Page 35 of Goodnight, Sinners

She ran down the carpeted hallway as Madison and her father continued to argue. Finally, she found a door with an exit sign over it. The alarm would go off once she pushed the door open, but it wasn’t a problem. She just had to be smart and run as fast as she could.

She pulled her pack off her shoulder and dug through the contents until she came up with a can of pepper spray. She secured the backpack and took a deep breath. Holding the pepper spray in front of her, she shoved the door open and flung herself onto the landing of a stairwell.

Unfortunately, she flung herself into the arms of a very startled security guard. She lifted the spray and let loose on the man, searing his eyes with the noxious concoction. The spray drifted back toward her, so she squinted her eyes and slid past the screaming man.

Sadly, he wasn’t the only security personnel in the stairwell to the penthouse. There were two more men behind him, and though the first man was leaning against the wall coughing, his eyes streaming, his compatriots were in perfect control. They grabbed her, one of them smashing her arm into the wall until she let go of the cannister.

“Don’t you fucking touch me!” she shrieked as she was bodily lifted off the floor and dragged back into the penthouse.

She fought tooth and nail, but the men holding her had a good grip and she’d never really learned how to fight. Not like her mother and sister. She was more the laze-in-bed-and-read-a-novel kind of girl. Now she was paying for her lack of combat skill. Possibly with her life.

They marched her from the stairwell where their comrade was groaning in agony, back through the loft and down the stairs to where Madison and Lord Grayson were looking up at them.

When Madison realized what was going on, she yelled, “Don’t hurt her!”

“What the fuck do you care?” Saskia shouted furiously. “You lied to me. You told me I would be safe and I believed you.”

The years of friendship fell to dust on the floor as Madison’s face crumpled in guilt. Maybe if she’d betrayed Saskia for a better reason, like her father threatened her, Saskia might have been able to forgive her. But a trip to New York? No, after today, Madison was dead to her.

“Calm down, Ms. Koba.” Lord Grayson held a hand up as though offended by the commotion.

Saskia rolled her eyes. Was she supposed to go quietly to what might end in a bullet to the brain? Not fucking likely.

“What happened to calling me Saskia?” she demanded, disgust in her voice. “That’s what you used to call me when I would run barefoot through your garden, picking wildflowers with your daughter. You remember that?”

He flinched, and she felt mildly better that she’d scored a hit. When Madison had sent out messages to all of Saskia’s social media and email accounts, begging her to get in touch after the collapse of the Koba empire, Saskia had truly thought she had an ally in her childhood friend. The betrayal stung. Though not as much as Madison would sting if Saskia could get her hands on the other woman for a few seconds.

“You’ll be better off if you go back to your family,” Lord Grayson said, his voice low, as though he meant to be soothing. “They’re desperate to get you back.”

“I’ll bet they are!” she snarled. “My father is dead, asshole, and my mother is on the run, afraid for her life, and you’re going to send me back to the man who plans on killing her. Excuse me if I don’t thank you.”

He shook his head in disappointment. “I wouldn’t send you back if I didn’t think it was safe.”

“Maybe we should think about this…” Madison interrupted, indecision in her voice.

Saskia ignored her former friend. “How much is he paying you for my ‘safe’ return?”

The kindly expression melted away, leaving behind the calculating mask of a man who was putting money ahead of Saskia’s life. “You were always a clever little thing.”

“It doesn’t take cleverness to figure out your motivation for returning me to the man who killed my father and took over my home,” she countered.

“Spare me the poor child campaign, it won’t work.” He nodded at the men holding her. “Take her. Use the needle, she won’t go quietly.”

Saskia snorted. “You sound like a Bond villain.”

When one of the men pulled a syringe from his pocket and uncapped it, Saskia began the fight. It was useless, though. Both of the men holding her outweighed her by a lot and had far more experience restraining a person than she had in escaping.

“What are you poisoning me with?” she demanded, her voice becoming higher pitched as hysteria took over.

Lord Grayson looked pitying, but not enough to stop what he’d orchestrated. “It’s just a shot of GHB to make you more compliant. It won’t hurt you.”

Saskia fought as hard as she could and twisted one of her arms out of their grip. She swung her fist around, but Lord Grayson stepped up to help hold her while they stuck her in the arm with the needle.

They continued to hold her until she stopped fighting them. “Okay, okay,” she snapped. “Let me up.”

They’d wrestled her to the floor, but once she was calm, helped her back to her feet. One of them still held her arm in case she bolted. She rubbed the needle prick with her hand and glared at everyone.

“I hope your conscience gives you restless nights for the rest of your damn lives. You’re sending an innocent woman to her death.”

---