Page 9 of No Escape

He and my stepmother are going to be so pissed.

If I live.

If I die in this hellhole, they’ll probably just be sad. And yeah, a little angry at me for doing something so ridiculously stupid, like blowing off my highly paid, highly trained personal security.

“If you would just listen to me, I can give you a phone number to call that will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.” I nod, trying to will him to believe me. “They’ll pay you if I’m unharmed.”

He snatches a handful of my hair, pulling me through the open doorway.

I squeak and dance around on my toes. He doesn’t even have the decency to tug close to my skull, and it feels like he’s about to rip out a huge patch of my hair if I don’t keep up.

“Please, at least tell me what you think I’ve done,” I beg, struggling to keep up with his long strides. It’s not easy, when he’s pulling me forward at an angle while my hands are cuffed. Normally, I would put my arms out for balance. “Are you trying to sell me? Because you can sell me back to my family!”

He spits a string of words in that other language.

Strangely, I don’t need to speak it to understand he’s not calling me nice names. The tone and inflection indicate he’s saying some vile things I’d probably rather not know.

I’m so confused.

Is this a setup?

Do they know I’m the daughter of a senator?

Or did I stumble into an omega trafficking ring?

I don’t know where I am or if I’m even in the same country.

My stomach lurches.

After my mom died, my dad brought in full-time personal security. He wanted to make sure no one could ever hurt me. Not that she was kidnapped or murdered.

She died in a car accident.

One minute, she was there, and the next, she was gone. It was the most traumatic thing I’ve been through—until this.

I thought my father was grossly overreacting by opting for a live-in team.

By the time I was fifteen, I had been through multiple sets of handlers, but Leo and Shaw stuck around. They were by far the best guys Shadow Security assigned to me, and not just because they were pleasant to look at.

They never let me out of their sight.

It might be unfair to blame my current team, considering I snuck out on purpose, but I did the same thing to Leo and Shaw back in the day. They found me within an hour, though again, that was under completely different circumstances.

Leo was also the only bodyguard I’ve ever had who would sit down and go over the kidnapping protocol with me on a monthly basis, despite never having any direct threats made to me personally.

My mom came from old oil money, and her trust left nearly everything to me.

If she and my dad had been able to have more children, I would have split it with them. Well, after my dad got his ten percent. Even inheriting ten percent was an astronomical amount of money that he seemed to be satisfied with. After all, it’s not like he grew up in poverty, and he always told me that the money was meant for me.

My stepmom is the one who was unsatisfied to learn what she and my dad missed out on. She’s never been good at holding her tongue, and some of her comments over the years have been downright hurtful. The one that bothered me the most was when she told me it wasn’t my dad’s job to pay for my college tuition. After all, they have twin boys that he’ll need to put through college one day.

And it’s not like I mind paying for my own things, but I don’t gain access to my trust until I turn twenty-one. I get half then and the other half when I get married. It really ate away at me to hear her talk about me like I was a drain ontheirfamily finances.

I plan to give my dad a check for every penny he’s paid for my tuition once I gain access to the trust.

The man drags me down the dimly lit hallway and stops near a door. He propels me into the wall, using his hold on my hair as leverage. My shoulder takes the brunt of the impact against the brick wall, but my cheek and lips slam into the coarse surface when I don’t stop myself in time.

If I live through this, I’m going to make this asshole pay.

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