Page 150 of Made for Sinners

I’d wanted freedom. I’d wanted air.

Now all I had was fear.

The manbeside me didn’t speak. None of them did. The silence in the car was suffocating, broken only by the hum of the engine and the occasional crackle of gravel beneath the tires. I tried to stay calm, tried to think through the panic clouding my thoughts, but it was like trying to breathe underwater.

Where were they taking me?

Was this about Dante?

Everything was always about Dante.

I shifted in my seat, testing the zip ties around my wrists. They were tight—too tight. My fingers were already going numb, and every movement sent a sharp sting up my arms. I tried to twist, to roll my shoulders, to do anything that might loosen them, but it was useless.

The man beside me noticed.

He chuckled.

“Don’t bother,” he said, his voice low and thick with amusement. “You’re not going anywhere.”

I glared at him through the gag, my chest heaving.

He leaned closer, his face still hidden behind the mask. “You should’ve stayed in your pretty little cage. But no. You had to play brave.”

I wanted to spit in his face.

I wanted to scream.

But all I could do was sit there, bound and gagged, as the SUV carried me further and further away from everything I knew.

From Dante.

From safety.

From home.

Time passed, but I didn’t know how much. Minutes? Hours? The trees outside the window eventually gave way to buildings—old, industrial, abandoned-looking. The SUV slowed, turned down a narrow alley, and stopped.

The door opened.

“Out,” one of them said.

They dragged me from the car, my legs stumbling beneath me. The air was colder here, sharper, and it smelled like rust and oil and something else—something rotten. We were in some kind of warehouse district, the kind of place where no one asked questions and no one came looking.

They shoved me through a metal door and into a building that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. The floor was cracked concrete, stained with things I didn’t want to identify. The walls were bare, except for rusted pipes and peeling paint. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, flickering like it was struggling to stay alive. The air was thick with dust and the sharp tang of oil, and somewhere in the distance, I could hear the faint drip of water echoing through the space.

It smelled like rot.

Like secrets.

Like death.

They dragged me to the center of the room and shoved me onto a metal chair bolted to the floor. My knees scraped against the edge, and I bit back a cry as one of them zip-tied my ankles to the legs of the chair. My wrists were already bound behind me, the plastic digging into my skin. The gag was still tight across my mouth, the fabric damp with my breath.

I was trapped.

Truly, completely trapped.

One of the masked men stepped in front of me, arms crossed, head tilted. He didn’t speak. None of them did. They just stoodthere, watching me like I was a puzzle they were trying to solve—or a bomb they were waiting to detonate.

---