Page 111 of The Chaos She Brings

Kai’s face flits through my mind. The image cracks my heart in two.

He’ll have read my note. I can picture the heartbreak in his expression. Will he have crumpled it up? Thrown it away? Kept it?

None of it matters.

I’ll never see him again.

That thought might actually be worse than the rest of the pain I’m in.

I could endure this if I knew it would end some other way than with me trapped here, tied to a man I hate.

I’m not sure how long I lay in the mud. Long enough for the light to change, for the rain to fade and the sun to shine.

Then long enough again for the sun to dip once more, beginning to set on the horizon.

My body is stiff. It’s been hours. A day? I don’t really know.

All I know is that I’m numb.

No one comes to disturb me.

Guess Nikolai meant what he said. That I could come back inside when I was ready to becivil. That limp-dicked, crusty-foreskinned, cum-gobbling, titty-wanking, shit-stained, twat-faced,asshole.

Fucking civil?

Fuck that.

A sound to my right has me lifting my head in time to see a blur of movement. I can’t make them out through the bushes. But someone is there. Just outside the property line.

It’s probably one of Nikolai’s men. But on the off chance it’s not—I let out a garbled moan of pain.

A twig snaps.

Then footsteps and hushed voices.

“Tessa?” someone whispers yells.

My head snaps up, trying to locate the source.

“A little more to your right,” the voice calls.

Finally, I spot them.

Three men, hiding in the bushes that line the property.

I push myself up from the ground for the first time in hours, coughing at the pain as I do.

A top falls to the floor beside me.

Dirt is smeared in places you never want dirt to be, but I’m grateful I can at least cover myself somewhat.

I stand, ready to run if I need to.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” the voice calls again.

“That’s what someone who was going to hurt me would say,” I joke weakly.

“We’re here with Enzo.”