Page 40 of Drowning in the Deep
“No, you’re right. It’s not. We’ll have to come up with a way to take out Yushenko, too. That one will be much trickier because all of his men are loyal to him. They’re not going to fold like wet paper bags the moment he shows weakness.” I wasn’t laughing anymore. None of us were. We knew that taking out Viktor was going to be much more of a challenge than it had been to take out Leo.
I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I hadn’t quite come up with the right combination to take my mother’s other strongest ally out of the picture yet. Perhaps I wasn’t quite diabolical enough to come up with this plan. My eyes went to Vin where he stood at the far end of the table. He looked innocent enough now, but something told me, if I prodded him, he’d come up with a scheme so bloody, so horrendous, it would even give me nightmares.
And that was saying something.
CHAPTER27
ELISA
Iwished I would’ve blacked out during the transport, but I didn’t. Every moment that I was rolled up in that carpet, in the back of what felt like some kind of a moving van, I was awake and completely aware of what was happening.
Well, not completely aware. Outside of the fucking rug, the world went on around me but I was certainly cognizant of what was happening inside. Every inch of my body itched from the rough, dirty surface of the rug, and every time I drew in a breath, no matter how shallow, filth and debris infiltrated my lungs. I couldn’t cough it up, though. The assholes who’d tied me up and wrapped me in this nasty prison hadn’t given me enough room to do more than pant.
What seemed like hours later, I felt the vehicle come to a halt. I couldn’t tell how long we’d actually been driving or where we were. We could be at my father’s mansion, or we might be at one of the facilities he’d legitimately gotten a hold of in Chicago. For all I knew, he’d dragged my ass back to Boston. I doubted that, though. It seemed like we were still in Chicago from the sounds of the road on the journey.
Now, I heard the doors being opened and felt the rug being hoisted out of the back. I strained to hear anything that sounded familiar—like the song of a bird I might recall from being at my father’s house—but everything was muffled. I may as well be on another planet.
As the two lackeys carried me inside, they jerked me around like a yo-yo on a string, not giving a rat’s ass when I hit the wall or a doorway. I didn’t make a sound, though. Maybe they’d think I was dead when they unwrapped me and leave me in a position where I could run. I wasn’t counting on it, but a girl could dream.
I felt the temperature drop as we seemed to be headed down a flight of stairs, judging by the angle at which I was being carried. I stilled myself, hoping that they would put me someplace less uncomfortable than this rug soon. But then I thought maybe they’d leave me there forever. Or maybe they were lowering me into a hole in the ground with the intention of burying me alive. I wasn’t afraid to die, not really, but I didn’t want to go like that.
The screech of a metal door filled my ears before I was rammed into another doorframe and then got unceremoniously dumped on a hard floor. Pain splintered through my ribs and hip with the sudden drop. I stifled a cry and waited.
It didn’t take long before they untied the carpet and ripped it away from me, causing me to spin out of it onto a dirty, damp cement floor. Looking up, I saw three hulking men towering over me, one of them being my father. He glared down at me, his eyes barely visible in the weak light.
“Untie her,” he said to his guys. They immediately pulled out a couple of knives and cut my hands and ankles loose. Then they removed the gag. One of them sliced into my wrist, leaving a trickle of blood behind, but at this point, my arms were so numb from the ropes, I barely felt it.
“This is your new home, you little bitch,” Father snarled at me as he signaled for the other two to come with him. The door slammed behind them, leaving me all alone in the dark with only the stench of mildew and what appeared to be a cold basement for comfort.
Immediately, I got to my feet, wobbly and aching. I launched myself at the door, banging on it with both hands. “Let me out!” I screamed to no one. I tried the handle, but it didn’t move. For several more minutes, I stood at the door, banging and pulling, but when nothing happened, I finally gave up, turning and moving to the corner of the small room and sinking to the floor with my back against the wall.
It was a storage closet of some sort. At least, that was what it appeared to be from what I could see. Only a small sliver of light seeped in from the bottom of the door. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when I could finally see, the only thing to look at were a couple of empty shelves on the other side of the room, which confirmed it was some kind of storage closet. My father had probably had it emptied out so I couldn’t find anything to blow the place up or throw in his face if he ever came back in here.
