fetish for being tied up, but it seemed that her Shadow was definitely getting off on it too.

  “You’re enjoying this?” Emily couldn’t help but ask.

  A slight pause on his part, one she may have missed had she not been so attuned to him at the moment. “Yes.”

  At least he didn’t tell her to shut up this time, she thought. Maybe she could get some answers and decided to tread carefully. “Do you tie women up a lot?” Emily’s voice quavered as she spoke.

  “I do. To the women who beg me to,” he replied matter-of-factly but Emily didn’t miss the slight tremble in Shadow’s voice either.

  “But I didn’t beg you to.”

  Another quick pause in his ministrations. He remained quiet while he finished binding her legs. After he finished with the ropes, the bed dipped as he sat beside her. She felt his breath near her face when he next spoke. “I am making an exception.” His voice altered from speaking softly to her, sounding slightly aroused, to deadly steel in seconds when he added, “The fact that I like seeing you tied up like this changes nothing.”

  “Please, just let me go,” she pleaded. The ice in his voice terrified her.

  His response was an emotionless “no.”

  Somehow she knew that pleading would amount to nothing, his coldness indicative of that. And his anger at being turned on by her was completely baffling. After all, wasn’t that the point of kidnapping her? What could he possibly want from her if not to rape or to sell her to someone who would? She certainly didn’t come from money. The living she made as an accountant, though quite decent, did not make her a Rockefeller. She came from an average middle-class family with parents who had kids later in life and were both living in a retirement community now.

  “I won’t tell anyone.” She had to keep trying, at the very least to find out why he kidnapped her. Being prepared was at least better than not, she supposed. “I didn’t see your face, I can’t ident—”

  And then he pulled off her blindfold.

  Her eyes widened. She felt like Psyche for a moment, forbidden to see the face of Cupid and yet she would have wanted nothing more, even though in this case it most likely had led to her death. To say this man was as beautiful as he was frightening was an understatement. Cupid may have even been envious of the Shadow with his mess of rich brown curls hanging down to his collar bone, striking gunmetal eyes, a perfect aquiline nose, a strong square jawline, and full lips with a natural pout. She figured he must have wiped the blood off his face in the car since she saw no visible traces of it. The chest he had held her against looked as firm as she imagined with visibly defined muscles bulging through his scoop-necked black ribbed sweater.

  His chuckle startled her out of her ogling state and his face remained beautiful even when his lips curved into a cruel smile. “I know I’m pretty to look at, but I imagine you’ll soon hate the sight of me.”

  “Why?” She whispered. “Why me?”

  “Payback!”

  With that, he got up and left the room, a room that looked like it was part of a finished basement. She had no time to really take in her surroundings since he turned off the lights on his way up the stairs, plunging her back into complete darkness.

  Chapter Three

  “Fuck,” Brody Beckett mumbled as he entered the kitchen.

  “You’re letting that bitch get to you?” Cal snapped. “Don’t get all soft on me, Brody. We’ve been planning this shit for too long.”

  Brody walked toward Cal slowly, like a predator stalking his prey. “Soft?” he roared into the significantly shorter man’s face. “Soft, motherfucker? You had one job and you pussied out. I had to step in and do it for you.”

  “She changed her s-schedule,” Cal stuttered, backing away from Brody. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “Exactly what we’ve been planning for the last four fucking months,” Brody roared again. “You adapt, asshole.”

  Brody pinched the bridge of his nose to calm himself down. It wasn’t like him to lose his cool in front of anyone. He’d always been good at keeping his emotions in check. And Cal was right. This girl had gotten under his skin. His emotions were warring inside of him with exactly how much damage to do to her ever since Cal started gathering intel and bringing him photos of Emily Renard. One particular image haunted him ever since he blew it up to enlarge her face. Haunting green eyes had stared back at him for months, as if even then they had been pleading with him not to hurt her. The way her wide eyes had looked at him downstairs had his dick hardening even more than when he was tying her up, something else that shocked the hell out of him. She of all people should not be having that effect on him, especially from what he saw of her in the video. Payback is going to be a bitch, he thought, haunting eyes be damned.

  “Go get everything ready,” Brody ordered Cal in a more even tone. “Can you handle that at least, you chicken shit?”

  Cal nodded and left the room. Calvin Dunne had just as much reason for doing this as he did, but he should have known better than to trust that unskilled weasel with any of the actual heavy lifting. And Brody suspected that Cal started using again after the death of his brother. A strung out junkie hell bent on revenge could easily make things go south for the both of them. Brody may have been just as hell bent on revenge, but at least he wasn’t a drug addict. He relied on his control too much for that.

  His cell phone rang. “Is it done, Beckett?” Stephen Nowicki, a man Brody loved and trusted like a brother, asked. Other than Stephen, there were only four others that Brody trusted in this world, and he had no doubt that his former Navy Seal brothers were on standby, waiting for all the shit to go down.

