Date and Time Unknown
The taste of blood.
That was the first thing I noticed as I came to.
I blinked.
Or, at least, I thought I blinked. I couldn’t be sure because nothing changed. Whether my eyes were opened or closed, it was all dark.
I was pretty sure I was blinking, though. The backs of my eyes screamed in pain every time I opened and closed my eyes. My head pounded in sync with my heart, which was doing double-time as I started putting together the shreds of gauzy memory slowly swimming to the surface of consciousness.
Crimson lights washing over the body of a girl clutching her side. Her face was burned in my mind as clear as day – wide eyes reflecting the fireworks overhead as tears streamed down her cheeks. She’d been crying, her sobs interrupted by rough coughing.
Her name… what was her name?
Charity.
I remembered ribbons of scarlet streaming from between her fingers as she clutched her middle. Her horrified screams still rang in my head as I recalled images of holding her close while bullets flew around me… the smell of gunpowder so thick in the air I could taste it.
Was she dead?
Fuck!
Emily and Natashya had been there at the party. Where were they?
Where was I?
I felt the blood pounding in my head as I tried my best to fight down the panic that threatened to consume me. Images of Emily lying on the cold concrete floor like Charity filled my mind. I could see Natashya crying over her body and screaming for help… or maybe it was the other way around. Shit. What if I lost them both?
Looking around uselessly in the pitch-black, I tried to search for anything that would give me answers. I realized I was sitting in a chair and tried to stand up, and something tugged on my wrists. I felt the chair being dragged behind me, throwing me off balance, and I tumbled backward into my seat with a loud clang as it landed on the hard floor beneath me. That’s when it dawned on me that my hands were cuffed behind me, attached to the back of the chair.
“Hey!” I cried out. “Hey! Is anyone here?”
Complete silence.
“Hey! Can anyone hear me?”
I tried to stand up again, more aware of my predicament this time. I managed to hop to my feet, but the way my wrists were bound to the chair kept me from standing straight like I’d intended, and I teetered forward. I tried to put a foot out to catch myself, but that’s when I realized that my ankles were also restrained. Each one was manacled to the corresponding leg of the furniture.
Unable to correct myself, I almost face-planted on the ground, only managing to roll to the side at the last moment so my face didn’t take the full brunt of the fall as I crashed to the concrete floor. The chair came with me, twisted in a way that put my arms in a bind, leaving me unable to move them.
Still reeling from the headache gifted to me by whoever had knocked me out, I felt the pain come back with a vengeance. The guy who kicked me in the face must have given me a concussion, and throwing myself on the floor wasn’t doing my recovery any favors. I groaned in pain as I unsuccessfully tried to right myself, pulling miserably at my bonds. All I could think about was Emily lying dead in a pool of blood or Natashya missing half her head like poor Ray.
Fuck. Ray. I remembered his body falling like a limp rag doll in front of me, missing the top half of his head. I’d never seen anything so disturbing in my life, and the mere memory of what had happened to him was enough to almost make me vomit on the cold floor I lay on.
“Where am I?” I called out pathetically. “What do you want?”
Still nothing.
“My sister was with me! Emily! And our friend, Natashya! Can… look, I just need to know they’re alive! Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. Just… I need to know they’re okay!”
God help me if Emily was dead. She had such an unhappy life the last few years and had just managed to get back on her feet.
And Natashya. Poor sweet, wild, wise, full-of-life Natashya. She didn’t deserve this.
And Ray… Ray was going to adopt a kid with his husband. Fuck. What was I going to tell him?
Had Erin, Ashlee, and the rest been there when the shooting happened? Were they all dead? Was I all alone in some dark room while all my people were fucking dead? Erin and that stupid mischievous grin. Tiny, vivacious Erin, who always smelled like flowers and looked like sin. I felt like vomiting again.
“Can anybody hear me!?” I bellowed, panicking… scared for the lives of the people I cared about. “Hey!”
