Deceiving Lies

6

Rachel

WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, there was no dizziness, no need to empty the contents—or lack thereof—of my stomach, no headache, and no sense of how much time had passed. But there was fear, and very vivid memories of being taken.

Kash. My chest ached and tears burned my eyes. He has to know by now that I’m gone. What is he thinking? What is he doing to find me? And I had no doubt that he was trying to find me. I just didn’t know if he would.

Finally opening my eyes to the dark room when a sob tore free from my throat, I covered my face with my hands and curled into a ball on my side before I heard a shuffling noise, and my entire body stilled.

There was someone else in the room with me.

Was it him? The man who had dragged me out of the closet and kept me from escaping the last time I’d woken on this mattress?

I brought my hands down from my face and waited the few torturous seconds while my eyes adjusted to the dark. Even having had my eyes closed for so long, it was still nearly impossible to see anything past my mattress, it was that pitch-black in the room. A large shape came into focus before I was able to make out legs stretched out along the floor and crossed at the ankles, large arms crossed over an equally large chest, and the whites of a set of eyes fixed directly on me.

“Are you awake now?” his low voice rumbled through the room, and for some reason I shrank away from it. “Do you feel up to eating?” When I continued to stay silent, he rose from the floor with a grunt and I watched his shadowed body stretch before turning toward the wall he’d been up against. “Don’t go back to sleep. I’ll be right back.”

A bright light filled the room for the short time it took him to slip out the door, and I immediately bolted off the mattress and headed in the direction of the door. The room went pitch-black again and I felt along the wall for a handle. Beeps sounded—like electronic buttons were being pressed—before a series of short, staccato beeps, and then the sound of his heavy footfalls as he walked away from the door.

I finally found the handle and tried futilely to open the door, even though I knew, deep down, those beeps had been a code to lock the door from the outside. The tears were now falling freely as I alternated slapping my hands against the wall and screaming for help, and trying to open the door. I’d continued my useless attempt to get someone to help me even after I’d fallen to the ground, and after what seemed like half an hour later, the beeps came back and I shot to my feet in preparation.

As soon as the door cracked open, I pushed through it only to be caught by a pair of large arms and walked back into my room as I screamed for anyone to save me.

“Get off me! Someone help!”

He shut the door behind him with a foot and continued walking us both until my feet touched the mattress and he started pushing me down.

Oh God, no! “No, stop! Help me, please!” My body hit the mattress, and he kept his arms on my shoulders as he knelt to the ground beside me and I struggled against him.

“I need you to stay here, and stop fighting against me. If you get out of this room, I promise you there is no one who is going to help you. I can only keep you safe if you stay in here, do you understand me?”

My head was shaking back and forth as I sobbed and fought against him. I’d dealt with Blake and his psychotic claims; I wasn’t about to believe this man.

“Stay here so I can bring you your food.”

His body wasn’t coming closer, but I continued to push against him and struggled to get out from under his strong hold. Without warning, his hands were gone and he was stalking back over to the door. I shot upright, and my mind screamed to make another attempt at getting away from here, but I knew he would bring me right back in. Besides, he only had the door open long enough to bend down and grab something on the other side of the wall before it was shut and he was making his way back to me.

He set something down on the bed next to me and walked quickly away again. “Close your eyes,” he said in warning.

I kept them open.

The light flipped on and I blinked rapidly against it, refusing to cover my eyes for fear of what he would do if I stopped paying attention. When my eyes had finally adjusted, I looked to my left and saw a plate full of chips and a gourmet-looking turkey sandwich. The guy came back to me briefly to set a bottle of water down next to the plate, before retreating to the place and exact position he’d been in when I’d woken up. We stayed just like that for hours.

Him, sitting on the floor in front of the door, watching me.

Me, sitting on the bed with my knees up to my chin, staring directly past his head to the handle of the metal door.

The food untouched.

“GET UP, LET’S GO,” the man ordered the next time I woke up.

Afraid of where he was about to make me go, I stayed on the mattress, staring at my knees, which I had pulled up to my chest.

“You haven’t left this room since I brought you in. I know you need to use a bathroom, so either we go now, or you can wait until tonight.”

I didn’t even know how far away tonight was. I’d just woken up, but I’d been sleeping almost the entire time I’d been here. I desperately wanted to take him up on his offer, but a part of me didn’t want to acknowledge that I needed him for a task as simple as going to the bathroom.

Wait. “Go.” He’s about to take me out of the room! My body began pumping adrenaline at a fast pace as I thought about what this could mean. Forcing my face to not give anything away, I kept my eyes off him as I stood and met him near the door.

“Don’t try anything, and don’t leave my side.” When I didn’t respond, he grabbed my elbow. “Understood?”

