Page 15 of Empowered
Then I bolted to the side of the building. I didn’t know where else to go, so I figured it was best to hide out somewhere nearby in case anyone came looking for me.
As I ran down the alley, I heard shoes slapping against the ground behind me. Tarun had found me.
I ran faster looking for any crevice in the alley to duck into to escape the person behind me. My lungs were about to explode from exertion and my legs were ready about to give out, but I couldn’t stop.
The footsteps grew louder with each second that passed by. Something grabbed the back of my clothes and pulled me backward. I slammed into something hard. I was just about scream when a cloth covered my nose and mouth tightly, suffocating me. The hand pressed so hard against my face that the cut on my cheek seared with pain.
I struggled against the hard wall behind me, but something held my waist down from. I couldn’t believe I had been so close to escaping and eventually rescuing Salena. I had failed her. I had failed myself.
My vision started to go hazy and I felt my body start to go limp, from my toes all the way up to my chest. My eyelids felt heavy with sleep. Everything around me blurred and then went black.
Chapter XII
Amelia
Icame to, the fog from my head slowly clearing and the realization of what had happened settling in.One of Tarun’s goons got me.My eyes darted around the room. This wasn’t my cell. I wasn’t back in the dungeon.
I was lying on a wooden bench, unbound and ungagged. I pushed up to sit slowly, taking in my surroundings. I was in some sort of a broken-down warehouse. There weren’t any windows at eye level for me to see clearly, only small ones just below the ceiling that barely brought in any sunlight. Electrical wiring in the walls was exposed and the beams holding the ceiling up looked worn down and seconds away from caving in.
A deep voice broke through the residual grogginess, snapping me to attention. I wasn’t alone.
I looked over to where the voice was coming from and saw the back of a tall figure. He didn’t look like one of Tarun’s men, who were usually stocky and unkempt in their clothes. This figure wore a fitted black t-shirt and camouflage cargo pants. He held his spine with perfect posture as he pressed a phone to his ear. He looked like a soldier reporting to his general.
“Yeah, she’s here with me. She tried to run.” He paused for a moment, giving the other person a chance to respond.
“You should have warned me she was fast,” he said next, chuckling into the phone.
“Don’t worry. I sedated her just enough to carry her without a fight. Didn’t want to make her too hungover to talk. I’ll question her when she comes to.”
No wonder I felt so out of it. Tarun and his guys must have had stockpiles of sedatives, judging from how much they’d used on me up until this point. I was still confused about why he hadn’t handcuffed or gagged me. I could easily run or scream right now, but he’d probably catch me and subsequently punish me for it. Instead, I stayed quiet, listening to the man speak in case he said anything useful for me to use later.
“No, she was alone. Lots of cuts on her feet and a pretty bad gash on her cheek.”
I touched my cheek, remembering the cut I had dug into as a way to distract the guard so I could flee my cell.
Bandages. Why would my captor have dressed my wound? Tarun certainly hadn’t cared about it after he sliced into my skin. I was sure the thing was infected by now from the lack of care it received.
After a few moments of listening to his boss on the other end, the man spoke again. “Okay. I’ll wait here for Jai’s call.”
Jai?Why would Jai be calling Tarun’s man? Unless—
He was about to hang up when I jumped off the bench—too fast for my legs to work properly. I tumbled to the ground, knocking my elbow on the bench with a thud on my way down.
The man turned to check on the commotion I had caused. His eyebrow hitched as he studied me.
“Looks like someone’s awake,” he said in a low voice into the phone, as if narrating what he was seeing.
My nerves rattled inside. I strained to raise my voice loud enough to be heard; instead, it came out hoarse and shaky. “Is that Shyam?” Uttering his voice aloud was enough to stop my heart from beating just so I could hear his reply clearly.
He stared back at me without replying. His silence was my confirmation.
He hesitated for a beat, listening tohimon the other line. “Boss wants to talk to you.”
He held the phone out to me, and I grabbed it desperately. I had so many things I wanted to say to Shyam—so many things I wanted to hear in reply. I wanted to tell him about how they took me from my office. How they drugged me and delivered me all the way to Tarun’s doorstep. I wanted to tell him how they locked Salena and me into cells and abused us. I wanted to apologize for ruining his business by diverting his shipments. And most of all, I wanted to tell him that I thought of him every day while I was held captive and prayed to be in his arms again. Yet, I couldn’t get my voice to start.
He spoke first. “Jaan.”
My heart stilled hearing my nickname again. After so many weeks of being held against my will, hearing that familiar deep voice call out for me untied all the knots of anxiety that I had been carrying inside all this time. All the feelings I had locked up tight into a box in order to survive came rushing out of me like water from a burst dam. The dam had crumbled to pieces, tumbling down to the earth. The freed water gushed out of my body as tears when I heard that one beautiful word.