A crash reverberated off the walls of what I realized was a mostly empty room, and a rectangle of illumination flared across my vision, temporarily blinding me as I adjusted to the blessed light. A single figure silhouetted it, standing in the doorway like some kind of mysterious angel or devil… I wasn’t sure yet, nor did it matter—as long as they had answers.
“Hey!” I said, squinting at the figure. “My friends! I had two friends with me!”
The silhouette in the doorway moved toward me without saying a word, its steps echoing on the cold concrete floor like some sort of foreboding drumbeat. Once the figure reached me, it grabbed one of my pinned arms and hauled me off the floor and back into a sitting position.
Judging by the strength of the grip and the grunt made while picking me off the floor, the stranger was a man. I squinted at him, trying to make out any features, but my head was spinning, and it was too dark to make out much anyway.
“Hey!” I shouted as I glared up at the stranger. “What did you do with my-”
My words were cut short as a fist slammed across my jaw, sending my head careening back and causing my world to spin. Before I could recover, I felt a firm grip on my jaw as the stranger forced me to look up at him. I felt sharp pain where his fingers dug into my jaw, and I blinked, trying to clear my head enough to process what was happening to me.
“Shut the fuck up,” the stranger growled at him. It was definitely a man.
I just needed to know. “No, but-”
The wind was driven from my lungs as I felt him drive his other fist into my stomach. This time, I did vomit as I tried to double over, pinned back against the seat by my bonds and the man’s hold on my face.
Despite retching and coughing, I managed to take a wheezy breath and breath, “Please… I just need-”
He drove his fist into my stomach once more, and I felt spittle and bile fly from my lips as I felt my existence narrow until there was nothing else left but the physical pain in my gut and head and worry for my friends. He shook my face a little and growled, “Three of my people are dead. You’re lucky I was told to keep you alive.”
“But,” he continued, and I felt something cold and sharp pressed against the side of my face. I tried to inch away from whatever it was, but the hold the man had on me was too strong. “Instructions didn’t say anything about body parts, though.”
He bent forward, getting so close that I thought for a wild moment that he was going to kiss me, and I tried to inch back from him. No kiss came, though; his face stopped inches from mine, and I could smell the stink of old coffee and nicotine on his breath as he said, “I hear any more whining out of you, and I’ll cut off your nose.”
He released me, shoving my face away from him as he straightened and stared down at me, putting away the knife he’d held against my face. I stared back up at him wide-eyed, wanting desperately to ask him about my friends but convinced he would shove more than just a fist in my gut if I uttered a single syllable.
Moments passed, and when it looked like neither of us was going to speak, he reached into a pocket and pulled something out. He held it in both hands and reached for my head, causing me to flinch, thinking he was about to garrot me or something. Instead, he slipped a blindfold over my head and secured it around my eyes until he was sure I couldn’t see anything. Then he tightened it a little more, causing my head to pulse in pain.
I heard him walk away from me. The door opened again, but instead of hearing him leave, as I expected, my assailant began speaking. I could barely make out the words.
“He’s all yours,” he said.
“For how long?” Another voice asked – another male. This one didn’t sound as rough as the one who blindfolded me. His tone sounded more measured and diplomatic.
“Till she gets here,” the first man said.
“And anything goes?” the second man asked.
“As long as you don’t kill him and as long as he’s in his right mind to answer questions.”
“What questions could Am-”
“No names,” the first man said, cutting off the second man. “You know the drill.”
“Apologies,” the second man said and cleared his throat. “It shouldn’t be a problem though, should it?”
“No,” the first man said.
“Well then, if that’s everything, I’m sure you have things to do.”
I heard those heavy footsteps fade. Then a flick and I could barely see the edges of my vision change slightly. They became a shade or less black, giving me the impression that a light had been turned on in the room. Despite not really changing my predicament much, the fact that there was a light on in the room filled the primitive part of my brain with a fleeting sense of hope. So did the fact that the rough man had left; the sound of softer footsteps approaching gave me the impression that whoever this was probably wasn’t as strong or aggressive.