There were no windows, only concrete blocks to the ceiling. The room was probably ten by fifteen or something like that. Beneath me, the floor was damp, though not wet, which confirmed my initial suspicions that I’d been taken to a basement.
I wrapped my arms around my knees, pulling them up to my chest as I tried not to shiver. It was much colder down here than it was in my apartment where there was a working heating system. Outside, it had been a crisp fall day, the kind that told you winter was coming soon. I noticed the assholes had left the carpet, but I wasn’t desperate enough to move to use it as a blanket. I didn’t even want to sit on it to keep the chill from seeping up my body through the floor. It smelled rancid and had almost murdered me, so it could stay in the corner for now unless I got desperate.
The basement was eerily quiet. I couldn’t even hear the squeak of floorboards above me. With no indication that there was anyone else around, I began to feel even more alone than I had before. My thoughts immediately went to Daemon. Would he notice I was gone?
Would it even cross his mind to check on me since we hadn’t made arrangements or anything? I cursed myself for not setting up a time to see him again. If we had a date, a place and time where I was supposed to be, he’d notice if I wasn’t there, which might make him come looking for me. But as it was, he might go a week or more without seeking me out. Granted, we had been spending a lot of time together lately, and he might want to speak to me just to find out if I had any more information about the properties to share with him. But if he had a lot of syndicate shit to take care of, who fucking knew how long it might take for him to check in with me? By then, I could’ve starved to death down here.
Only, I knew it wouldn’t be starvation that got me. Knowing my father, he’d want me to die at his own hand. My thoughts went over some of the ways I knew he’d killed people in the past, and a shiver went down my spine. There were the usual ways, the kinder ways. A bullet to the head. A quick swipe of a knife across a throat. My father wouldn’t reserve any of those compassionate deaths for me. No, he would probably torture the hell out of me before slowly slicing me up like a tomato. Whatever the old fucker had in store for me, it wasn’t going to be quick—and it wasn’t going to be painless.
I needed Daemon to show up like a fucking prince in a movie, maybe even riding a white horse, and rescue me. Like he had last time, he could bust in, kill everyone, and the two of us would run away together, never to be seen or heard from again.
I almost laughed aloud at the thought. There was no fucking way that was going to happen.
Even if Daemon did realize I was gone—so what? How the hell would he find me? He didn’t have a tracker on my father the way he had on Ragno. And even if I was at the mansion, in the basement, Daemon would have a hell of a lot of trouble gaining access to this place. Would he even be able to get through the door? It was metal, after all, and I bet there was more than one lock on it. I may as well be locked inside a fucking bank vault.
I had to accept the fact that I was going to be here for a while, and I’d probably be tortured and die before anyone who cared about me even noticed I was gone. While Sarah would know I was gone right away, she might just assume that I was back with Daemon or was with some other guy. She could become suspicious when she noticed my phone was at home, but who would she call to help me? My father? Well, he’d just lie and say I’d run off to Belize with some ex-convict or some shit. If she called Drake, he might know what to do, but I didn’t know if she’d think of that.
The people at work would be no help. Obviously, Williams and the others were so far up my father’s asshole, they could smell his rotten liver. No, they would definitely be no help to me, and now that I knew Jason had been in on helping my father trick me, I seriously needed to reconsider my employment with them. It wasn’t like I needed to stick around to help the old man out anymore, after all.
Letting out a sigh, I dragged a hand down my face and repositioned myself on the floor. This was going to get uncomfortable really quickly. I wished I’d eaten something before I’d opened the door. Actually, I wished I’d never opened the door. My father would’ve found a way to get inside, but maybe if I’d had a chance to call or text Daemon before he got to me, he would know to be looking for me.
But then, would he even come for me if he did know I was in trouble? Our relationship was so complicated, and from one day to the next, he oscillated from seeming to care about me to not really giving a flying fuck.
If he knew I was here and he didn’t come, I guessed death would be more merciful than living in a world with that knowledge.
