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And try to get myself out of this.
I’d done it once before.
The difference now was I had some time to think, to plot, to listen to my attackers and learn from them.
There was constant chattering from what seemed like far away, muffled voices of two or maybe three men. Men I had to assume were armed.
Then were the two closer voices I heard.
At least one of them rang familiar. The ringleader from the warehouse attack. The one whose words dripped with malice.
Look at the mighty Cinna now.
I had to imagine the other two were present as well, ready to enact revenge for the throat punch and ball kicking.
Given the brutality they’d forced on me before with no provocation, aside from being a woman and existing, then I knew it was going to be bad the moment they knew they could get a reaction out of me.
Pretending to be unconscious would only last so long. Even the best drugs only stayed in your system for a while, and slowly lost effectiveness before they were gone.
I wondered if groggy would be enough reason to leave me alone for a while.
“She’s still unconscious?” a woman’s voice called, mingling with the click of chunky heels on the floor, stopping right in front of me.
If I wasn’t so outnumbered and out-weaponed, I could reach out, grab her ankles, and yank her onto the ground. With luck, her head would whack off the floor, and she would be one less person I had to worry about.
But I would have men on me in seconds if I tried. And as confident as I was about my abilities, I knew there was no way I was staving off that many men. Especially if they were armed.
So I kept playing asleep.
“How much did you give her, Brett?” the woman asked.
This had to be the Miller widow.
I had a vague memory of her. Short blonde hair, light eyes, a permanently pinched, unhappy expression, and a skinny frame.
Funnily enough, her husband John, was similarly tall, skinny, and always kind of looked like he’d smelled something bad.
It was like when people started to resemble their dogs. Except with spouses.
If we were being technical, I hadn’t been the one who’d wanted him dead in the first place. There’d been a turf war between the Millers and the Strand brothers. The Strands, being loyal to me, and offering the better kick-up, had been granted the offer to handle their turf war by any means necessary. Which meant the death of John Miller.
It wasn’t personal.
It was the life.
Something John, and his wife, knew when they’d decided to try to push the brothers out. But, clearly, the widow was now taking it personally.
If there was one thing I’d learned working in this world, it was that when women let power go to their heads, when they let it chisel out any goodness in their hearts, they were ten times as cruel as any man could be.
I mean you were a whole new kind of evil to be a woman and order men to not only beat—which I could overlook because, hey, I knew the risks I was taking in this life too—but also rape another woman.
Would she stand by and watch as her men tried to do that to me now? That thought made me want to say ‘fuck the consequences’ and take her out now.
“It was a lot,” Brett admitted. “But I didn’t want her waking up in the van or on the way down here. She’s stronger than she looks.”
Down here.
So it was a basement.
