A Double Dose of Billionaire: Part Four (2 page)

“It’s fine. I’ll handle myself.”
Not.

Kristie flashed me a mocking smirk. “Sure, I believe you. You’re the worst at handling breakups. Call me when you need someone to talk to, okay? Meetings can wait.”

“I’m not that bad at handling breakups.”

“That guy before Damien. What was his name?”

Darn. That was a one-time incident. I didn’t like her bringing that up. “Brad.”

“I had to get you out of his apartment after you hit him and nearly knocked his door down.”

I grinned playfully. “Hey, I kicked the shit out of him.”

“A black eye doesn’t mean that you did.”

“Good enough.”

“Well, if anything pops up,
call me.
”

“Whatever.”

She glared at me.

“Okay, okay, I will.”

“Good, now take care of yourself. Don’t be stupid.”

Why was Kristie starting to sound like my mother? “I will.”

“Yep, I still don’t believe you.”

My shoulders sagged as I watched my best friend walk down the corridor and turn the corner. She left me all by myself again. Time to wallow in my self-pity and overdose on smoothies. Maybe I could watch another movie, or play some online poker, embracing more self-destructive behavior. I thought about my losses today and decided against it. I’d be avoiding poker for a
long
time.

I turned the door knob and stepped into my apartment. Oddly, my lights were on. Did I forget to turn them off?

Rubbing my eyes, I set my keys onto the counter. As I whipped my head around, I caught sight of somebody I hated.
Really hated.

Kelly, the girl who Damien cheated on me with, was sitting on my sofa. She wasn’t doing anything else but look at me with a smug expression, her head tilted up in a challenge.

“Why the hell are you in my apartment, you bitc—”

Before I finished my sentence, something was thrown over my head—a sack, presumably. It blocked my vision, effectively blinding me. My assaulter wrapped his or her filthy hands around my waist.

A hard object smashed against my skull. I heard a faint
clank
sound before blacking out.

When I came to, the most painful headache I’d ever had was pounding in my ears. I groaned. My hands were tied behind a chair by some coarse ropes. The ropes had begun to bite and tear into my skin. I recognized the place. I was still in the same apartment. My apartment. I had always felt safest in my own home. It never crossed my mind that I’d be ambushed there.

My cloudy vision cleared. The man standing at the other corner of the living room became recognizable.

Damien.

What the fuck? Why would he tie me up like this? He didn’t act like the kind who had enough balls to do things like that. No relief came to me after I spotted Damien. He was idiot, and idiots tend to do dumb shit, including dangerous and brash things.

“Is she awake?” a girl’s voice sounded. Kelly appeared from the corner of my eye.

Damien looked up from his phone. “Is she? Oh, shit, how are we doing this?”

Doing what?
They weren’t planning on murdering me, were they? Because judging from the way Damien talked, what they were about to carry out seemed serious. But why would they want to kill me? My first conclusion was they were trying to get some money out of me. Damien did mention the loan sharks and how they couldn’t get away from them. I should have reported these two to the police long ago. 

“I’ll handle this.” She was chewing gum. That annoying movement of her lips grated on my nerves. Why did people like to chew gum? It made them look like cows. But I had more worrying things to concentrate on.

From the looks of it, Kelly had planned my whole kidnapping. Damien was simply her henchman, out to do the dirty work. Studying her stature, I  couldn’t fathom why my ex-boyfriend would cheat on me with her. She was too skinny, to the point where I could see her chest bones and her thighs wrinkled and sagged. Her teeth were a horrible shade of yellow. She should have been around the same age as Damien, since they went to school together, but she looked ten years older than she actually was. She bent down so her face leveled with mine. “I think you know what we want.” The smell of cigarettes wafted to my face. Was she a drug user? Because she carried that image pretty well and beside my couch was a bong. She was actually smoking pot in my house?