“Hey,” I said, unsure how to proceed. I needed to find out something – anything – that would give me an inkling of what had happened to Emily and the others. “Listen, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but-”
My cheek blossomed in pain as I received a firm slap across it, followed by another slap across the other cheek. I tasted fresh blood.
Okay, so I was wrong about the new guy being aggressive.
“Fuck! Fine! Beat me. Do whatever. Just tell me if they’re alr-”
Another punch across my face cut me off. Whoever this was didn’t hit nearly as hard as the other guy. Small favors, I guess.
“Please,” I said, trying to reason with the man. “I don’t know why this is happening. Can you just tell me what I did?”
Nothing. I heard light footsteps to my left and then another slightly behind me. He was circling me.
Then I heard a slight trickle of water behind me and turned my head to concentrate on the sound, trying to figure out what he was doing. It sounded like someone was peeing.
“What-”
“I hope you feel every excruciating second of what’s about to happen to you,” the man finally said, speaking to me for the first time. He sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite put a face to the voice. I was just about to ask him what he meant by that when I felt a soaking wet rag hit my face; a hand shoved it firmly against the lower half of my face. Water invaded my mouth and threatened to fill my nostrils. I had to fight hard to not inhale as the stagnant liquid washed over me.
The hand held the soaking rag to my face, and I struggled against his grip for the next several moments, trying to fight free so I could spit the water out and breathe. Seconds ticked by as I drowned while bound to a chair, unsure of why, left with nothing but my need for oxygen, burning questions, and an overactive imagination that haunted me with scenarios of the gruesome fates that Emily and Natashya could have suffered.
It could have been minutes or hours, but it all was a blur of pain and near drowning as the man relentlessly tortured me, beating on me, repeatedly waterboarding me, and cursing me the whole time. Eventually, I blacked out again.
I was ripped back into consciousness when a high-pressured column of ice-cold water threatened to tear the skin off my back. I yelled out and rolled toward the column and realized the mistake as soon as I made it; water slammed into my chest and face. I rolled away and yelled out again, confused, hurting, and more than a little pissed off. The assault continued for another minute and a half before the stream of water abruptly disappeared.
“What the fuck are you doing?” someone said. It sounded like the man who had put a blindfold on my face earlier. It was no longer there, and I dared to open my eyes to see a sliver of silver in the sky as the last dying gasps of the day faded. A handful of stars dotted the sky, their brethren blotted out by light pollution. Judging by the sky, I was sure of one thing – I had no idea where I was or what the hell was going on.
“You told me to wash him down,” someone else said.
“Inside, dumbass. There’s a tub in there.” the guy giving orders said.
“I’m not touching him,” the other man said. “Guy had piss on him.”
Had I pissed myself?
“Upton pissed himself?” the rough man said. I’d started to think he must have been the leader of the people who captured me.
“Nah. He pissed on Upton. It was a lot, though. I dunno. Maybe some of it was his.”
“Fuck, I don’t care,” the leader said.
Coughing and sputtering, I rolled over and saw two men standing less than ten feet away from me. A thick coil of fire hose lay at their feet. Three other men stood nearby, armed with rifles.
“He could be spotted. Get him back inside.”
The other man muttered something but followed orders. He called one of his buddies to come over and help him pick me up. The pair grabbed an arm each and dragged me toward a large warehouse. My head hanging limply, I stared up at the silhouette of the sad-looking building and realized just how tired and sore I was. Vague memories of being beaten across the back with something long and hard came rushing back. I remembered being waterboarded with foul-tasting water. My head was pounding, and despite feeling like a drowned rat, my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth. I was surprised I could even hold my head up.
“Why are…”
My words trailed off. I was too tired to even finish the sentence.
“Where are… Emily…”
Neither of them said anything to me. I simply shut my eyes and let myself be carried back into the warehouse, sure I would probably die there. Once again, I felt darkness overtake me.
My shins blossomed in pain as I felt something hard strike across them, and my eyes flew open… or tried to. Once again, a blindfold had been placed over them, preventing me from seeing who had just struck me.
