Page 71 of No Longer Mine (Rags & Riches #2)

Chapter Sixty

Scarlett

It didn’t matter how much I screamed or fought the bindings.

They were tight and unrelenting. The duct tape across my mouth muffled every sound, turning my cries into pathetic gasps that disappeared into the walls. My wrists burned. My shoulders ached from being twisted behind me for so long. Every inch of me trembled—not just from fear, but from fury.

The secret room Sinclair had thrown me into was narrow, lined with steel and concrete. No windows. No cameras that I could see. Just that awful chair, the cold bite of metal, and the faint smell of mildew and old cigars. It was one of the old servant hallways turned into a cell.

I closed my eyes and focused on the rhythm of my breath.

One in. One out. My pulse was racing, but I tried to slow it.

I thought about everything I knew. Every secret passage.

Every route in and out of Sinclair’s apartment.

I thought about the last time Dimitri held me.

I imagined his eyes when he was gentle with me and when they were full of desire.

There was a small panicked part of me that wondered if I would ever see him again.

The ropes around my wrists had rubbed my skin raw, but I flexed against them again, twisting my wrists, trying to angle the tape across my mouth against the rough edge of the chair. I pressed my face down, scraping. Pain lanced across my cheekbone, but I didn’t stop.

The sirens started faintly.

A door slammed somewhere in the apartment above me. Heavy boots pounded the floor overhead. Something was happening. I paused and strained to listen.

A voice—low, deep, and unmistakable—cut through the chaos above.

Dimitri.

God. He was here.

I thrashed harder, tears springing to my eyes, not from fear—but from relief. A desperate kind of hope filled my chest.

He was here.

He was close.

Another voice, sharp and guttural, barked in Russian.

I twisted my wrists until I felt something snap—something in the rope, or maybe in me, I didn’t care. My hands screamed with pain, but I shoved against the bindings again and again, my shoulder jerking with every lurch of the chair.

Come on. Come on, please ? —

The door to the room groaned open behind me.

I froze.

Not footsteps. Just the creak of a door.

“You know, I never expected you to be the one,” Sinclair said conversationally, as if we were catching up at brunch. “But that’s the thing about men like my son. They always fall for broken things.”

He stepped into view, still impossibly composed. A coat was thrown over one shoulder with a duffel bag in his hand.

He was planning on leaving.

“And just like all broken things,” he murmured, crouching in front of me. His face was bloodied and swollen but he still smiled. “you’ll be forgotten once you’re no longer useful.”

He didn’t strike me. He didn’t need to.

He pressed a single finger to the duct tape over my mouth—and then turned and walked out.

I screamed through the tape. I thrashed against the chair. It was no use.

Why was Sinclair happy? Why was he smiling? What on earth was happening? Where was Dimitri?

All of these questions swirling in my mind came to a crashing stop as one of Sinclair’s men stepped around me and crouched before my chair.

His movements were faster and more jerky.

He was worried about getting out of here.

I could see the fear in his eyes and his movements.

He knew Dimitri was coming for me. He sliced through the duct tape and warmth dribbled over my skin. The bastard had nicked my skin.

“Hurry up!” Someone barked outside of the room and the man didn’t worry about pulling the tape from my ankles. Instead, he tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and thundered out of the small room.

I kicked my legs and thrashed against his hold but he only tightened his grip. I was weak, my body hurt, and every ounce of my willpower was fading with the passing seconds. Every step he took knocked more fight out of me.

“Do you know what happens when you touch something that’s mine?” Dimitri’s growl echoed through the hallway like the crack of thunder.

The man froze and then dropped me like dead weight.

Pain exploded as I hit the floor, my shoulder taking the brunt of the fall. Fire tore through the joint. I screamed, but the sound barely made it past the tape still clinging to my mouth.

Tears blurred my vision, searing my cheeks. But it didn’t matter. He was here.

I would’ve wept harder if I could breathe through the agony.

“I’ve found her!” Dimitri’s voice cracked through the static in my brain. It was the only thing I could cling to.