Page 19 of Mason

Don’t stop fighting.

No matter how hard I try, my eyes refuse to open fully. The lids are impossibly heavy.

Everything is. My head. Arms. Legs. It feels like concrete has encased my body.

I whimper, struggling as my muscles refuse to obey basic commands. All I can do is shiver while a confusing mixture of stinging and numbness ravage my skin from every angle. I’m freezing.

Musk and earth burn my nose, the scent so powerful that I taste it on my tongue with every breath. I’m inhaling it in gulps. Drowning in it.

Light burns my eyelids, but I can’t shield them from the invasion. Is it the sun? How is it morning already? I was just at Down Under.

The memory immediately brings knots to my stomach.

The man.

He kidnapped me.

I can vaguely remember waking somewhere cold and dark. I screamed, and he forced something bitter into my mouth. A powder. I tried to fight him off with everything I had before sleep took me again.

Fuck. What did he give me? I don’t want to die.

My back presses into something cold and hard—maybe stone or tile—I can’t be sure. I will my hands to move, but the signal misfires, the limbs struggling to make sense of the command.

I turn to sound, though I’m unable to make out much over the chatter of my teeth. But what I hear horrifies me all the more, adding a chill down my spine besides the tremors from the cold. Chains clattering.

I manage a tiny screech. It isn’t much, but it’s something. It’s better than sitting here accepting my fate in silence. I’m Emily Giambelli. I’m someone. I won’t go down quietly. If there’s a chance for someone to hear me, I’m taking it.

“Don’t be scared,” a voice mumbles—one that definitely doesn’t belong to the man from Down Under. His was low drawl with clear Chicago undertones. This one is straight Mississippi. Smooth. Deep.

My stomach clenches as my mouth refuses to form the swears and demands running through my mind a mile a minute. I’m a prisoner trapped in my own skin, forced into silence.

“I won’t hurt you. You’re safe.”

The man in the alley said the same thing. I’m not safe anywhere but at home. I never should’ve gone to Down Under. Papa tried to tell me. I disobeyed, and I'm paying the ultimate price. I’ll die alone, and Papa will never know what happened to me.

“People are after you. That’s why you had to leave for a little while. You’ll be back with your father again soon. I promise.”

People are after me?

Does this idiot know who my father is? There’s nowhere safer than our compound. Papa’s men have more firepower than the entire city’s police force. I’ve seen the assault rifles tucked away while snooping.

Something heavy and warm drapes over my front, shielding me from the cold. In an instant, it chases away the putrid earthy air, replacing it with spicy cologne.

“Keep a level head. It’ll be a lonely few days, but you’ll be home soon.”

Days?

I struggle against my body’s binds, powerless.

Had the man paralyzed me?

Terror courses through me. No, no, no, no. I need to be free.

“I’ll be back. Take this for now. I’ll bring something better, I promise.”

A rough warmth trails along my cheek. It takes a second to register that it’s a hand. Every fiber of my being demands I punch the stranger, but my body still fails to react.

A moment later, he’s gone, taking the burning light with him and leaving me in darkness.

---