Page 70 of Unhinged Cravings
I would have laughed, but there was too much at stake to let my guard down.
“What’s the plan, Emerson?”
“Something new and something unexpected. It’s time to take my power back and show these assholes they can’t break me.”
For the first time in months, I felt like myself. The same, yet different. Still powerful and terrifying but changed by a spirited woman who saw below the identity I had created and into the man I’d forgotten I was. Letting my hatred and need to show I was stronger than my brother drive me. Now I had a new drive: Ava. And a new future that offered a remedy to the loneliness I’d covered with brutality, greed, and one-night stands. The possibility of a woman at my side and of a reconciliation I’d never imagined I needed.
“Pull six men. Only the ones who have been with us from the early days. No one else. Breaker, included.” There was no doubt of where his loyalty was. His cousin had been Jill’s husband. He would fight to the death by my side. “They’re watching us, expecting me to attack, but instead, we’ll go to the safe house. We tell every man to load into the cars. Each car takes a different direction to the safe house in Umberg. That way, we all head in different directions. Ours is the only one that heads to Newpen instead.”
Newpen was the only safe house my men didn’t know about. Only me and Pack. It was there only for emergency. An empty estate with twenty-four-seven security by an elite team of ex militia I had hired years ago. They kept the house secure and stocked, ran it like it was theirs and even lived in the west wing of the house. I hadn’t stepped into it more than twice in the last ten years that I’d owned it. And none of my men even knew it or the team existed. I could have called them in to help me raid the warehouse and get Ava, but I suspected those four men wouldn’t be enough in addition to the few I had left.
The house and the team were my last resort backup. If things ever went to hell and there were no options but to run, that was the place. A final stop before I slipped away and disappeared. An emergency plan that I had never used…until now.
“Got it.” He was out of the office before I could say more. He’d get everything in order, giving me time to send coordinates to Greyson.
I left the office, heading to my bedroom to grab a few things. I didn’t know if I’d ever come back to this house. If things didn’t work out, I never would. Reminders of Ava were all over the room. Her scent, her book, the lotions and beauty products she’d moved from the guest room. The clothes she’d worn the night before strewn on the floor where I’d ripped them from her. My eyes leaped to the bed, eyeing the wrinkled sheets shoved back. I moved closer, seeing the syringe tossed to the side.
They had drugged her and taken her. Naked. The ire snapped through me like the end of a whip. They’d touched her naked body and taken her out of my home that way. When I was through killing the others, I would torture the ones who touched her until they were pleading for death. Starting with their hands and then their eyes.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I threw a few things in a bag. I stared at the bed, remembering how I’d curled her body into mine and held her all night. Wishing I had stayed in bed with her. I could almost feel her skin under my fingers, hear her steady breaths, smell the fragrance of her shampoo. The moment left me riven until I picked my head up and remembered my purpose. I would bring her home and bring my wrath down upon the shitheads who had dared take what was mine. They wanted a war. Well, I was about to bring that war to their front door and trample them with the force of it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
AVA
My head throbbed, and a heavy sense of grogginess sat over me. Groaning, I opened my eyes, squinting at how blurry they were. I tried to move my hands, but someone had tied them behind me. The rope dug painfully into my skin. My ankles were also bound. The room came into focus, but it was too dark to make much out. A single dull yellow light hung from the ceiling. I was on a cot in an empty room the size of a cell. And I was still naked.
Fear trampled any fight that might have been in me. My bindings were too tight to even offer wiggle room, and my captives had no qualms about leaving me naked and alone in a grungy cell. Had they touched me? Raped me? All kinds of thoughts raced through my head and panic eked its way in. The numbness started, and I knew a panic attack was coming, but this wasn’t the place for it. My heart raced, so I forced myself to take slow and steady breaths, counting to five with each before releasing them. Remembering all the meditation sessions I’d had with my therapist. The wave of panic subsided, the tingling fading as my heartbeat slowed.
Swallowing down the fear, I took a mental check of my body.Nothing hurt but the few bruises I knew were from Emerson, distinctly around my hips and on the insides of my thighs. But there was no pain or sense that someone had touched me, not that I had any idea if I would know since they’d knocked me out. I pushed the thought aside and tried sitting up. It took a few tries, but I managed just in time for a figure to enter the room.
“Look who’s awake.” The creepy man with the snake tattoo came closer. His grin caused the hair on my arms to rise, and I backed away as his hand reached for my breast.
“Get away from me,” I said, hitting the wall behind me.
His hand met the skin of my cheek in a flash that sent me falling onto the thin, dingy mattress and my jaw aching. He climbed over me and held my chin, squeezing it so hard tears sprung in my eyes.
“You better be glad the buyers don’t want us sampling the goods or I’d fuck you so hard you’d be pleading for me to stop.” His tongue ran over my cheek and licked away the tears. “Fucking Cade Slaughter’s woman would be something to brag about.”
He rose and adjusted himself, cupping the small bulge in his pants like he was proud of it.
“Too bad you have to hold your dick to make it look big,” I said, because I never knew when to keep my mouth shut.
With a handful of hair, he tugged me up and hit me again. This time my ears rang, and I tasted the tang of blood in my mouth.
“Get your hands off her,” another voice came from the doorway. “You bruise her too much and we’ll lose money.”
“She’s got a smart mouth on her. I might need to use it to show her some respect.”
“And I might have to bite to teach you respect,” I retorted.
A hand caught his before he brought it down on me again. “Get out. If I catch you in here with her again, I’ll take your fingers and send them as an apology to the buyer for touchinghis property.”
“We have a buyer?” The excitement in his voice had me cringing just as much as the fact that someone had paid money for me.
“They liked the pictures we sent, and the bids are high.” Oh shit, pictures? They had taken pictures of my naked body and sent it to their list of buyers? Pervs who bought women and girls to use for their pleasure. I was going to be sick. “There’s a bidding war going on. Everyone wants the honor of owning Cade Slaughter’s woman. A piece of the mighty and a fuck you to his power.”
“We struck gold.”