“What!?” I bellowed, my voice coming out rough and a little hoarse.
“Someone wants to have a word with you,” Leader said. I could hear him standing just to my right.
“I’m not speaking to anyone until someone tells me what’s happened to my people,” I muttered.
No one said anything for a long moment, and I simply sat there in the chair, my head dropping back to my chest as I listened to the silence. Finally, someone said, “Would you give us the room, gentlemen?”
It was a woman. Her voice was cool and collected.
“Everybody out,” the leader said, and I listened as several sets of footsteps began to fade. Nothing was said until everyone else was gone and the door shut. I sat there in silence, shivering, naked, and cold as water continued to drip off my body, not bothering to start a conversation. Every time I did, I’d been punished for it without receiving a single damn answer.
Finally, the woman asked a question. “Did you receive a flash drive from your grandfather?”
It took me a second to register what she asked, and even though I understood the words, the question didn’t make sense. “What?” I asked.
“Did you receive a flash drive from your grandfather?”
I looked in her direction despite not being able to see anything. “I heard you. I just don’t understand.”
“Do you know what a flash drive is?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I fail to see what the issue is.”
“What the issue is?” I laughed at the absurdity of the situation. “Lady, I’ve been beaten for god knows how long. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I’ve been asking what people want for hours, and no one will tell me a goddamn thing. I keep asking after my friends, and no one will answer me! Now, when I finally have someone who will actually talk to me, they’re asking me about some flash drive my grandpa gave me?”
“That’s correct.”
“Who the fuck are you!?”
“Mr. Upton, that hardly matters. What does matter is that you’re tied naked to a chair. You’ve been abused by mercenaries, and no one knows where you are. Emily and Natashya-”
“What about them?” I asked, latching onto the first I’d heard of them since waking up here. “Are they alright?”
“Are being held against their will,” she continued. “The only thing that matters is that we can release you and your friends if you cooperate.”
“You haven’t even given me the chance to cooperate!” I shouted. I was fucking done. Whoever this monotone bitch was, she was pissing me off, suggesting that I was the unreasonable one.
“I’m giving you that chance now,” she said.
I stared in her general direction and considered my options now that I was getting information to work with, no matter how minuscule. I had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t know anything about a flash drive. Maybe there had been one among my grandfather’s possessions. I hadn’t exactly been thorough when searching through everything I had inherited. I’d been a little busy.
Still… whoever this woman was, she obviously didn’t know that. I wasn’t sure if they really had Emily or Natashya, but if this was what they were after, and they obviously needed me alive for it, then this was the only card I had to play. I needed to bluff.
“You want the flash drive?” I said. “I want to see my friends first.”
The woman didn’t reply, but I heard her approach me. Her footsteps reported her walking past and circling me before coming to a stop somewhere directly behind me. I felt fingertips lightly brush up one arm to my shoulder, and then a palm gently rested there.
“I’m aware of how you’ve been treated so far, Mr. Upton,” the woman said. Her fingers danced over the damp skin around my collarbone before dipping down to play with the wet hair on my chest.
“You’ve been beaten across your back with a military-grade truncheon, received two successive concussions, and likely have a fractured tibia. You’ve been punched and slapped across the face repeatedly by two different men. You’re bleeding from three different places along your scalp. You’ve been urinated on, sprayed with a fire hose, stripped, deprived of sleep, waterboarded, and haven’t eaten for the duration of your captivity. You’ve endured more than most… all without a request from your captors.”
Her hand snaked down my abdomen and traced undiscernable patterns around my belly button. I could feel her breath on my face, and I bit my lip as I felt that familiar surge in my groin. I didn’t exactly find this situation to be much of a turn-on, but soft tenderness felt so much more intense after having experienced so much abuse. Despite my sore muscles screaming at me and the shivering I was doing from exposure, I could feel my cock begin to stir as those fingers came dangerously close. It was strange, though. Her touch suggested intimacy and warmth, but her voice still held a certain coldness, making the situation even more confusing.
