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Tangled Hearts
Sara Fields
Chapter One
Ellie
Fuck.
I knew I shouldn’t have stopped here, but I was too tired and too damn worn out from running last night and the old mansion on the north side of the city had seemed like the best option at the time.
Hell, my cheek still hurt from the backhand across my face. Flinching, I brushed my fingers against it.
I hoped my face wouldn’t bruise.
It wasn’t the first time Marco had hit me either. His anger got the best of him sometimes and I’d finally had enough of it. Just yesterday, he’d tied me to the bed and left me there for hours to teach me a lesson while he went away on some business trip. I’d been able to escape, but it hadn’t been easy.
I rubbed my wrists absently. They still ached from the rope.
I shook my head, thinking maybe I’d just woken up from a bad dream and hadn’t heard anything at all. I’d only just laid my head back down on the pillow when another noise caught my attention. My hearing laser focused on the sound. I thought it might be a footstep brushing against the floor, but I couldn’t be certain.
Fuck. What was that?
It could be absolutely nothing. Maybe it was an animal. Or maybe it was just the wind… Right?
This house was abandoned sometime in the last few years. The woods surrounding the back were chock-full of racoons, foxes, and coyotes. Regardless, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I chewed the inside of my cheek.
Slowly, I pushed myself off the twin bed. I’d chosen it because it looked the cleanest out of all the beds in the house. It was covered in a dark navy-blue quilt with only a few stains. I’d covered the pillow with a sweatshirt and laid down for a few hours. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but the sun hadn’t risen yet, so it still had to be sometime in the middle of the night.
My heart thundered against my chest as I stood up, holding my breath. I could hear the creaking of the floorboards under my feet, and I pressed my lips together nervously. As silently as I could, I grabbed my backpack and tiptoed across the room. I flinched with every soft sound, hoping whomever or whatever was downstairs wouldn’t hear me up here.
Maybe it was Marco’s men or maybe it was someone else. Either way, I didn’t want to take any chances.
The moonlight flittered with a soft glow through the window, and I weighed my options. I could run, but if it was Marco’s soldiers looking for me, then it would be far too risky. I could slip out through the back of the house into the woods, but that still posed the issue of getting caught if I made just one wrong step.
My gaze landed on the closet door.
I could hide.
For right now, it seemed like the most viable option, so I took a deep breath and grabbed the knob. The hinges squeaked quietly as I slowly opened the door. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. In a rush, I threw myself inside, turned around, and closed myself in.
The footsteps pounded louder.
They were getting closer.
I swallowed hard.
Whoever was here, they weren’t trying to hide their presence. I took a step backward, and my back brushed against the wall as I held my breath. I could see through the small gap between the door and the doorframe. When a shadow moved across the wall, I shrank back a bit more and my gaze landed on my sweatshirt on the bed.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I froze as a man moved into my field of vision.
He was tall, maybe something like six foot four. I could easily make out the form of his muscles underneath his impeccably tailored suit. He was big, but not huge, and my eyes widened as his hand slowly came into view. He brushed his fingers across the dark green fabric of my sweatshirt, his dark head tilted to the side, and then lifted as he looked around the room. His gaze fell on the closed closet door, and he paused as my heart pounded in my chest like a goddamn drum. I hoped he couldn’t hear it.
I stopped breathing when he took a step toward me, but then another man slipped into the room beside him.
“I could have sworn I heard something,” the first man said softly.
