Raw pain made me numb to everything.
I lay on the cement floor of the basement where they threw me and two bottles of water after facing Logan. He’d betrayed me. He’d looked at me as if I was nothing. Like a piece of mold as I lay degraded and beaten on the floor.
My mind fought what I’d witnessed, trying to make sense of something that didn’t make sense. How did I miss it? How did I not see that coldness I saw in him now? Was it possible I was so taken by him that I’d blocked out what I didn’t want to see?
No. Kat said she’d seen it. He was in love with me. But the man I saw here wasn’t a man in love. That was a monster. He’d looked right through me, his eyes void of emotion. He ignored my pleading while another man stuck his finger up inside me. He watched as I was whipped over and over again. That wasn’t human.
But Logan had a band. Georgie and Deck knew him. He sang in Matt’s bar. It didn’t make sense, and yet ... he stood and watched me being abused. He talked to those men like he knew who they were.
I don’t know how long I cried for. I was bleeding and alone, so hurt and desolate that when the numbness from shock came over me I let it. But it didn’t last.
Anger came, with the hatred for Logan. The shaking stopped, and I sat for hours staring at the small window, most of the time thinking of nothing except the burning hate for Logan—no, Sculpt. Logan no longer existed.
What seemed like days later, but may have only been several hours, the door opened and footsteps stopped at the top of the stairs. I got up and walked up the steps toward Alfonzo, each step agony matched with despair bleeding through my veins. I had nothing to fight with any longer. Logan betrayed me. Matt nor the police were coming for me—no one was.
“Stop.”
I did.
“Put this on.” He passed me a clean T-shirt and jeans then threw a pair of flip-flops at my feet.
I knew asking for privacy was pointless, and it really didn’t matter. My body no longer belonged to me. It had been starved, beaten, and blinded with darkness. The welts on my back and legs still throbbed, and I could feel dried blood where they’d whipped me so hard it ripped open my skin.
I’d never experienced such excruciating pain before; the worst was getting kicked in the ribs by a horse. But this pain wasn’t just physical; it was emotional. Being locked away for hours, waiting for the unknown and praying for someone to save me, while Logan’s cold voice, haunted every waking moment.
I unzipped what was left of my dress and stepped out of it. I could feel his eyes roaming over my naked skin. It was disgusting, and I felt dirty, and I quickly pulled on the jeans then put the T-shirt over my head at the same time as slipping on the sandals that were a few sizes too big. I briefly wondered about the girl who had worn them last.
I was waiting for him to touch me. To throw me down on the floor and kick me or use me, and the slightest movement had me jumping and recoiling.
Without a word he nodded toward a door at the end of a narrow hallway.
When we reached it, he threw it open and shoved me outside, and I stumbled down two steps onto a walkway. As soon as the scent of fresh air wafted into me I stopped and breathed it in. After days of smelling urine, I felt like crying just being given this chance to breathe fresh air.
When I looked around I saw nothing except fields. No one to help. No one to hear my screams. Movement to my left caught my attention, and I saw them ... horses off in the distance. The thrill of freedom beckoned to me, and I knew nothing could stop me.
I ran.
I heard his scuffle of feet as he dove for me then cursed when I slipped through his grasp. He shouted behind me as I kicked off the flip-flops and ran as fast as I could. My legs wobbled, and I stumbled as I raced across the gravel driveway toward the cedar fence. My mind roared with panic, adrenaline keeping me from falling flat on my face.
He was right behind me, swearing and cursing. I could hear his footsteps and knew if he caught me it wouldn’t be good. He was mean ... cruel. It was in his eyes; I knew he would hurt me if he got hold of me again, and that thought pushed me to run faster.
If I could make it to the horses and get on one, ride it to wherever the stable was ... Someone had to be there to help me. Anyone. No way could he catch me on a horse. I could make it. I knew I could.
I felt his heavy breathing on the back of my neck as I dove for the fence. My hand touched the cedar rail, and then I had the wind knocked out of me.
His body trapped me against the fence, hand wrapped in my hair and yanking backward. I screamed out in pain then shot my elbow back, but this time he was ready and ducked to the side.
He retaliated with hooking his arm around my throat so tight I couldn’t breathe. “Not this time, bitch.”
He started walking, dragging me toward the van. I fought, kicking and writhing against his hold, but his locked arm around my throat squeezed harder until I was struggling for each breath. I was about to pass out or die when suddenly he let me go, and I fell to the ground sucking in air.
He slid the side door open on its metal tracks and kicked me hard in the stomach. “Inside.”
I wheezed as I crawled to my feet, struggling to move, but knowing if I didn’t he’d kick me again. He shoved me hard in the small of my back, and I fell forward, abdomen pushing into the metal edge of the van.
As soon as I was all the way inside he slammed the door shut.
There were no windows in the van, and the back door was chained with a heavy padlock. I heard a key turn in the lock of the side door and then the handle being tested. I felt like an animal being shipped for transport. A sharp, gruff laugh emerged from my throat—I was an animal. Actually less than that. A carcass, a piece of dead meat being hung up, cut, tasted, and thrown about.
