Relentless: A Bad Boy Romance (Bertoli Crime Family #1) (41 page)

“What the fuck did you do?” I hissed, stepping forward. “And stop with this third person
Tris
shit.” Chris brought his hands up, his eyes flashing with fire as he got to his feet, smirking as he dropped all the smoke screens and told the bare-faced truth.

“It's what I'm going to do that you should worry about. A vial to the friend, a vial to sweet Abby, and both of them are sleeping it off. When they wake up, they're going to find themselves in my nice, new little play room. Then it's going to be play time—all the time.”

I couldn't resist it anymore. I swung. Unfortunately for me, I forgot the first rule of hand-to-hand combat as I was lost in my anger, which is don't let your emotions get the better of you. I should have kicked out straight, or thrown a jab. Instead, in my anger, I let loose with a huge, looping overhand right that Chris stepped inside of, catching my arm and attempting to judo throw me over his shoulder. I hung on, though, the two of us crashing to the floor in a tangle of bodies, arms and legs as I tried to pummel him. Curses and grunts filled the air.

Chris got a shot into my ribs as we rolled, a tight elbow that drove the wind out of me as I felt something inside me let go. Coughing, I hung on as best I could, trying to avoid the punches he began to rain down on my head and shoulders. While he punched, he was yelling. “Man, I so tried to get you into the game, to have some fucking fun. I figured if anything, prison would have made you more understanding. Instead, I come to find that you're fucking the one that I let get away? You probably even love the stupid stuck up cunt too.”

“Fuck you!” I screamed, slipping my head to the side. Chris's punch, which had been aimed at my nose, slipped by, just clipping my ear before I could push the elbow up and over my head, allowing me to escape out the side. I wanted to try for a choke hold, but Chris was fast, scrambling to his feet and grabbing a small statue from the coffee table. He brandished it at me, the dull pewter-like metal gleaming in the afternoon light, suddenly deadly.

“Get out,” Chris said, raising the statue up. I was on one knee, pain flaring through my body as my most likely separated rib sang out inside me. “Get out—you're on your fucking own. I tried, Dane. I gave you a place to stay, got you a job, I even took you out to get some pussy. But you just wouldn't go along with the program. So fuck you. You're on your goddamned own.”

“I'll take this to the cops,” I hissed, backing away slowly. “I'll call the cops, and I’ll find Abby and Shawnie. You won't get away with this.”

Chris laughed, breathless and with a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. “You stupid fuck, you're even dumber than Lloyd. Who's going to believe you? The cops? You're a convicted killer, dipshit. You go to the cops, and you'll be the one arrested. Stalking, sexual assault, murder . . . oh, I'm sure they'd love to find everything. Because I bet if the cops did a rape kit on sweet, sweet Abby's corpse, they'd find your DNA, wouldn't they?”

I could see it in Chris's eyes; he would have a backup plan. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd been the fall guy. He knew that if he ever got into a jam, he could use me as a convenient excuse. After all, Chris was the upstanding member of society, from one of the best families that had served his nation honorably. I was just his fuck-up friend who he'd given a second chance to, the most noble of gestures that would be regretted sorrowfully.

“I will stop you,” I gasped, backing away. I grabbed my phone from the counter as I approached the front door, glad that I still had my wallet in my pocket. “I don't know how, but I will.”

“I don’t think so, lover boy. By the time you figure things out, those two will be dead, and I'll be sitting here as free as a fucking bird. Get the fuck out. Next time I see you, I’m calling the cops myself.”

Chris darted forward and shut the door in my face, throwing the lock. I knew from months in the apartment that the door was steel core, and the deadbolt could probably hold back a motivated gorilla if it needed to. I turned and limped as fast as I could toward the elevator, hoping that Chris's bragging had been in haste.

As the elevator descended, I tried to think of someone, something I could use to save Abby and Shawnie. Chris was right, the cops were useless. They'd believe him, and most likely
I'd
end up arrested. Instead, I had to find someone else. I racked my brain, trying to think. Hank? No, Hank Lake might have been a good man, but Chris was his family. I didn't really know anyone else at work well enough—I didn't even have anyone's phone number.

