Page 85 of Captive Prize

Maybe Mateo wasn’t as dumb as I thought he was.

Maybe he realized he needed me, and all I needed to do was buy time.

Eventually, he’d give up. Maybe only for a couple hours, maybe a couple days, leaving me down here to starve.

That was fine.

I needed time to figure out how I was going to get out of this.

Just because I would rather die than give this asshole any of my money didn’t mean it was on my short list of things to do today.

The page refreshed again, and again that brief message flashed:Invalid login attempt.

“You are trying my patience, bitch.”

“Trust me, I know the feeling. Good help is just so hard to find.”

Mateo hit me again. This time, he let the chair fall. My head banged onto the cold concrete, and I landed directly on my already injured shoulder.

The sadistic fuck then kicked me in the gut a few times. I coughed and choked with every single strike.

I tasted blood, but I wasn’t coughing it up, not yet.

I didn’t know how much longer that would last.

When he lifted the chair, he put me back in front of the computer.

“I’m done playing nice,” he growled.

Fuck him. He didn’t get to see my pain and he didn’t get to see my fear. He was only worth my indifference, and barely even that.

“But we were having so much fun,” I said, my words coming out as more of a wheeze before I dissolved into a coughing fit.

“Bitch,” he yelled in my face.

Vile spittle and rancid breath flooded my nose, making my coughing so much worse.

“God, I knew meth-mouth looked terrible, but no one warns you about the stench,” I said.

This time, it was his other hand that flew through the air. He slammed the butt of the knife into my temple, into the fresh stitches from earlier.

I toppled over again, but this time it wasn’t my shoulder that I was worried about.

He had opened stitches.

And I started bleeding.

Not a slow trickle, but warm, gushing blood that poured down my temple, soaking into my shirt. A hot, sticky reminder that I was running out of time.

The end was going to come so much faster than I thought.

I wasn’t going to get the chance to break myself out.

Only one word echoed through my head as the fear finally set in.

Roman.

CHAPTER 21

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