“No, I don’t, bitch,” I lied. “And I probably don’t have whatever you need.” I tried to wriggle free from the ropes so I could claw the skin off her face. She dared steal my ex-boyfriend, manipulate him, break into my house, and then make him bind me up? I didn’t want to have any more of that.

She beckoned to Damien with her index finger. “Come here.”

“Do we have to do this?” he asked, reluctantly strolling to her side.

“It’s thirty thousand dollars, hun. They’re not going to let us go. We need that money.”

Her words triggered the memory of Damien showing up at my workplace’s lobby weeks ago, begging for cash. How Kelly managed to convince him to go through such lengths puzzled me. Considering she had sex with an attached guy, gambled too much, and plotted a kidnapping, her personality wasn’t exactly peachy either.The woman barely had any breasts
or
butt. Her face was a mess too, with dark circles around her eyes and a horrible spotted complexion.

My jaw clenched. “Thirty thousand? No, I don’t have that kind of money. And Damien told me it was five just last week.” I did have that in my bank account, but if I gave it to her, I would barely have any left over. I’d be kicked out by next month, and even grocery money would run low. I wasn’t quite ready to be homeless yet, especially not because of these two.

She sneered, “Five is too little. The twins should have more. And, as if I’d take ‘no’ for an answer. Damien, pass it over.”

“I don’t think we should—”

“Just hand it over, stop chickening out.” He reached over to his back pocket and pulled a black, metal object out. At first, I couldn’t tell what it was, but once I did, I nearly screamed and wet myself.

They had a gun.

On screen, they showed scenes like this all the time, so much that common folk like me get desensitized to them. Kelly pointed its barrel at me. I had an actual gun to my face, a trigger away from getting killed. The instinctual need to survive kicked in and my body went into a flight or fight mode. Adrenaline rushed through my veins and my senses bucked into overdrive. “Put that thing away!” I lurched backwards. The chair nearly tipped over before I regained my balance and slammed it back down onto the floor.

“No,” she quipped, before pulling the trigger.

I shut my eyes and turned away, expecting a loud, ringing gunshot and sharp pain. Nothing happened. Sadistic female laughter bounced off the walls. I slowly faced Kelly, fear and anger boiling under my skin.

She threw herself forward and slapped her thigh as she continued her tearful guffaw. “You should have seen the look on your face!”

“I’m going to kill—”

“You looked like you were going to shit yourself. Right, Damien? She looked ridiculous.”

My ex-boyfriend grunted.“Um, yeah. I’m still not sure if we should be doing this…”

“Stop whining. Man up for once,” Kelly said to him, and then she continued to address me. “The gun isn’t loaded, stupid. But, we have bullets, and we’ll use it on you if we have to.”

I ground my teeth together. “You wouldn’t.”

“Bang,” she mouthed, pulling the trigger one more time.

I couldn’t stop myself from flinching, despite knowing nothing would happen. This woman was a complete lunatic.

She set the gun down on the counter, next to a laptop. “I just need you to transfer thirty thousand dollars into our account. You can use my computer. I even brought it for you.”

Shaking my head, I stubbornly replied, “I don’t have that much money.”

“Fifty thousand. You have no bargaining chips, bitch. I’d think twice before declining again.”

“I don’t believe you’d kill someone so easily.”

She reached into her handbag and took out some bullets. Carefully, she loaded them into the gun. “Who said anything about killing?” My mouth went dry as I watched her. Smirking, she licked her lips. “What use will you be to me dead? You can’t send us any more money if you are. We’ll just torture you until you concede.” The trigger went off, one more time. This time, however, the gun was fully loaded, and a bullet pierced through the air and straight through my calf. I didn’t feel any pain at first—shock had numbed it. “I’m used to getting what I want,” she said.

Seconds later, realization took hold and a sharp, searing pain burned through my leg. “Shit! Why the fuck would you do that?” It was difficult to breathe. I tried to clench my calf muscles, but it only caused more pain. Blood gushed out of the wound. I’d die of blood loss at this rate.

