Wrecking Ball, page 18
I gasp at his crudeness and at the sheer lack of emotion in his voice.
He killed their parents?
Christ. This man has absolutely no morals if he’s willing to do that off his own back.
“Nate was always the fucking favourite. Always the one that was lined up to be the most powerful of them all. And when I slit their throats, I thought I had it in the bag, but then shit went wrong and I had to flee.
“Turns out, no one really liked me much, and they all chose Nate over me. So, I bided my time, went underground, kept silent, and now, here I am, ready and waiting for him to come here to rescue you both… and he won’t even see the trap as he comes in here. He won’t be thinking clearly, and it will pave the way for me to capture him and torture him before he meets his maker.”
“No,” I cry out, the first words I’ve spoken in a while because the thought of him not being here kills me. I might as well be dead if he is.
“Aww, isn’t that sweet… You want me to keep him alive for you?” he says in a weird-ass voice that sends an uncomfortable shudder down my spine. “Too fucking bad, princess. His death has been on my mind for years, so as soon as I feel as if I have tortured him enough, I’m going to take my shot.”
“No, please, you can’t––”
“Oh, I think I can,” he says, cutting me off. “You see, I’ve been watching him for years, just waiting for my moment, and then you came along, and just like that, I knew how to hurt him so bad that he would never recover,” he says, and I grit my teeth to stop from screaming out.
“Just think how he will cope without his wife and his sister. Doesn’t bear thinking about really, does it?” he taunts, and I look at the guy that is supposed to love the both of them because they are his blood. He did not get Nate’s looks, he did not get Zoey’s compassion, he didn’t get either of their thirsts for life… all he got was a thirst for evil. I’ve known him all of a few minutes and I can see it as plain as day.
“It’ll make him careless to know that I have you both,” he says with a grin.
“Lucas, please don’t do this,” Zoey pleads, and I can hear the hurt and pain in her voice.
“Why not? Because we can all be one big happy family?” He laughs cruelly at her. “I don’t fucking think so. Now, take her away and make sure we hear her screams,” he says to the two guys, and then he’s stepping aside and we’re leaving the room, my heart pounding with terror, my body trembling with shock, anger and fear.
And then it comes to me.
The guy from Purity and his words from that night… “Hopefully the boss will let me, once I have delivered you to him because I would love nothing more than to fuck Nate Knowles’ woman.” Oh my God, his boss… he… Lucas. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I haven’t thought of that until now. I could have passed that onto Nate, it was clearly fucking important… and now it’s too late. I can’t tell him anything because there is a very real possibility that I will never see him again.
How the fuck am I going to get out of this one?
How is anyone meant to warn Nate of what awaits him?
“Oh, and don’t worry, Kat… I’ll take good care of Nate once you’re gone… when he’s all alone and needs some attention… you know, before Lucas puts a bullet in his brain,” Jessica shouts from behind me, and I blink back the tears that sting the backs of my eyes. It’s no good crying, that won’t get me anywhere. Why would she go to all of this trouble to get Nate’s attention, just so Lucas could kill him?
It makes no sense, and clearly, she’s more fucked-up than I was led to believe.
I make sure to take in where we are going, because if there is any chance of me getting out of here, then I need to know where to go. I’m taken back down the stairs and then we’re moving through a door to the left and down more stairs, these ones concrete and a slow drip of water seeming to echo all around.
If these men touch me, then I would rather die anyway. I wouldn’t want to live after being tainted by them. I couldn’t bear to be with the memory of any other hands on me except for Nate’s.
Christ, I spent so much time hating him and not enough time loving him.
I wasted valuable minutes of our lives, and now it all feels like it was for nothing.
A lone lightbulb comes to life as we reach the bottom, and I see nothing except for a bed in the middle of––what appears to be––the basement.
There are handcuffs at the top and the bottom, the sheets are filthy, and the pillows have seen better days.
Fucking hell, how many women have they had down here?
I’m taken to the bed, and I fight with everything I have to try and get these guys off of me, but I end up led down, both hands and feet cuffed and spread apart.
They both look down on me, and the one to my right speaks first. “I get the first go.”
“No way, man, you had the first hit on the last one,” the other guy argues.
“Yeah, and good job too, because she was ruined once you’d had her,” the first guy says, and my eyes look around for anything that could distract them. But of course, there is nothing as it is bare. Nothing to help, nothing to take their attention off of me. Just a lonely old bed and a woman that got in way too deep cuffed to it.
“I hope you don’t mind a bit of pain, because I like to fuck with knives,” the second guy says and my heart plummets into my stomach. “Better than lube. Free-flowing and no need to keep reapplying.”
Oh my God.
No.
Please no.
This can’t be how I go out.
Nate, please come and rescue me. Please find me. Please get these men away from me.
But as more minutes tick by and the first guy whips out his dick, I feel the hope die inside of me. Guy number two rips my top in half and cuts through the middle of my bra, leaving my breasts exposed to them.
