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My mom screams and starts violently shaking her head. She struggles against her chains as the tears fall down her face. I can see the wrist cuffs cutting into her skin as she fights with all she has.
“Fuck right the fuck off!” I scream at all of them. Damien grips the back of my hair and yanks my head back. I let out a cry as my mom continues her protest.
“Be a good girl and just do what you said you would. Give us the money. All you have to do is marry Ledger. I mean, you fucked his son, it’s basically the same thing.” Damien grins wickedly.
“What? No.” I try to shake my head, but Damien has it gripped tight. “I am not marrying that asshole.”
It all happens so fast. The glint of the metal under the dim light and Ledger’s hand reaching for it. My eyes widen as I watch it come out and he stretches his arm.
The loud bang in the room we are in reverberates against the walls, and I let out a scream as I watch a bullet go right into my mother’s head. The light in her eyes is gone the second the bullet pierces her skull.
Her struggling stops. Her body hunches over. She’s unmoving. My heart skips a deafening beat.
She’s gone.
She’s gone.
No.
She can’t be dead.
“Mom. Mom! No! No! Mom!” I scream. “Mom!”
“Ah. Much better. She was getting on my nerves,” Ledger sighs.
“Did you really have to do that?” Aaron throws his hands up in the air. “Do you know how hard it’s going to be to cover that up?”
“She was annoying me. Besides, we don’t need her anymore. We have what we need.” Ledger smirks and shrugs.
“What did you do?” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Why did you do that?”
“You wouldn’t marry me. Now you have no one. Guess I’m your only option.” Ledger gets up and walks over to me. His hand comes up, and the force of his palm on my face knocks me over to the floor. “Happy engagement day, my future wife.”
“Fuck. You,” I say through the sobs.
Ledger laughs. “Feisty. I love it. I will have no problem working to break you. So act tough now, because that will not last long.”
He walks over to my mom’s body and admires the bullet hole in her head. He turns to me with a wicked gleam in his eye and licks the side of her face before kissing her on her lips. His hands coming up to her breasts as he rubs and plays with them.
Bile rises up my throat again as I lose it all over the floor in front of me. Snot and tears drip down my face as the taste of vomit sours my tongue.
“Goddamnit, Ledger. You just made her fucking puke again,” Damien gags.
“Well, like I said, I’ll break her.” He lets out an evil laugh. “Take her back to her cell until we can get someone to come down and marry us. Also, have Spike get the lawyer on the phone to ready the paperwork for the money. Aaron, you need to disappear and come up with a cover story. We will get her body dumped somewhere out in the desert.”
“Let’s go, bitch.” Damien yanks me up as I continue to dry heave. My head hurts, and my heart is completely dead at this point.
My mother’s gone. Dead. I watched her die. I let out another sob as the reality sinks in that I am in a mess that I have no way out of. And the only person I had a fight in me for is dead.
Damien drags me back into the cage and throws me in. I fall against the bed and let out a yelp. He comes over and crouches next to me, grabbing my hair and yanking my head back, causing me to shriek in agony.
“You need to listen to me and listen to every word I say. I am not who you think, and I’m going to get you out of here, but I need to send out the call for backup,” Damien whispers as heyanks on my hair again. “I’m only doing this for looks. I’m so sorry Rory.”
I blink a few times, unsure whether what I just heard was true. Did he just say he was going to get me out of here? “I-I don’t understand.”
He grips my face with his hand and squeezes hard. The look in his eyes tells me he hates that he has to do it. The regret in his frown.
He lets out a long sigh. “I’m undercover.”