The bell to the lobby dinged at almost the same time that the answer came to my mind.
Daddy
. Patrick Rawlings might have wanted to shoot me, but he loved his daughter more than life itself or his dislike of me, warranted or not. If there was anyone in the world that could help me, and had the social influence to get the cops to believe him instead of Chris, it had to be Patrick Rawlings.

Of course, that left me with one major problem. Other than his name, I knew nothing of Patrick Rawlings, or even how to get in contact with him. I left the Mayfair Tower, then turned around. I walked into the concierge area, where the person on duty looked up at me in surprise. After all, I'd been living there for four months now, and other than snatching old newspapers, I'd never said a word to them. “Can I help you, sir?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to put as casual a look on my face as I could. Rule number one in a firefight: don't panic. If you panic, you’re dead. “I'm trying to get a home phone number for someone. It's a business emergency, and nobody's at the office. Think you can help me out?”

I
felt
consciousness come back slowly, achingly fighting its way back from the blackness that seemed to be smothering me. My mouth felt like it was lined in cotton, and my pulse pounded in my ears. I swore I could even feel the air resting against my skin, and everything was in pain.

I tried to move my arms to scratch the itch that had developed in my hip, and found that I was restrained somehow. I forced my eyes open, pain chasing away the last of my cobwebs as even the dim light of wherever I was sent stabbing needles through my eyeballs, directly into my brain. I mewled, trying to turn my head away.

“You're awake,” someone said in a near whisper, which still sounded like I was at a rock concert. “I was getting worried.”

I blinked, trying to get my eyes to focus. After a minute, I thought I could see a little bit, and recognized that I was in what looked like a garage, with a bit of dim light filtering through the one window that was in the corner. I guessed that it was nearly sundown, but that was all I knew. There was also a little light coming from what looked like maybe a twenty or forty-watt light bulb suspended from a socket in the middle of the room, but it cast more shadows than anything else.

I looked toward the voice that had spoken, and was shocked to see Shawnie trussed up, her clothes hanging in ripped rags from her body. “Shawnie? What the hell?”

“Don't worry, you look about the same way,” she said softly, her voice dry and raspy. “Although I think I might be a bit more dehydrated.”

“What happened? Where are we?” I asked again, still muddled. I looked up and saw that my hands were chained to a thick eye bolt in the beam that supported the ceiling. While the chains weren't super thick, and I wasn't exactly hung up like a side of beef, there was no way I was breaking that chain. It looked like the sort of chain you might use to hang a kid's swing or something, easily capable of supporting three or four times my body weight. “What the fuck?”

“We were drugged, we're in the lake house garage as best I can tell, and I have no fucking clue,” Shawnie rasped, her voice gaining strength when she paused and forced herself to swallow whatever spit she could work up to lubricate her throat. “You certainly have interesting taste in men.”

“Hey, I wasn't dating him anymore,” I replied, wincing as my brain tried to kick off the rest of its cobwebs. “What happened to you?”

“I arrived at the house at the exact time that you told me,” Shawnie said, rolling her shoulders. She was trussed up like I was, about six or seven feet away from me. I looked at her chains and guessed that if she stretched her arms overhead, she might be able to sit down, but that was it. Her clothes hung in tatters, and I felt a rush of shame as I noticed that I could see her left breast hanging out through a cut in her shirt, and that she was only wearing panties. I looked down and realized with a shock that I looked about the same way, although I was still wearing my shorts.

“When I got here, Chris was surprised as all hell, but he invited me in. He told me that he must have given you the wrong time, as the party wasn't supposed to start for another two hours. He seemed relaxed, and since it was hot as hell, when he offered me a drink, I accepted. Before you ask, no, it wasn't supposed to be alcoholic. I just asked for a glass of Coke. I was about halfway through my second cup when I started getting woozy, and it hit me. I woke up here this afternoon while he was chaining you up. What day is it, anyway?”

I blinked, tears coming to my eyes. “Shawnie, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that I was putting you in danger.”

Shawnie shook her head and tried to wave it off with her fingers. “You didn't know, that's for sure. Can I ask, did you have any suspicion about this guy when you were dating?”

