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I’m going to skin their entire family alive. Tristan Cross is Bastian Cross’s younger brother. They are all fucking snakes. This lets me know my job isn’t done. Lacey was telling the truth. Tristan knows I was going after his brother, so he took an opportunity to strike.

Why the fuck would she willingly go with him? She would never leave with someone. She fucked up, but I’ll have to deal with that later. Right now, I need to make sure she is alive.

I step on the gas and know where I have to go to find her. I just hope I’m not too late.

14

D & E

Evelyn

The door opens, and I jump. I can barely stay awake anymore. I feel like I am drifting away to nothing, and I may be going insane. White walls and no food will do that to you.You’re still alive. Keep fighting.

I don’t even look towards the door. I know my fate. I’m going to be raped by a scummy man and then killed by the man that broke me—a truly happy ending to my shit show of a life. Everything was perfect until I got adventurous. I just wanted to feel alive. To live life on the edge. Now, I don’t want to live at all.Yes, you do.

I hear footsteps grow closer as I shudder in fear.

A pair of gloved hands reach behind me, but his shoes are different. It’s not the black combat boots I was haunted by last time. They look like dress shoes, but I’m so out of it I could be hallucinating either from lack of sleep or the drugs that were pumping through my system.

I hear the shackles hit the floor, making me jump, and I am scooped up from the floor. I have no fight left in me. I look up, knowing my fate, but I freeze when I see who is carrying me. Lucien.

Feeling exposed, I try to cover my chest, but my arms fail me. I try to cross my legs, but I can’t move them either. They are numb from the position I was left in. My body aches badly from being chained to the wall for so many hours, and I smell of piss. The smell doesn’t bother me anymore. I don’t think anything would.

Lucien carries me out of the room and down a dark hallway. I can’t even hold my head up any longer. I can’t tell if I’ve been saved or if he is in on this sick twisted shit. He could have been the one to set it all up if he didn’t want me taking up Dante’s time.

He opens up a steel door to a room. Great, he’s come to torture me.

He sets me in a chair and throws a sheet in my direction. I don’t catch it. I can barely move. There is no point in fighting anymore, either. I think I’ve been here for several days, but I’m not sure. He approaches me andhelps to cover me. I look around the room, adjusting to the darker light. I see three men strapped down to chairs in the center of the room. Panic grips my chest. I still have tape over my mouth and a cloth gag shoved inside my mouth.Breathe.

The men all have burlap sacks over their heads, and they are stripped completely naked. I am scared of what Lucien is going to make me do for them.

The room is filled with muffled grunts and sobs. I know they are gagged beneath the sacks. They can’t say anything. Neither can I.

I hear the door open once more, creaking loudly, my body twitches in response.

I’m sitting in my chair, trembling, when Dante enters the room. His jaw is sharp and hard, his eyes black. He looks like a killer at this moment. I’ve never felt more afraid of him. My body stiffens as he walks closer to the men in the center of the room.

“Some people think they can take what doesn’t belong to them.” He rips off the man in the center’s burlap sack. It’s Tristan. He sits still in the chair, glaring at Dante.

“Some people think they can drug what doesn’t belong to them.” He rips off the burlap sack from the man to the right. It’s the bartender from the club. Goes to show how fucking observant I am.

“Some people are in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He rips off the remaining man’s burlap sack. I don’t recognize him.

They all stare directly at me with anger.They want to kill you.Their veins bulge from their necks, and sweat glistens on their bodies. I close my eyes, not wanting to watch what happens next.

“Ms. Blackwell,” he says, my name firmly. I press my eyes shut as hard as I can.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” He yells at me with aggression in his hoarse voice.

I look up, my eyes swelling with tears.

“Did he touch you?” He stares into my eyes, his eyes like daggers.

I shrug my shoulders. It’s the truth. I don’t know what he did to me.

“Did he undress you?”

I nod my head slowly. Sobbing even more than I was before.