Page 99 of Rescued Dreams

When she’d begun to object to his treatment of her, things had deteriorated. He’d become even more controlling and, as she’d later realized, started drugging her coffee.

She wanted coffee.

Okay, so she wanted to get out of here first. Then she was going to have a cup of coffee, finally. She refused to live in fear anymore.

He entered the room, pushing two teenage girls in front of him. The girls were wide-eyed with cloth around their mouths and their wrists secured in front of them. That man wasn’t anyone she had ever loved.

“What did you do?” Amelia screamed the question at him, clutching the bars of the cage.

That’s who the cages were for.

She scanned them for injuries.

Maddie screamed behind the cloth, her cheeks flaring. Desperate for Amelia to help her. Tears rolled down Ella’s face.

“Let them go!” Amelia would break this cage apart and throttle him. “They have nothing to do with this.”

Nicholas didn’t look anything like the man she’d fallen for. He hadn’t been the same when she’d left Benson years ago, and now seemed more like a stranger. Had he suffered some kind of breakdown?

He jabbed something into Ella’s back, and the girl arched. She screamed behind the cloth, and Amelia saw he had a sort of cattle-prod-looking thing in one hand.

“Don’t hurt them! They haven’t done anything to you!” She rattled the cage.

He shoved them without pressing the button, and they stumbled forward. He swiped out with his boot and kicked her cage, laughing. “All part of the plan, sweetheart.”

That word. He’d used that word when he’d needed to justify getting angry or pushing her around. Tearing her down.Sweetheart.

“I’m not your sweetheart. And those girls are innocent. Let them go, they havenothingto do with you.” Anger burned in her stomach like a fire blazing. “Don’t?—”

“Get in.” He shoved them toward two of the cages.

The girls whimpered, finally complying with his instructions.

“Nicholas. Let them go.” She stared at him, fully focused on her mission to get him to let the twins go. If she looked at them, she would shatter. “You’re only here for me. Why are you involving all of them? Just take me. I’ll go with you. I’ll do whatever you want. Nicholas, please.”

He looked at her, that cattle prod in his hand. “You know I like it when you sayplease.”

She gritted her teeth. “Let them go, please.”

Two long strides brought him over to her.

“Nich—”

He stuck the cattle prod into her cage and jammed it into her side. Every muscle in Amelia’s body clenched at the same time, her nerve endings suddenly white-hot.

She fell against the side of the cage and slumped into a heap, curled up.

He walked some more. She could only stare at the far wall and listen to him stop. He clinked a lock. “Get out.”

The twins gasped. One whispered, “She’s pregnant.”

Cherry walked in front of Amelia, shoved along by Nicholas. If he used that cattle prod on a pregnant woman…

Amelia gasped. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye onto the mat beneath her.

“No one leaves.” Nicholas shoved the door closed, and the slam echoed through the room.

“Amelia.”