“Oof, would you look at that, Alf? Perky tits and enough to fill your hands,” guy number two says––so now I have one of the fucker’s names to add to my last memories. Wonderful.
“Please don’t do this,” I manage to say, realising that I actually can fucking speak, and my mouth hasn’t been taped or gagged. The shock must have rendered me speechless, but I need to try and appeal to these guys somehow. “If you let me go, I’ll make sure Nate leaves you both alone. He won’t come after you, I promise.”
They both stare down at me for a second before bursting into laughter.
“Oh, man, you may be pretty, but you have no fucking brains,” Alf says, dick still in hand. “There is no way that Nate would let us go. We know who he is, and we’re going to enjoy fucking his tight wife before we disappear from here for good. We’re not sticking around for him to find us, but you… well, you were just too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Alf licks his lips and starts moving his hand up and down as guy number two––whose name I still don’t know––starts to unbutton my jeans. I twist and turn from side to side as much as I can, but when he pulls a knife from under the bed and holds it to my pussy, I stop.
My body freezes as he runs the knife down the zip.
“That’s better,” he says with a smirk as Alf grunts on the other side of me.
I swallow down more bile and fix my eyes on the ceiling. I need to zone out, make myself numb while they defile my body. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel.
I cast my mind back to the first time I met Nate. How I thought he was hot, how I thought he was sexy despite being a bad man––or so I was led to believe. Because he’s not all bad. And yeah, he may only show his softer side to me, but that was all I needed to fall hard and fast, even if I did deny my attraction to him for months.
Tears stream down my cheeks and I cry silently as I feel my jeans being tugged.
I think about the time that Nate first made love to me. How he caressed me, touching me so gently as if I would break. How his mouth made me forget everything else.
My heart aches as I think about not being with him again. Not holding him. Not having him pull me close. Not feeling his lips on mine.
The tears come faster; my cheeks drenched with my turmoil.
I should have told him that I loved him sooner.
He’s the only person in the world that has ever shown me true love, and for that, I will always have the memory of being the centre of someone’s world.
“I can’t get these off of her,” guy number two says as I tune back in, feeling the tugging on my jeans stop.
“Uncuff her then. I’m ready to stick my dick in her,” Alf says, but I don’t look at him and his manky dick. I can’t. It’s just too gross for words.
“Fuck’s sake,” the other guy grumbles, and then I feel him place his hand on my ankle. He’s unlocking the cuffs? Oh my God, he’s unlocking the cuffs! It may only be the ones securing my legs in place, but my brain goes back into survival mode as I realise what I can do to buy myself some more time––even if it will only be minutes. Thank fuck for tight skinny jeans.
I wait, I bide my time, and when the fucker thinks I’m not going to react, I swing my right foot around and kick him straight in the dick, as hard as I can.
He shouts out loud and drops to his knees, his cheeks puffed out, his face red and his eyes watering.
“You fucking––” He doesn’t get to finish his sentence because he slumps to the floor and passes out.
Oh my God.
“You bitch,” Alf says, and I don’t have time to process what is happening as he jumps on top of me, his dick on display and threatening to touch my skin as he leans over and slaps me across the face. Once, twice, three times. The force of each hit has my head feeling dizzy, the pain blasting through my face, but I clench my teeth and take another hit. I won’t beg this asshole to let me go because I know he won’t.
“I’m going to fucking ruin you,” he snarls. He grabs his dick again and starts to shuffle up me. “I’m going to come all over your pretty face and then I’m going to stick it in you before he wakes up and disfigures you… pussy and face.”
And as he starts to pump himself again, I scream out loud. It’s all I have left to do. I can’t move because he’s too heavy. I can’t escape because I’m still cuffed. All I have is my voice, even if it won’t help me.
“GET OFF OF ME,” I shout again and again and again.
“Shouting won’t help you, but I kinda like it. Makes me feel like I’ve worked for my reward,” Alf says, a sadistic grin on his face. Jesus, he gets off on this?
His body shudders and he closes his eyes. And just when I hear his breathing change, everything goes silent, and he collapses forwards on me before rolling off to the side and landing on the floor.
My brain frantically tries to work out what just happened, but when I look around the room and see Nate stood on the bottom step, I let out a cry of relief.
He made it.
He came for me.
He saved me.
“Nate,” I whisper as he makes his way over, taking in my half naked state, my jeans which are unzipped and my––probably––red cheeks from the slaps.
“Fucking hell,” he breathes as he goes to the cuffs keeping my hands in place. “Key?”
“The other guy had it,” I say as I nod to the floor. “He’s not dead.”
“He fucking will be,” Nate grates out as he rounds the bed and looks for the key. He finds it somewhere near the guy, but I can’t quite see as the tears blur my eyes.
Nate leans over me and I feel the cuffs being undone, freeing my wrists from their restraints, and I waste no time in throwing myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck and sobbing into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper through my sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
“Shhh, it’s okay. I’ve got you,” he says soothingly as he holds the back of my head to him, moving me off the bed and wrapping my legs around his waist.
