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“You’re going to watch, little girl,” one of the men said, “while we kill the man who wronged Lane Price.”
“No!” she cried.
I gritted y teeth. I knew what was next.
Kicks and blows rained down on me, so heavy I couldn’t even try to rise. These sadists wanted Emma to see me suffer a slow, painful death. After a while, the kicking stopped, and I laid perfectly still, holding my breath.
They didn’t even have the decency to check if I was alive. I could hear Emma’s teary voice, begging them to stop. “Don’t do that,” she was saying. “He was only doing what the Reeds told him to!”
One of the King men laughed. “He’s Braden Reeds lieutenant, not your lover.”
Emma fell silent after that.
And I knew that I had to muster up the will to live. Because of her, I had so much to lose, if not everything. The very thought of getting her back made me forget the excruciating pain that I was in. I needed to find water, but I couldn’t even get up. Salt from my sweat blinded me, and I had nothing but the memory of Emma to hold onto.
I took a deep breath, struggling to stay conscious. I wasn’t going to to waste my last breath dying. I was going to live, because I was going to get her back. I may have failed at protecting her, but I was going to find them and I was going to take her away with me.
It was my last thought before I passed out.
When I woke,I wasn’t in the abandoned building. I was somewhere else with bright lights. I was laying in a soft, ample bed with what had to be one of Reed’s girls tending to me. She didn’t have the best bedside manner but I was grateful to be alive.
“When you heal up, Braden wants to have a conversation with you,” she said.
I knew then and there that I was a dead man, but it didn’t matter because I was going to get Emma back from her father. She was mine, and I was going to do everything I could to get her back.
5
EMMA
The King Mafia definitely didn’t care about me. I expected so much more out of my father, but I suppose, if the shoe fits… The Kings got their money from my father after a few hours.
“Is that all you’re good for? Money?” I asked my father when he handed it over. My guess was that the Kings offered my father a lower price for protection than the Reeds did. Even extremely wealthy men watched their wallets—for whatever reason.
“Apparently, a young lady doesn’t know how to be grateful. I had you rescued from savages,” my father said, coldly.
I couldn’t believe him, but I was through with all of it. I just wanted to get out of the prison he’d made me for me. I wanted to be free to do as I pleased.
“You’ll be staying with me,” he said after some time. “One of the guards will watch you.” He waved his hand absentmindedly at aman in a suit and tie who was posted at the door. He’d taken me to one of his many houses, a single-family home he’d purchased as a safehouse. Owning a home was like owning a car for my father, he was so rich. I’d never felt more limited.
I don’t want to be stuck here. I need to find Jack.He was all I could think about. He had been left for dead because of me.
I had to get out of the house, but there was an entire security detail on me. Even so, after my father left to go run some errands, I tried to leave the house.
The doorman immediately blocked the door. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Watch me.” I tried to push past him, but he was too strong and promptly grabbed me by the arm, holding me in place.
“Just wait till I tell my father that you had your hands on me,” I said, though I knew it was pointless.
The guard knew this too, and grinned smugly. “You were trying to escape. Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head no and bit back the impulse to tell the guard what I really thought of him. Instead, I retreated to my room. With little else to do, I immediately got to work devising a plan to get out.
There would be guards posted at each of the doors at all times, so I had to come up with some kind of diversion. Oddly enough, when I thought about Jack, the answer seemed obvious. I was going to cause an explosion.
But how?
I couldn’t make the explosion look like I had done it; I needed the guards to believe that we were being attacked.