I shook my head, the pain lessening with each second. “No. But we didn't really spend a lot of time together. I mean, he was already in the Army when we started seeing each other. A lot of our courtship was done by phone calls, letters, emails, stuff like that. He was really sweet and charming at the time. He seemed like a normal guy when we were together though.”

“So what day is it?” Shawnie asked, rasping. “I know it has to at least be Sunday, but I figure not Tuesday. I haven't had anything to drink, and while I'm pretty sure I pissed myself while I was out, I can't be sure.”

“It's Sunday,” I answered. I sagged, letting my head fall forward. “Shawnie, what are we going to do?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. Like I said, I've only been awake a bit longer than you. He must have dosed me a lot more. What brought you here?”

“I tried to text you last night, see how the party went. When I called Chris, he said that you were at the party, but that he didn't know who you'd left with. Where is your car, anyway?”

“I don't know,” she said. Shawnie didn't drive her car often, it was a third-hand used thing that had a barely-working air conditioner, but it was all she had. “I drove it over here, but I heard Chris start up a car after he chained you up, driving off before he came back. I guess that was your Camaro?”

“Even drugged, I don't think you could confuse a beater Honda and a Camaro,” I said with a mirthless chuckle. “I’m guessing he drove my car off to the same place that he took yours. Considering the area, that could be anywhere.”

“It couldn't have been too far, he was gone only twenty minutes or so,” Shawnie said. “I mean, I guessed it was twenty minutes. I can't see my watch very well. When he came back, he taunted me a bit, then left.”

“What did he say?” I asked, chilled at the idea.

Shawnie shook her head, not wanting to relive the memory. Still, the information was important, she thought, and she swallowed thickly before continuing. “He didn't give a lot of details, but basically, he plans to rape us both and then kill us.”

The calm, simple way she said it convinced me that Shawnie was pretty certain that she was going to die. I wasn't going out like that. I knew it for sure. Taking a deep breath, I screamed as loud as I could for help, until my breath was gone and a harsh, jagged pain racked my throat, like I'd swallowed a bone or something.

“Don't,” Shawnie said when I stopped, forced to hack and cough to ease my vocal cords. “I already tried that. I stopped a while before you woke up.”

“So what do you want to do?” I replied angrily. “Just stand here until it's time to be raped and killed?”

“I plan on surviving,” Shawnie said simply. “I've just been trying to figure out what to do. Chris at least made a few mistakes.”

“What's that?” I asked, getting my heart under control. It was hot in the garage, and while there was a trickle of cool air coming in from the currently open door to the rest of the house, sweat was beading on my forehead and trickling down between my breasts.

“The eye bolt isn't all that strong,” Shawnie said, “and I don't think it's an actual full eye bolt. I think he used a U-shaped hook. If he can put it on there, it can come off too.”

I looked up, moving around in the limited amount of space the chain's slack gave me. As I moved, I studied the beam above my head more closely, wondering if Shawnie was right. It was about six feet over my head, and from my angle, the shadows made it look solid, telling me nothing. Instead, I looked over at her bolt, and saw what she meant. What I'd originally taken to be a full circle was in fact a mostly closed U shape, like Chris had taken a hook and bent in the top. “Still, that looks like a pretty hefty hook. What's your plan?”

“Depends. How much do you weigh?” Shawnie asked. “Real weight, not Facebook weight.”

“One fifteen, last time I checked,” I said, thinking back to when I'd stepped on the scale. “I might be a bit heavier now. That was during the two-a-day spin classes.”

“I'm one thirty-five,” Shawnie said, “so I guess I get the painful one.”

Before I could ask Shawnie what she meant, she looped the chain through her hands and dropped, jerking on the chain when her body came to a jarring halt an inch or so above the floor. She yelped in pain but got back to her feet. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Seeing if we can unbend the hook,” she said before dropping again. The beam above her groaned but looked as strong as ever, and if there was any change to the hook itself, I couldn't tell. “I'm hoping that Chris knows more about cars and sexual torture than he does construction materials. And I'm hoping he's a cheap bastard.”

“If the hook is soft enough, you might be able to get it to open some,” I said, understanding her point of view. “But you might just jerk your arms out of socket at the same time.”