Page 19 of Triple Trouble

Fuckers.

10

EMMA

As a young girl, stranger danger had always been drilled into me. Don’t climb into anyone’s car, don’t trust people on the internet, and don’t go home with strange men.

Yet here I was, in an ultra-secure apartment, behind a door that didn’t look like it would open easily, with two men I barely knew.

It seemed crazy.

But then again, I thought, I only trusted Nathan after months of getting to know him, and look where that got me. He was perfect at first, and only showed his true colors after I moved in with him.

Xavier and Jackson, at least, had a a store to run and a reputation to protect. If word got around that they were kidnapping and torturing young women, their business wouldn’t last long. That idea made me feel a tiny bit safer. And they’d put a lot of effort into making me feel comfortable.

Xavier pulled a first aid kit out of the cupboard and told me to sit on the couch with my feet up on the ottoman.

“This might sting,” he said, as he poured some Dettol on some cotton and wiped it over the wound on my arm. With the amount of blood that had smeared over my skin, it looked huge, but once he’d cleaned it up, it was much smaller, like a scratch from a tree branch that I hadn’t felt. He did the same thing to my feet, tenderly wiping the dirt off, revealing red skin underneath. Once the Dettol had dried, he found some plaster strips and stuck them over the cuts that were still bleeding, but most of them had stopped by now.

“Have I missed anything?” he asked, and I shook my head, although honestly, my whole body ached so much that I didn’t know what was injured. On top of that, a headache thumped behind my eyebrows. It was late, I’d had a huge day, and all I wanted to do was fall into bed.

“I’ll find out in the shower, I guess,” I said.

Jackson gave me a fluffy towel and, in the absence of my own clothes, a thick robe of Xavier’s that looked big enough to wrap around me twice. Since I’d already done my breast check, I was tempted to skip it, but fear niggled at me as I hung the robe on the hook behind the door, and I couldn’t help myself. I went through my whole process: visual exam, manual exam. Starting at the nipples and working my way out.

“Everything okay in there?” Jackson called from the other side of the door, as I poked into the underside of my breast.

“Of course,” I said, and ran the water again, finishing my exam while I stood under it.

When I came out of the shower, I almost felt like myself again. It was nice to be clean, although my feet stung and now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I felt out-of-place in this unfamiliar home.

There was nothing unusual about it, aside from the security features: the living area was open plan, with the kitchen behind the couch, and a small dining setup near the window. The long curtains gave me the impression that during the day, the whole space would be full of light. There were books everywhere: art books, sketch books, and a healthy collection of history books on shelves and stacked in piles along the wall.

The hallway led to the bathroom, and what I assumed to be bedrooms: all three of the doors were closed when I walked past.

It wasn’t bad, it was just… different to what I was used to, and everywhere I went, I could smell the lingering scent of men’s cologne. It was strongest in the bathroom, but as Jackson and Xavier argued about where I would spend the night, I realized I could smell it out here, too.

All I wanted to do was go home. The only problem was, now that I was no longer with Nathan, I didn’t have one. I still owned my mom’s house, but I’d rented it out to tenants when I moved in with Nathan. Technically, I was allowed to evict them with notice, but they were a sweet young couple with a young daughter and a baby on the way.

“She can sleep in my room,” Jackson said, as he rubbed his stubble, “and I’ll take the fold-out couch.”

“I don’t mind sleeping on the couch,” I said, but both men shook their heads.

“That thing’s not soft,” Jackson said, “and the last thing you need right now is back pain.”

“What if we need something from the kitchen during the night?” Xavier asked. “We’re late-night snackers — you’ll be waking up constantly.”

In the end, they decided that Jackson would sleep in Xavier’s room. They stripped the sheets off his bed and I helped, and we were almost done remaking it with clean linen when Adrian arrived with a black bag and a weary expression.

“What took you so long?” Jackson asked, the irritation clear in his voice.

“Was Nathan there?” I asked, as Adrian dropped the bag on the bed.

He avoided my eyes.

“No, he was gone.” He looked at Jackson and tilted his head towards the door. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What did he do?”

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