AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Your move.
***
Time drags. I shift on the cold floor, trying to ease the pain in my joints. My stomach is twisting up, trying to swallow itself. I’m not used to going hungry. Not used to the unrelenting burn of thirst and the pain in my head, in my arms and legs. Not even back when I lived with my grandpa and he beat his brand of discipline into me, on the principle that if it hurt I wouldn’t forget what he told me.
No, this is a brand new experience. How many millionaires get to experience such interesting things? Go, me. I’m so fucking lucky.
I drift in and out of uneasy sleep. In my dreams, my parents stare at me, accusation in their eyes. See what you did to us, they whisper. Put us in prison. Betrayed us, our only son. There’s a hell for children who betray their parents, did you know that, Jamie Fleming?
Did you know you’re going to burn in hell?
I wake up with a gasp when someone decides to use me as a punching bag again, and I wonder dimly if the Boss knows and approves of his thugs banging me up some more before I make up my mind about joining him.
Probably not, I decide when Elliot comes running and drags the guy off me. “Christ, Johnny, you moron. Boss wants him alive. What part of that don’t you get?”
Johnny-boy shoves at me until the ropes bite into my wrists and ankles hard. “He’s not gonna play along. Can’t you see that he’s a cheat? He’s playing us all.”
Damn. Johnny-boy is turning out to be too suspicious and too spot-on for comfort.
“Taking off the blindfold would make me more agreeable to your boss’s fucking proposal,” I grumble, and it annoys me that the silence that follows bothers me. “Would help me decide in favor.” I draw a deep breath and damn but my ribs ache. “He is the big boss, isn’t he?”
Fuck, I need them to move, talk, hell even beat me. I hate not knowing what’s going on.
And then it gets worse because Elliot whips out another rag and gags me.
Goddammit!
“Let him think, then,” Elliot mutters, or I think he does as their steps move away from me.
“Take off the blindfold!” I yell from behind the gag, but of course I get no reply to my garbled words.
The door slams.
Hell.
Deep breaths. It’s fine. Okay, so I didn’t expect them to starve me and let me shrivel from thirst if these are the people who want my cooperation—but I should know better. I’ve dealt with the Chinese mafia, for chrissakes. Why should I expect that civilized people would lead this violent, all-powerful Organization?
Power strips all pretense, strips people of their humanity, their kindness, their empathy, as history has demonstrated time and again. A man who says he can replace me by some unknown cousin, who can kidnap me and be confident no repercussions will touch him, is not constrained by societal rules.
Or morals. Or remo
rse.
Like a snake, I think, trying to spit out the gag, tugging uselessly on my bonds. A born predator, unaware of the destruction he causes.
Like my parents. Like Rook’s parents. Got Storm’s parents killed. Got Storm almost killed. Plowed through countless people’s lives for money and riches and power.
Game on.
The Organization has its tentacles everywhere. There’s no way to know where they reach.
Unless you infiltrate it. Enter it. And what better way to get inside than to be caught? Wait, don’t answer that. Storm and Rook already gave me a piece of their mind on the subject—but it’s me the Organization heads wants. Me they hate. And they’ll have to deal with me, negotiate, and probably not kill me. Not immediately. Not unless it serves a purpose.
So I stand a good chance of finding out something.
I just need to keep my cool. No matter how bad things look, it’s all going according to plan. According to my plan, I repeat to myself as something clangs overhead and a door slams somewhere inside the building.
I cling to the faint sounds and work on keeping my calm.