I looked up at him, making deliberate eye contact for the first time since I’d woken up here.

With a curt nod, he opened up the door, keeping his hand on my arm the entire time. Looking to the side, I saw a long hallway in one direction, and a much shorter one in the other with a door where it ended.

I didn’t know if that was a closet, or a door to the outside, but when the man began walking me in the other direction, all I wanted to do was go to it.

We passed multiple rooms on each side and a kitchen before he stopped in front of a shut door. Opening it slowly, he flipped on a light inside and started to look around. His hand still hadn’t left my arm, but he was facing me. I knew I wouldn’t get another chance like this, so before he could look back at me, I quickly lifted my leg before shoving it into his groin as hard as I could. He bent and his hand loosened, but it was all I needed.

Wrenching my arm from his hand, I turned and started sprinting down the hall in the direction we’d come. Not long after, I heard heavy and quick footsteps behind me, but I didn’t look back. Another few rooms had gone by when one of the doors ahead opened, and a guy stepped out. He wasn’t facing me, but with the sound of our approach, he’d stopped walking and started to turn.

A muscled arm wrapped around my waist, yanking me back and into the kitchen. My scream was cut short when a hand slammed down over my mouth, and I opened my eyes to see my captor directly in front of me, his eyes dark and a finger in front of his own mouth, telling me to stay silent.

My back was against the wall, the man caging me in so I couldn’t move. Every heavy breath from him had his large body brushing against mine.

“Oh, little girl,” a sinister voice rang out in the hall behind me, and every hair on my body rose. “Have you finally come out to play with the rest of us?”

A low growl built up in my captor’s chest, and my body started shaking uncontrollably.

“I won’t bite . . . hard.”

My captor pressed his body closer to mine, and after slowly moving his hand away from my mouth, moved close to whisper in my ear. I cringed back but couldn’t go far. “Don’t say anything.”

“Where’d you go, you little bitch?” the voice said again, but this time the sinister tone was laced with hatred.

When my captor pulled back, his face was murderous. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I somehow knew that I needed to listen to him. Suddenly his head turned to the side, and I froze . . . not wanting to see the man that voice belonged to.

“Damn, bro, already claiming her?”

“Leave,” my captor growled. “Now.”

“No need to get touchy. I’ll wait for my go at her.”

“I said get. The fuck. Out.”

“I’m going . . . I’m going. You better keep an eye on your bitch. Because next time she’s alone, Marco might be the one to find her . . . and you know how bad Marco wants her.”

“No one touches her.” His body was vibrating, and I looked up at his face to see the barely concealed rage.

“For now,” the voice said in a mocking tone. “Possessive doesn’t suit you. You might want to be careful with that, you know how we all like a challenge.” With a deep laugh, I heard footsteps retreating from us. “I’ll be seeing you soon, sweetheart.”

A few seconds passed before my captor looked back at me. His face was dark when he whispered, “Do not run from me again, understood?” Not waiting for me to respond, he pushed off me, grabbed my arm, and started walking out of the kitchen.

I shrank into him when he suddenly stopped, and we came face-to-face with three men.

“Look what we have here,” one of them said.

“Told you I’d be seeing you soon, sweetheart,” another said, and I would have recognized that disturbing voice anywhere.

“We need her.” The third spoke directly to my captor, his eyes never once looking at me.

The man holding my arm pulled me behind him. A move the first two didn’t miss. “You’ve gotten by fine without her, Marco. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Moving me to his other side, and closer to the wall, he began walking again. Not four steps later, pain spread over my scalp, and a cry burst from my chest as I was yanked back by my hair. My captor’s arm moved around my waist as he put himself between Marco and me, and his other arm was straight in front of him with a gun pointed at Marco’s head.

“Someone’s moody.” Marco never flinched. But a smile slowly crossed his face as he let my hair fall from his fingers. “You have beautiful hair. What a shame.”

“No. One. Touches her,” my captor said low, his words full of warning.

“Just fuck her and get that pent-up anger out of your system already,” he said to my captor, his smile never fading. Marco stepped back to the other two guys, his hands raising up in mock-surrender. “Until next time.”

My captor quickly pushed me back, the hand not holding the gun never leaving me until we were in the room I’d originally woken in. Scrambling away from him, I darted toward the mattress and pressed myself to the wall. Our eyes never left each other until I broke down crying. My adrenaline had faded, and the fear of seeing the other men consumed me as I shrank down until I was sitting with my knees pressed to my chest.

I wanted to know what Marco had meant by “What a shame.” I wanted to know what my captor planned on doing with me. I wanted to know why it felt like he’d just saved me, when he’d been the one to take me from my house. And I wanted to know why, for those few minutes, I had felt safe next to him.