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Nia
I’ve been afraid many times in my life. I thought I knew fear, but I never did. This, what I’m feeling right now, has surpassed afraid and is racing into terror. I’m tied to a chair by my hands and ankles in a dark, dank space that looks like it might have once been a house. Now, it’s abandoned and from what my kidnapper has told me there’s no one around for miles, so screaming would be pointless.
My blood is pounding through my arteries at a million miles per hour and my heart is racing to a beat that is far too fast. I can barely think, my mind focused on one thing: this is where I’m going to die.
No one knows where I am and no one will notice I’m missing until the morning, whenever that is. Time has lost meaning here.
Jared will start to wonder where I am once I don’t turn up for the zoo trip we planned with Cooper, but even if he wonders, what can he do?
I don’t even know where I am. The last thing I remember was coming out of the store. Then, I woke up here… wherever here is.
“You’re awake,” a deeply masculine voice says to me from the shadows—a voice I recognize.
When he steps into the light, I know why he’s familiar. I’ve met him before. It’s the man who came into the shop and creeped me out. The guy looking for decorations and pictures.
“What do you want?”
“You took what’s mine. I want it back.”
His statement confuses me. I’ve never taken anything that wasn’t mine. “What are you talking about?”
“You bought a storage unit that should never have been up for sale.”
My stomach fills with ice. When I first opened the store, I did buy a storage unit. It’s the same storage unit with the million-dollar portrait in it. I keep this to myself, but a horrible suspicion is starting to grow in me that the portrait might be the reason behind my abduction.
“Yes, I bought a storage unit,” I tell him carefully.
“My grandmother owned it,” he says, pacing a little as he speaks. “She passed, but I was out of the state at the time, so I had no idea. I also had no idea her death meant she hadn’t paid for the storage unit for six months, which meant it was repossessed by the storage unit owner.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I mutter, pulling on my bindings.
“When I finally got back to town, I couldn’t get into the unit. I had to pick the goddamn lock. Imagine my surprise at finding it was empty.”
That’s because I bought it and transferred all the stuff to the back room in the store, sold on what I couldn’t sell in the store. The rest I got rid of.
“Imagine my surprise,” he mutters. “I spoke to the owner of the storage unit company. He said he’d sold it on to pay for the rent arrears. He did, under duress, give me your details.”
“You ransacked my store,” I accuse.
“I was in a rush.”
“Did you break into my apartment, too?”
“When I didn’t find the item in the store, I wondered if you’d taken it home with you, if you knew the true value of the piece.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He rushes at me, his face inches from mine as he hisses, “You’re lying. Where’s the portrait?”
My suspicion confirmed, I swallow bile. How can one little portrait cause this much turmoil?
I peer into his face, my heart thundering beneath my ribs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His hand flashes out and catches me in the face. My head snaps back from the force of the blow, and I’m transported back to my past, back to a time of fear, when I was used to taking hits from Thomas. I shake my head, trying to stop the ringing in my ears, and failing.
“Does that jog your memory?”
“I really don’t know—”