Kelly tinkered with her gun. “So you know I’m serious.”

“You’re crazy! Fucking crazy!” Worried, I looked down at my belly. As long as the baby was safe.

She shrugged. “If crazy scares you, that works.”

“I thought you told me we weren’t going to hurt her,” Damien said, meekly.

“We weren’t going to hurt her
if
she co-operated, but she’s being stubborn as hell.”

“Oh.”

I moaned in agony as the throbbing in my leg got stronger. I had to stop the blood loss, somehow. I wasn’t ready to die of some stupid reason like that. I breathed in and out in a controlled manner as I attempted to my head leveled. “The two of you are going to hell. You’ll have people to answer to, cunt. There’s the cops. They’ll lock you up behind bars before you even get the chance to blink.”

Kelly crossed her arms.“Which reminds me. I need collateral. Do you mind, Damien?”

“It’s not right…”

“They’ll arrest us if we don’t. Stop being a pussy.”

He paced toward me, wearing the sorriest look I’d ever seen on him. What did she mean by collateral?

“We don’t want you ratting us out to the cops,” Kelly explained. “We need to make sure you don’t. So we need to give you a good reason to keep your mouth shut.” She had her camera out as she talked.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out what she meant. Photos—photos of me undressed and humiliated. That was one method to keep me quiet.

As soon as Damien came onto me with his sticky hands, the camera clicked.

Even with an injured leg, I couldn’t be stopped from fighting back.

***

I’d never get tired of the ‘straight in the balls’ trick. Damien was groaning at my side before he could do Kelly’s bidding. He had one button off my shirt—my uninjured right leg landed swiftly between his thighs before his hands could stray any further. Kelly was yelling at him from the middle of the living room, shouting words like ‘idiot’, and ‘useless’.
Remind me again why Damien likes her?

With him temporarily down, I had a small glimmer of hope. But faced with a bleeding calf, bound hands, and an insane woman with a gun, my hope continued to be nearly non-existent. I had no moment to think. Kelly got over her frustration fairly quickly. Leaving her gun on the counter, thankfully, she sauntered toward me with her camera in her hands. “I’ll do this myself.”

If she thought she’d get anywhere near to getting my clothes off, she was wrong. Using all the strength I had, I knocked the chair I was tied to over, luckily hitting her with its ends and tripping her. I fell face first onto the hardwood floor. Attempting to keep the impact from reaching my womb, I positioned myself so most of the stress landed on my chin and knees. The lack of pain from my tummy region served as a good sign that my child was still safe. I tried to inch away, panic momentarily making me forget about the stinging in my leg. I was probably suffering from a lot of blood loss, but the consequences of that had yet to take effect.

“Fucking bitch,” she uttered under her breath, before getting up. Vengeance painted all over her face, she lifted her heel and pressed it against my bullet wound. An electric shock of misery traveled all the way to my hip. I screamed, unable to stop myself. She displayed sheer satisfaction as she dug the heel of her foot deeper into my calf. I wanted to kill her. I wanted her to pay for every last second of torture she inflicted on me, but my resolve to stay strong wore thin as she continued to give me more agony than I could handle.

“Stop, stop!” I begged, shamed by my own weakness and lack of will. She grinned. Seeing her pleased by the way I crumbled sent disgust to my stomach.

“I will if you promise to stay still.”

“I’ll stay still.” My mascara trailed down my cheeks as tears forced their way out of my eyes. “Just stop, please, it hurts.”

“Good.” She kicked me so I turned over. My mind turned into mush while my leg muscles continue to pulse and ache.

But I wasn’t willing to give up. When her fingers reached for my shirt, I lunged forward and tried to bite her.

Damien recovered too quickly. “Fuck, she’s fiesty.” He grabbed my hands and pulled me backwards, away from Kelly.

Kelly wiped her forehead. “You’re an annoying bitch, you know that? Stop being so difficult. Now, hold still.”