“I’m sure you’re aware of the proverb ‘It’s easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar,’” she continued.
Warm fingertips brushed my cock near the root, causing it to jump as I sucked in a breath of air, hardly believing what was happening to me. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t dare say anything. If I’d learned anything about myself over the last two weeks, it was that, like other men, I had an Achilles heel when it came to being seduced by hot women. I’d made some questionable decisions, and considering my predicament, I couldn’t trust myself to make even worse choices.
“I’m sure you would find my skills in pleasuring men preferable to being beaten, and I would make sure the latter stopped altogether.” Her fingers wrapped around my thickening member, and I clenched my teeth so she couldn’t have the satisfaction of hearing my groan. After everything I’d suffered, what she was doing now felt good.
She gave my cock a couple of light pumps as she waited for me to respond, and I did my best to remain as stoic as possible. Once her movements halted, I took a deep breath and said, “I’m not giving you a goddamn thing till I see Emily and Natashya.”
“No,” she replied.
“Then you won’t get anything from me,” I said through gritted teeth.
She was silent for a long moment, but she stayed close; I could feel her warm breath on my face and her hand still gripping my cock. Then she started slowly pumping it again, saying, “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Upton. Not only could this be a much more pleasant experience for you, but also for your sister and girlfriend.”
“I’m not-”
She cut me off, “You’re currently being held by mercenaries. Unscrupulous individuals with morals that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder. They’ve been tasked with keeping you alive. No orders were given regarding your sister or Natashya except to ensure they’re kept alive. Without any other detailed orders, what do you think men like these are capable of?”
I felt the blood drain from my face as I processed what this woman was saying. Horrible scenarios began playing in my mind – images of Natashya, Emily, and a dozen jacked men with tendencies toward violence and aggression. As if on cue, the woman holding my cock squeezed it lightly and picked up the pace as she continued to jack me off.
“I can assure you, Mr. Upton,” she said, her voice low and husky while still maintaining a certain level of frigidity. “I’ve seen their tears with my own eyes. They’re not having a good time, and that will continue until you decide to give me what I want. How much pain and suffering they endure is entirely up to you.”
Fuck. If she was speaking the truth, then that meant that the longer this continued, the more responsible I was for whatever was happening to the girls. Regardless of whether she was bluffing or not, I had to put a stop to this.
She gave my cock another little squeeze, “And despite that knowledge, you’re allowing yourself to fall prey to your baser instincts. Tell me, does the thought of several men taking advantage of Emily and Natashya turn you on?”
“I don’t have it?” I breathed, trying to ignore the sensations pulsing through my member.
“Don’t have what,” she asked.
“The flash drive! I don’t have it!”
She sighed, her breath rolling over my face, then said, “Their continued suffering is your fault, Mr. Upton.” She still kept up the pace as she handled my dick.
“I don’t have it!” I repeated. “I haven’t seen one! I don’t know anything about it! Who the fuck even uses flash drives anyway? My grandpa probably owns his own cloud service!”
She kept stroking me without responding, and any seductive quality this scenario had was quickly evaporating with each passing moment, with the thought that I could be responsible for ruining the lives of two people I seriously cared about.
“I don’t fucking have it!” I bellowed again.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You offered an exchange.”
“Because I was trying to get you to let me see my friends, you psychotic bitch,” I said, laughing in pure disbelief at the situation. “What the fuck else was I supposed to do?”
“You inherited everything,” she said, her tone even more frosty than previously.
“Maybe I did inherit it. Maybe it’s sitting in a drawer somewhere!”
“No. It would have been left in your safekeeping. Your grandfather wouldn’t have simply left it unattended.”
“Have you met the guy? He just dropped billions of dollars in my lap without so much as a fucking letter!”
“If you think I’m lying about your sister and girlfriend,” she said, and I could detect a hint of heat in her frigid tone. “I’m not.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” I insisted, and we could both tell that my hard-on was beginning to deflate in my frustration over the situation. No… not frustration – near panic. I had gambled and tried to use the one piece of leverage I had over them to try to confirm whether or not they really had my friends, and this cold bitch called my bluff. Natashya really had been right; I didn’t have a poker face.