I cling onto him because he is my fucking lifeline. I don’t want to let go, but when I hear a grunt from behind, I know that I will have to, so Nate can end the other asshole’s life.
“I need to––”
“I know,” I say, cutting Nate off, knowing he needs to do this. I let my legs fall and I shakily stand, but he only lets go of me when he knows I’m going to be able to support myself. He takes off his jacket and wraps it around me, because my top and bra are shredded on the floor.
He places a light kiss on my forehead and squeezes my shoulders gently before walking around me and to the cretin on the floor.
He’s pulled himself up on the side of the bed, not yet realising that Nate is here.
He grunts before shifting to a standing position, squinting as he does, his eyes going from the bed to me stood on the other side.
“How the fuck did you get over there?”
“That would be my doing,” Nate says from behind him, and immediately his eyes go wide and the bit of colour that was left in his cheeks drains completely.
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, oh shit indeed,” Nate says as he swiftly picks up the knife on the floor and proceeds to shove it up the guy’s ass. His face contorts with pain as he falls forward onto the bed.
I hear footsteps on the stairs and turn to see some of Nate’s guys coming down.
“Make him suffer,” Nate tells them before he comes back over to me and lifts me back up. I wrap myself around him once again as we leave the basement to the sounds of howls of pain. I can’t even feel sorry for him because he deserves everything he gets. If that makes me a mean person, then so be it, but he was going to use that knife on me and rape me, so I think his punishment is deserved.
“Didn’t you want to be the one to kill him?” I ask Nate as I rest my hands on his shoulders and hold his eyes.
“Usually, yes, but getting you out of here is more important,” he tells me, and there goes my heart. It’s all his, and it always will be.
He carries me out and to his car which waits just outside the doors. I see Zoey is already inside, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“And Jessica?” I ask.
“She’s dead,” Nate tells me.
“Your brother?”
“Dead.”
“And was there any sign of Stefan?”
His jaw clenches, and his silence tells me all I need to know. Stefan is dead too.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as his pain becomes mine and I place a light kiss at the corner of his mouth. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
Nate
As we make our way back home, I try to expel the anger that still runs rampant through my body.
Lucas.
Jessica.
Zoey.
Kat.
Stefan.
Lucas had been working with Jessica. She turned on me when she knew she couldn’t make me fall for her or let her suck my dick. Woman scorned and all that… except she wasn’t scorned because she was never mine, and I sure as shit was never hers.
When I turned up at The Lodge, making my way as quietly as I could through the place, I knew that I needed to stay focussed to get the two women that mean more than anything to me out alive. Being a hard-faced bastard all of these years came in quite handy, because I was able to turn my emotions down a notch and tap into my deadly side. The side of me that I have perfected over the years. The killer inside of me knew what he had to do in order to save Kat and Zoey and make sure I lived too…
I could hear a female voice as I made my way along the hallway. I had quietly taken out anyone standing guard on my way here, and my men were taking care of the rest that were lurking about the place. The beauty of a silencer is that your enemies don’t even get an inkling of you creeping up behind them to end their life. And Jessica sure as hell will have no idea that she has been left open and unprotected as I come for her.
I pause outside the room as it all goes quiet, and then another voice has rage searing through me like a wildfire.
“Baby sis, I’m sorry it had to end like this… well, actually, I’m not really, and I will take great pleasure in finally bringing Nate to his fucking knees. It’s his turn to beg for mercy, beg for life, but I’ll never give him that.
“I’ll torture him until he struggles to breath, and then I’ll rip out his fucking heart and lodge a bullet in his brain at the same time, because I couldn’t decide which ending was better, so I’ll just go with both.”
Motherfucking Lucas.
“Lucas, you promised me that I could have my fun before you ended him,” I hear Jessica say.
“And you can. You can jump around on his dick as much as you like until I decide that it is enough,” Lucas says, and I can hear the warning in his tone.
“You two are fucking sick,” I hear Zoey say, and my heart thumps a bit harder hearing that she can speak, and I pray like fuck that she is okay.
“You always knew this about me, sis, and I never pretended to be anything else,” Lucas replies, no shame, no fucks given. “And you know what else, dear sister of mine?”
There is a pause and I hear feet shuffling.
“I’m going to make sure that I retell the story to him over and over again about how his pretty little wife was raped repeatedly as she begged for her life.”
That’s it. That’s where my patience fucking ends.
I stand up and move to the doorway, my gun trained in my hands and ready to fucking shoot.
Lucas has his back to me, as does Jessica, neither of them paying the least bit of attention to anything other than Zoey because they think they have this in bag, and it’s made them sloppy.
I would love to torture Lucas, but there is no time. I see that Kat isn’t in here and his words have me desperate to find where she is. So, I aim the gun and pull the trigger, the bullet landing in the back of his head and his body dropping to the floor. Pretty boring ending really, but I had to act fast.
I turn the gun on Jessica as she whirls around, her mouth dropping open and her eyes wide with shock.
