Page 2 of Grace

I’ll survive this. That was my first thought, after the man finally snapped out of his shock and called an ambulance.

A few seconds later, a civilian car pulled up and parked beside the police car. The driver slammed the car door, and only growled something in response as the policemen greeted him. He must have hated being dragged out of his bed.

The man instantly crouched down beside me. He smelled familiar. I forced my eyelids to open wider to get a good look at his face, but he had already recognized me. His gaze bored into mine.

“What have you gotten yourself into this time, Grace?” He whispered the words, still, he sounded so authoritative that the pain ruling every inch of my body subsided, and a wave of adrenaline hit me. Every nerve in me yearned to tell him what had led me here—to tell him about this domino effect.

Although he knew how my story had started, the dominos didn’t stop falling when our paths diverged. At every step, another inevitable shitstorm hit me. And… I let myself be swept away by the current without asking for help. Which was a big mistake.

I still have his card in my wallet. I should have called him when I realized my brother had gotten tangled up with some bad people, or when Nikky’s boyfriend had shown his true colors, or when I had first realized my life was in danger because my siblings had destroyed what I was trying to hold together.

They blamed me for our parents’ death. And while I’ve been feeling guilty ever since, I didn’t ask to be kidnapped when planning my third-ever date in my head.

Domino effect.

Only the three of us remained. Our life wasn’t as nice as it used to be—still, I held on to the naïve belief that everything could turn out well if we just stuck together.

Jamie, at least, wasn’t hostile. Nikky, however, kept bullying me with her friends whenever she got high. She didn’t have a single moment of empathy for me, even though she knew exactly what had happened to me. She was the reason I was here now… Pain tore into my heart again.

How could she have done this to me?

Cyrus carefully brushed the tear from the corner of my eye.

I don’t even know where to start my story. With my kidnapping? Or when I first met Cyrus? Or with all the horrors I went through?

Maybe it’s best to start at the very beginning.

Chapter 2

Summer of 2000

(Kidnapping)

Grace

Chase Baker.

The local dealer who was always selling weed from his run-down van in the park near our high school. And who never got caught—miraculously. No matter how many times his van was searched, he came away clean as a whistle. He had no criminal record whatsoever. I never understood how he managed to avoid trouble, but I didn’t really care. I was only worried about Nikky, since she and her friends often bought weed from him. Once, she even dragged me along with her saying Chase Baker was a weird combination of disturbed and disturbing. A beautiful psychopath. The Devil without horns. Satan himself who could bring Hell to Earth.

I could only roll my eyes at my sister’s tirade. It was even more boring than Mrs. McLaren’s physics class—Nikky’s outburst made absolutely no sense. What’s the big deal? He’s a twenty-year-old guy selling drugs with no goals in life except drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. He seemed… more a good-for-nothing than dangerous.

That is, until I met him.

I instantly understood why Nikky and her friends were scared of him. Chase Baker was silent. He barely spoke, yet his silence—and the way he looked at you with that heartbreakingly beautiful yet somehow appallingly ugly gaze of his—could scare people to death. You felt as if he could see into your soul. As if he knew what your fears and desires were—and how to turn them against you in an instant, twisting your dreams into nightmares.

I won’t lie—he also put me under his spell for a short while. His dark, bad-boy vibe, his chiseled, rigid features, his long black eyelashes, his hair falling into his deep brown eyes that somehow had a steel edge to them... all of it swept me off my feet.

However, no matter how gorgeous he was, I wasn’t naïve. Mom kept lecturing us about the dangers and tricks lurking behind beautiful faces, about the arrogance that often hides behind bright smiles.

I snuck a glance at Nikky and had the feeling that she hadn’t been paying attention to Mom’s warnings at all. We had nothing in common besides our parents’ DNA. While I was a slowly winding river, she was a wild ocean. Our relationship was limited to having to bear each other’s presence while we were living under the same roof. She never did anything a normal sister would: never did my makeup, never painted my nails, or shared anything with me about her private life. No hanging out together, no gazing at the starry sky in our backyard gossiping about guys or girls… She only acknowledged my presence when she needed something—when she needed me to cover for her or get her ass out of trouble. This was one of the times when she needed me so she deigned to consider me her sister—for a while.

Nikky is three years older than me. At the time, she was close to eighteen while I was nearing my fifteenth birthday. The difference was visible, even from a distance. She loved to flaunt her blossoming body while I wore oversized T-shirts and denim overalls. I didn’t wear makeup or paint my nails, and at home, she called me “Samaritan” to mock my selflessness.

“And who is she?” Chase asked, pointing at me. His voice pulled me out of my sister’s shadow.

“My cute little sister, Grace,” Nikky replied, stepping closer to me and putting her arm around my shoulder. She tried to play the cool girl but her visible shaking betrayed the lie behind her confident voice. The funny thing was, I wasn’t shaking at all.

“Grace.” Chase repeated. His voice made my stomach shrink to the size of a walnut. Chase Baker was only twenty years old but had a voice of a powerful Greek god: it was commanding, authoritative, with a dark resonance. There was no compliment in it, yet I felt as if the word was floating above us, like in an invisible speech bubble. My heart jumped, goosebumps rose on my skin, and a tingling ran down my spine when he noiselessly jumped up from his seat and offered me a pack of Marlboro Reds. For a few seconds, I did nothing but take in his masculine hand and long, tanned fingers before I fell into his empty eyes, which were devoid of any emotion. His gaze was a dark, dangerous, swirling whirlpool that sucked me down mercilessly, without asking questions.