Page 115 of Keep Your Guard Up
A silencer? I’d only ever seen those in the action movies JJ chose when it was his pick for movie night. Guns, being as illegal in Australia as actually shooting someone, were not seen very often around Soggla. Maybe a shotgun here and there for some of the local farmers. But hers? Talia’s gun wasn’t like the locals’. It was shiny—too clean from what I could draw from the little amount of knowledge I had surrounding firearms. The gun had a wispy darkness oozing from it, the kind that drew a certain persona in. The kind that promised a life of wickedness and corruption to follow.
A life that someone from little old Soggla wouldn’t know.
Behind her slender figure was a pile of rope that explained the burning sensations in my wrists and ankles. The rope was chucked lazily onto the dingy red rug that was half faded, half stained—
The rug.
Thatrug.
With a wince and an internal scream from every single one of my neck and shoulder muscles, I looked to my left. There it was, highlighted by the moonlight shining through the skylight above us. The gigantic stain halfway down the left side of the rug fromwhere I’d violently thrown up on it the night I turned eighteen. Like some drunken, disgusting shining star to help me escape.
I am in JJ’s fucking house.
It was genius, really. Who would ever think to look here first when they realised I was missing? What kind of kidnapper brings their hostage back to their hometown, let alone their fucking house?
Well, former house … sort of, but close enough.
They continued talking, not giving a single shit that I could have picked up on all of their evil plans … if only the buzzing in my head would stop.
“He won’t be able to resist coming here himself. There’s no way he’d leave it to the cops,” I managed to catch.
“Trust me, baby, I’ve laid it out for him and only him. He’s the only one who can solve the great puzzle of ‘where we are’.” She waved her hands in a rainbow, like she was announcing her name in lights.
Chance.
They were baiting him. They wanted him to come here and … now would be a really nice time for my fucking head to stop pounding.
I had to get out of here. I had to escape before Chance found us and somehow got in contact with them before—
I caught myself falling into a spiral loop of anxiety and dread.
Priority one—get the fuck outta here. They may have been smart bringing me back to JJ’s, where cops wouldn’t think to look for me. But they forgot about one thing—I knew this house like the back of my own hand.
“You’re making quite the death wish here,” I said, clenching my jaw to force the wobble out of my voice. I looked to Randy. “I think you’re forgetting who knocked you out less than twenty-four hours ago.”
I had a grin on my face when Randy slammed his fist into my temple.
~
Randy’s fist drove across my left cheekbone, splitting skin and smashing through what felt like straight bone. How Chance’s cuts hadn’t been worse from his fight with him, I have no idea. Randy’s knuckles arched high across his hand, each and every one forming a pointed peak. I concentrated on the gashes Chance had left onhisface when he backhanded me. I smirked at the fact that he couldn’t draw as much power from his left side, from the switch kick Chance had delivered. That costed me a heavy boot to the gut.
“You should really learn to submit, slut,” his voice whispered in my ear, and I could feel the darkness on the edge of my mind, threatening to take me again. “I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirtyall over youif you did.”
I held my breath to stop the gag reflex that followed. He smelled of booze, cigarettes, and blood. His? Mine? Chance’s? I pushed my teeth into my lip as he grabbed my bound hands and put a foot on my lower back through the gap in the chair. He snickered, the most disgusting sound I’ve ever heard, and began to pull.
I will not scream.
I will not cry.
I will not please him.
The ligaments in my shoulders began to stretch, begging me to stop and firing off panic signals to my brain. I bit down harder onto my lower lip, using it as if it were a strap of leather, and pushed away the pain of driving my teeth into the split in it. I imagined that pain and locked it into a box, deep in the archives of my mind. A metallic taste filtered into my mouth. My teeth were sticking to my lip as I withdrew them.
Talia sat in the large, green armchair across from me looking as if she was enduring nothing but a regular, boring day. The armchair I’d cuddled in with Chance less than a week ago. I scowled at her—her disgusting, abusive, evil ass was tainting that goddamn chair.
A fire lit in my gut—that familiar searing hatred. I fuelled it, using it as a shield to block out the reality I was present in. I remembered the words he’d said, the memories he’d shared with me during our secret nights.
“I made weight for my fight eight weeks out because I couldn’t fucking eat …”
