Page 63 of Ruthless Prince
My heart pumped furiously as I turned around. The masked man tilted his head to one side as if he were questioningme.
“This isn’t an Order prank, is it?” I saidshakily.
He shook hishead.
“You aren’t a hallucination, either,” I whispered. He had to be real. Otherwise Mal and Adam wouldn’t be lying on the floor behindme.
The man shook his headagain.
“What do you want?” Iasked.
He stayed still and silent for another petrifying minute, staring at me. I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t even try. My legs were frozen withfear.
The man suddenly surged forward. One arm wrapped around my waist, spinning me around so my back was pressed against his hard chest, and a hand closed over my mouth to mute the screams bubbling up in my throat. I fought for my life, clawing and kicking, but it was no use. My attacker was built like a brickwall.
I winced as something sharp jabbed me in the side of the neck. A familiar sense of weariness washed over me, and the room wobbled and went fuzzy before my eyes, turning darker with each passing second until it felt like I was drowning in a deep blackpool.
I tried to kick out again in a last ditch attempt at escape, but it didn’t help. The man kept me in his iron-tight grip, rendering me utterly powerless. My legs and arms turned weak and exhaustion overwhelmed my mind until giving up was the only choice I hadleft.
I closed my eyes and let the big black pool of nothingness drag meunder.
13
Willow
My shadowy nightmarescrumbled to dust as my eyes slowlyopened.
I was in a huge four-poster canopy bed with a soft comforter and plump pillows with matching white and gold threading. The room around me was softly lit and thick curtains draped the window on my left. On the wall across from the bed, a widescreen TV hung with small light sconces on either side of it. To the right of that, there was a cream-colored door with a goldenhandle.
I yawned and stretched, grateful that the awful pictures in my head were merely the result of a bad dream. No one took me last night. I was safe at the Order retreat on Fire Island,and…
Wait.
The last foggy remnants of sleep evaporated from my mind as a chilling realization set in. This wasn’t right. The room around me didn’t look like my suite in the island mansion at all, and when I tried to stretch my legs, I couldn’t move themproperly.
I sat up and whipped the duvet off. Two gold-plated cuffs were clinched around my ankles with long matching golden chains affixed to the posts on either side of thebed.
“What thefuck?”
I reached down and tried to pull the cuffs off. When they didn’t budge, I started jerking my legs around as much as I could, hoping the chains would break off the posts from the hard, spasmodicmovements.
Nothinghappened.
Swallowing hard, I closed my eyes and attempted to recite some of the calming mantras Dr. Monroe taught me to use whenever I was stressed. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember any of the words. I couldn’t even tell if this was really happening. The feel of cold metal around my ankles told me it was, but past experience told me I was just having a hyper-realistichallucination.
“Wake up. Wake up.” I pinched myself on the arm, trying to snap out of the horrifying episode. It felt like the whole world was filling with dark water and I was trapped somewhere near the bottom, desperately trying to figure out which way wasup.
When I opened my eyes again, I was still in the same unfamiliarroom.
The TV on the wall suddenly switched on. On the screen, my White House bedroom was displayed with full color and clarity. There was a small timestamp in white print at the corner, but I couldn’t make itout.
I watched myself step into the frame in a royal blue gown with a matching purse. The past version of me wasn’t aware of the camera recording my every movement, and I stayed right in the shot, blissfully unaware as I removed my jewelry and put itaway.
A deep pit appeared in my stomach as I realized what I was watching. It was the night of the PM’s ball several weeks ago. Any minute now, I would go into the bathroom and emerge frantic and hysterical, petrified by the note written in lipstick on themirror.
With horror, I watched the rest of the evening’s harrowing events playout.
The recording skipped forward several hours at one point and switched to night-vision, and it showed a masked man leaning over me before attacking and terrorizingme.