The hand on my dick slowed to a halt and then disappeared. I felt the weight of her breasts on my shoulder dissipate entirely as she straightened. The clack of heels on concrete echoed through the room as she circled around me and headed toward the door.
“Hey!” I called out. “Wait! What about my friends!?”
There was no response. I heard the door open and then slam shut.
I let out a wordless scream in pure and utter frustration, pulling against my bonds in a futile effort to break free.
“Emily! Hey! What about my friends! Natashya! Emily!”
The only response I got was the echo of my own voice as it bounced off the walls. I was truly and utterly alone, left only with the hope that the mystery woman had been lying to me the entire time. I could never forgive myself if the girls were being harmed because of me. I pulled again at my restraints, once again failing to accomplish anything.
“Fuck!”
Naked, hurting, and terrified for the others, the next hour was one of the longest of my life. Intrusive thoughts kept invading my mind, and it was all I could do to chase them away, choosing to dwell on figuring out how to get out of here. I’d seen movies where people dislocated their thumbs to get out of cuffs, and I’d tried to imitate it, but all I’d succeeded in doing was rubbing my wrists raw on the cuffs and probably giving myself early onset arthritis in my right hand.
I kept wondering what was going to happen to me. Would they kill me once they realized that I didn’t know anything about a stupid flash drive? Would they just ask for money instead? How would I get the money to them? Once they had the money, would they let me go or just kill me anyway? I had to keep thinking about what they would do to me because every time I even considered what might happen to the girls, I felt my eyes sting. More than once, I’d choked up at the possibilities of what they might be doing to the girls. At least the blindfold soaked up the tears.
“Come on, Marcus,” I muttered, trying to keep myself from crying by focusing on trying to come up with a different solution. “You can’t do this. You can’t fall apart. You can’t-”
There was a loud crash as the door opened again, followed by several footsteps. It sounded like boots, and I heard a pair of feminine heels on the ground as well. None of that mattered, though. The only sound I cared about was the sound of a woman sobbing.
“Wait!” I said, perking up. Something was happening. “Who’s that?”
Footsteps approached me, and I felt someone grab the blindfold and rip it off my head. Light flooded my vision, causing my headache to flare up anew. I blinked, trying to focus and make sense of what I was seeing. As my vision started to clear, I could see the entire room now that it was well-lit. A man stood in front of me with hair cut close to his scalp. He was caucasian and wore a wife-beater that showed off massive tree-trunk arms and broad, well-muscled shoulders. A horrifying tattoo of a graveyard of bones covered the entirety of his right arm. He wore black canvas cargo pants, a handgun strapped to his thigh, and a dark blond goatee on his otherwise clean-shaven face. Partially dried blood caked the right side of his face, and I noticed part of his right ear missing.
Four other men in the room were similarly dressed and looked just as thuggish as the man in front of me. A woman stood to the side with a phone in one hand, texting furiously. She had hair the color of dishwater, which she wore to her shoulders with bangs. Wire-rim glasses sat on the edge of her nose, and the tip of a small, pink tongue was pinched between pursed lips as she looked back and forth between the scene she was witnessing and her phone.
I didn’t care about any of that. Only one thing held my attention – in the center of a rough semicircle of mercenaries knelt Natashya.
One side of her face was swollen and bruised. Some sort of makeshift rope or strap of something loosely dangled from her neck. Her exotic hair hung all around her in a wild mop of loose tresses mixed with dreads, giving her the look of a wild cavewoman who had just been dropped out of time. Her wrists were bound behind her, causing her breasts to stand out proudly in front of her. They were covered in bruises, as was much of her nude form. A leather cord had been shoved in her mouth and tied off, making it impossible for her to talk. To complete the horrific image, her mouth, chin, and cheeks were covered in blood.
Her mahogany eyes locked on mine, and she let out a guttural shriek, her gaze full of equal parts fury and terror. The scream turned into a sob near the end, but she never looked away from me.