  “I went and got her myself,” Brody replied.

  “I knew that little prick had no balls!”

  “Make the call, Nowicki.”

  “Done. ETA for first video?”

  Brody thought for a moment. “Give me an hour,” he said before disconnecting the call. A short little video every hour should do the trick, he thought.

  Brody imagined how the conversation between Stephen and the scum drug lord Carter would go as he went over to the sink to try and get the blood out of his black leather jacket.

  She’s going to pay for that one, too.

  Right about now, Nowicki was informing him that they had the girl and for every hour that Carter did not deliver his right-hand man, Zeke Fallow, to face justice—to be delivered by Brody and Cal, of course—Emily would be the one to suffer for it.

  She deserves it as much as Fallow, he tried to convince himself.

  “Shit!” he muttered, breathing heavily. He nearly scrubbed a hole in his black leather jacket trying to get all the blood out.

  After blotting the jacket nearly dry, he walked over to the small kitchen table and draped it over one chair while taking a seat in another. He rested his elbows on the table and placed his head in his hands, fisting his unruly curly locks. His phone buzzed again. A text this time.

  Stephen Nowicki: Not the reaction I expected. When I told him we had his girl, he seemed almost unconcerned. He said he’d think about it.

  Brody Beckett: Wtf! He’ll change his tune after the first video.

  Brody angrily shoved the phone back into his pocket and slammed his fist down hard on the table. He’d make her bleed! Maybe that would make Carter more concerned. Just then he heard a piercing scream coming from downstairs and immediately picked himself up and rushed to the basement.

  The lights were back on, a video camera sat on a tripod by the bed aimed directly at Emily, and that fucker Calvin had his hand down her pants. Emily’s shirt was ripped open, revealing a boring white cotton bra. She was thrashing and struggling against the ropes but to no avail.

  “That’s enough, Cal,” Brody commanded. When Calvin ignored his order, Brody lost his cool composure. He walked over to Cal and yanked his hand out of Emily’s pants and shoved the smaller man off to the side. Only then did Emily stop struggling.

  “The fun’s not over yet, princess,” Brody sneered looking directly into her grateful eyes. She had absolutely nothing to be grateful for.

  Brody took out the knife he kept holstered to his side. He watched as Emily’s eyes had widened once again with fear, completely obliterating the tiny sliver of hope she must have felt. There was only one way out of this for her, but even if she made it out, it would not be unscathed.

  “Oh God,” she whispered zeroing in on the knife, tears streaming down her face.

  “God can’t help you now!” He paused for a moment, tilting his head to the side, remembering something she had blurted out when he held her against the SUV. “What did you mean earlier when you said ‘I’m not that pretty’?”

  She shook heard quickly as a response.

  “I don’t like repeating myself, Emily. I asked you a question.”

  “How do you know my—”

  “I’m the one asking the questions here,” he cut her off, growing impatient. She would not keep defying him. He placed the knife to her throat, the tip of it causing only a little sting, he imagined, but enough to see a small trickle of blood forming. Carter would not be privy to their conversation when he received the footage, but the footage would get the point across nicely.

  “Do I need to ask you again, princess?”

  She shook her head. “For your … for your sex slave ring?”

  Brody couldn’t help but laugh at that. Not only did her response come out as a question, but here she thought he was going to sell her into slavery and to top it all off, she didn’t think she was pretty enough. “On the contrary, princess, you’re quite pretty.” She let out a small whimper when he pushed the tip of the knife further and added, “For now.”

  He felt his stomach churn when he remembered the video in his possession featuring another woman, tied to a bed, taunted about how pretty she was … for now.

  Brody pulled the knife away from Emily’s throat and walked over to where Calvin stood by the camera. He powered it off and then with a smirk, he wiped off the small amount of blood on Cal’s shirt. “I’ve had enough blood on my clothes for one day.”

  Brody removed the camera from the tripod and nudged Calvin forward to head up the stairs. When they reached the top, through gritted teeth Brody said, “She’s mine to deal with. You get me?”

  “I have just as much—”

  “You can have Fallow.” He handed him the camera before deadpanning, “Touch Fallow all you want.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “No thanks,” Brody replied with a chuckle. “Get this to Stephen.” When Cal hesitated, Brody put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Focus, Cal. It’ll be over soon.” This time Cal nodded.

  Brody turned from him and headed back downstairs. He wasn’t finished with her yet. When he reached the bed, he sat down by her side. He didn’t bother covering her up and unabashedly let his eyes roam down her scantily clad torso.

  So she didn’t think she was that pretty, huh? That certainly explained some things and confused him with others.

  “Is it your turn now?” she asked him bitingly.

  “Somehow I think you would enjoy it if it was my turn.” The proof of his statement was given when with just the tips of his fingers, he brushed across her skin from between her breasts down to her belly button. Goosebumps appeared where he touched her, her pupils dilated, and her cheeks, which were ghostly pale before, bloomed a rosy blush.