I bounced around in the back of the van for what I guessed was an hour until I heard the tires slow, and crunch along a gravel road. The van stopped, and the door slid open.
“Out.”
I was huddled in the back corner of the van. Too scared to get out and yet wanting to, but knowing whatever awaited me couldn’t be good either.
“If have to come get you, bitch, you won’t like it.”
I knew he meant it. It was like he enjoyed seeing me in pain. I slowly crawled to the door, and Alfonzo grabbed my arm and yanked. I didn’t have time to gain my feet, and I landed hard on my knees on loose gravel.
I looked up, flinging my hair out of my eyes and came face to face with ... Oh God, Logan. It took me a second to register his face as he stood looking down at me. Steady. Composed. Almost as if five days ago he hadn’t made love to me. As if he didn’t even know me.
All the contained anger shot from my feet up to my skull and exploded.
“You fucking bastard,” I screamed and went flying for him. My fist managed to connect with his face before I was caught from behind and dragged back by the hair. I thrashed against Alfonzo’s hold, losing my footing and falling on my ass all the while Logan merely stood and watched.
“You done?” he asked when I stopped fighting and lay on the ground heaving in air while Alfonzo kept hold of my hair.
“She’s one feisty bitch. I’m going to fuck her raw when you’re done with her.”
Logan moved fast, knocking his hand off my hair and grabbing him by the shirt and slamming him against the van. “She’s mine. You get that. You don’t get to touch her—ever.”
The guy’s face went beet red, and his lips pursed together as he spit out, “She’s not yours. Raul owns her, and I train all his girls before he sells them.”
The aluminum crinkled as Logan slammed him into the van again. “She’ll be sold when I’m ready to sell her. You touch her again like you did at the farmhouse ... I’ll cut off your cock and shove it down your throat.”
Alfonzo’s eyes glared at me lying on the ground, but finally he put his hands up, and Logan let him go.
“Get up.” Logan stood in front of me, his feet inches from my hands that pressed into the gravel. He stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. “Now.”
“Fuck you,” I said and threw a handful of gravel at his face.
He was on me before my next breath, taking my arm and without hesitation dragging me toward another car. I pushed backward with my feet, trying to gain my balance, but he was walking too fast, and I couldn’t do anything except feel the stones digging into my hips as he pulled me across the driveway.
“Transport her with the rest of them,” Alfonzo yelled. “Bitch needs a fucking lesson. She arrives after that, she won’t be putting up much of a fight.”
As soon as Logan let me go, I leapt to my feet and was about to run when his hand trapped me by the throat. “Don’t do it, Emily. You run and I have to chase you, it won’t be pretty.”
I was wheezing past the pressure he had on my neck, my hands on top of his trying to peel back his fingers.
A wave of memory—Logan’s hand on the back of my neck—came plowing into me, and my breath hitched. No, don’t let me remember. Don’t. Please. I swear I heard him whisper my name, but it had to be my imagination. My mind was trying to find some sort of hope to grasp onto when there was nothing, and I wondered if maybe I was going crazy.
“Tell Raul I’ll contact him once we cross the border.” Logan opened the passenger door to the Lexus and put his hand on my head like the police do when they’re putting criminals in the back of a cruiser.
I got in and noticed two guys sitting in the back seat. I recognized them, but I didn’t know from where until it suddenly hit me as Logan walked around the front of the car. The fight—the bodyguards. The night Kat and I went to Sculpt’s fight and I asked him to teach me self-defense. These men had been in the back of the warehouse watching Logan.
But that was months ago.
Oh God. Had they been watching me for weeks? Had every day with Logan been a lie? Was he, what, testing me for this? I started hyperventilating as I thought of all the times I’d been with Logan. How he cradled me in his arms as we sat watching the horses. How he was so protective of me. Why would he have protected me if he was going to let me be beaten?
Confusion weaved so much anxiety over me that I was having trouble breathing. Logan knew these guys. He’d known them months ago. The truth was ... Logan did this to me.
The door slammed as Logan got in. He started the car and sped off. I noticed him glance briefly in the rearview mirror at the two men and frown like he was pissed off. At them? I thought he frowned at least, but I was thirsty and delirious and couldn’t be sure if what I was seeing was real or what I wanted to see.
“They were at your fight.”
Logan stiffened, looked in the rearview mirror again, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Why? Why did you even bother being nice to me?”
“Emily. Quiet.”
“Why didn’t you just take me weeks ago? What was the point being nice to me at all? Why did you—”
“Emily.” His sharp tone was enough to stop me. “We’ll go through this once. Once, Emily.” He stared straight ahead, his voice calm and laced with cold, like an ice pick banging out each word. “Never speak unless asked a question. Do exactly as you’re told without hesitation. The outburst you had ... That is reason enough to have you killed, and that’s if you’re lucky. Worse is giving you for the night to a group of workers. Then you’ll wish you were dead.”