“What the fuck!?” I shouted at all of them, unable to tear my eyes off what they’d done to one of the most beautiful souls I’d ever met in my life. “What the fuck did you do!?”
“Shut up!” the leader said, backhanding me across the face hard enough that my chair came close to toppling. He pulled the handgun out of his thigh holster.
“No!” A vaguely familiar voice said from behind me. Despite myself, I tried to look over my shoulder but couldn’t quite make out who it was. “I’m the only one killing him!” It was the man who had spent hours torturing and pissing on me.
“Everybody relax!” Leader said. He crouched beside me and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. “I’m not going to kill him. Let some lawyers and executives try to get information out of a guy, and this is what happens. A fucking waste of everybody’s time.” He pressed the barrel of the pistol against my temple and stared directly into my eyes, and I realized I’d seen this man somewhere before. “I’m just going to give him some goddamn incentive.”
He stared at me with absolute fucking hatred in his dark eyes and said just loud enough for me to hear, “You don’t know a damn thing, do you?”
I swallowed hard, very aware of the cold metal pressed to my temple and unsure whether I should respond.
“Good,” he said, seeming to read the answer in my face. “This will make what I’m about to do all the more enjoyable, and I still get paid.”
He stood up, turned away from me, and walked back to his men, speaking up loud enough for everyone to hear. “Since you won’t answer the nice lady, I’m gonna do the asking.”
The leader stopped next to Natashya and slowly turned, looking down at the dancer appraisingly. Then he raised his pistol and planted the barrel in her hair, casually looking over at me and flashing a small, crooked smile. Natashya screamed and flinched away from the gun, but the man simply grabbed a fistful of her hair and kept her in place. She glared daggers up at him, but I couldn’t help but notice the fresh tears streaming down her face.
“No, no, wait! Hang on! I told you, I don’t fucking know anything!” I said, looking around the room at the men, trying to find at least one who would believe me. All of them had faces that could have been carved from stone.
“I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t tell us what you know, I’m gonna paint the floor with whatever’s inside her fucking head.” Leader said. “That way, you know we aren’t playing around. Still won’t cooperate? Then we’ll kill the other one.”
Natashya screamed something unintelligible around her gag and then looked at me. She was trying to tell me something with those beautiful eyes of hers, but I couldn’t even begin to decipher what it was. All I could think about was that she was about to die in front of me. I’d hoped they were bluffing. God… I would have given up anything if it meant they were bluffing. I would have given up everything.
Why couldn’t I have been better?
“One!” Leader said.
I tried to stand up, but the chair nearly caused me to topple again. “No!” I screamed. “I don’t fucking know anything! Just let her go! Kill me if you’re gonna kill anyone!” I fell back, landing in the chair again with a crash that reverberated across the room.
What had I done wrong? What could I have done differently? Why were these people doing this?
“Two!”
“No, you son of a bitch,” I screamed, feeling fresh tears leak down my face. “Fucking kill me! Just let her go! Please!”
I looked down into Natashya’s eyes, and she looked up into mine and slowly blinked. There was so much I wanted to tell her. I wanted her to know how special she was. How much she had given me to think about. I wanted to let her know how much she meant to me. Not only for what she’d given me but what she’d given Emily. This woman… this goddess… she didn’t deserve this.
I tried to communicate that as I stared at her, hoping beyond hope that this was just some horrible bluff, or even better, that it was simply a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
“Please!” I said, one final desperate cry for mercy.
“Three!” Leader said.
“No!” I screamed and shut my eyes. Hoping with every fiber of my being that he wouldn’t pull the trigger.
The deafening sound of a gunshot echoed through the room, and once more, I tasted blood.
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Thanks again for reading another installment of the story. If you have any feedback, please feel free to email me. Or if you’re interested in reading any further installments, check out my Patreon at patreon.com/mindsketch. Chapters up to 39 are posted there already, and a LOT of extra dirty bonus chapters. Thanks for your time and cheers!
-MindSketch