CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Laurel
“It isn’t working out like you thought.”
That voice was new. Even through the closed door, I could hear the thick accent though I couldn’t place it.
I slowed my breathing and tried to listen in closely.
“No one has come for her. You sure she isn’t just one of their throwaways? My patience is running thin here.”
“I’m sure. She’s important to him,” my captor said and I could detect a slight hint of fear in his tone. Or it could have been annoyance.
“I am growing tired of your games.”
“You need me,” crazy-head said with certainty.
“I let you in because you made promises. Promises that you could bring me new clients. So far I have yet to see any of it.”
“I helped you. I told you when that fucker was sniffing around. If it wasn’t for me, you would have been caught.”
“I still lost a great deal. You have some vendetta against these bikers, deal with it on your own time. I lost half my men because of them. I want them to hurt like I have hurt. I want them to suffer. No one fucks with me.”
Even that had me shaking a little.
But…
Bikers?
There was no way.
I had been thinking this had to do with my father all along. Had I been wrong all this time? Was this really about Bryan and his men? His club?
“Get rid of the bitch or I will. I gave you enough time. Now she’s nothing but wasted money. And since you have failed to deliver on new buyers, I should sell her and keep her profit all to myself.”
There was a long pause of silence. I didn’t dare move.
“You have three days. Then I will be here to pick her up. I will take a loss just to get rid of her quickly.”
A door opened and closed hastily. I assumed it was the front one and that the other man was now gone. With a warning like that, I wouldn’t want to mess with him.
“You are fucking useless, bitch,” my captor said walking into the room then slammed the door behind him so hard it rattled the walls.
He was vibrating with rage. I swallowed hard because I hadn’t thought he could be truly dangerous until this moment. Crazy? Sure. Off balanced? Definitely. But so far he had just kept me locked up. He hadn’t attempted to touch me or hurt me. He barely spoke to me as it was. Right now was a different story. He was downright unhinged. A man humiliated and hanging on by a thread.
“I don’t fucking get it!” he roared. “Why? I watched for months. He was always sneaking in and out of your place. You! Only you!”
The way he was angrily pacing reminded me of a caged tiger. Which was kind of funny, seeing as I was the one in the actual cage.
“At first, I wanted to go after the Sergeant’s woman. But then I could never get close enough to her. Always someone watching. Just like with that other one… the younger you.”
He was ranting and I was trying my hardest to follow along.
He was talking about Gwen and Cami.
I knew for sure he was talking about Bryan and his club now. To think that he had been watching my sister sent a chill down my spine. How long had he been watching them? How long had he been watching me?
“But then I noticed him sneaking off in the middle of the night. I followed him and what do you know? He was always going to see you.”
I got the feeling like he wasn’t really talking to me. I curled up in the corner and tried to make myself seem as small as possible. But I didn’t dare take my eyes off of him.
“I thought you were special,” he said and abruptly stopped his pacing. His eyes moved to look at me with a slowness that made my skin feel itchy. “Why hasn’t he come for you?”
I swallowed down my fear and spoke the words that I had felt were true for so long.
“Obviously, I’m not that important to him.” I sat up tall and stared him down, unblinking.
“No,” he said and shook his head wildly. “No. That can’t be it. I must have not been blatant enough in my clues for those assholes. I need to do something more. Yes, more.”
He wasn’t around all that much after that. The walls started to close in on me and I was honestly surprised that they hadn’t done that already. I counted the holes in the walls. The planks of wood on the floor. The number of bars each cage held, again and again. The clumps of random dirt and dust on the bottom of my cage. I traced the lines of that room so many times I could have mapped it out with my eyes closed.
I was glad he was gone but at the same time, a huge wave of loneliness began to hit me. I guessed it was rather silly. Or desperate. Or just complete insanity. Why would I rather have him in here than feel so alone? It made no sense.
A day went by and nothing.
No food.
No water.
No coming in to empty my bucket.
My lips were dry and though I knew better, I kept licking them to try and get some moisture there. The night was cold and a dead kind of silence hung in the air. I wondered if he was even in the house anymore.
Maybe he was just going to leave me here.
This was how I would die.
How long did it take a person to starve to death?
Was it going to hurt?
Strange as it was, I never imagined my end before all of this. I was young, and like most young people, I thought my death was far down the road. Sure, I was aware that anything could happen at any time, but it didn’t really register, you know. Not that I thought I was untouchable. I knew I wasn’t.
A sharp pain shot through my midsection. I doubled over and tried my best to breathe through it.
Would this get worse?
Would I get so hungry that I would think about eating parts of my own body?
I wondered what went through people’s minds when they were in similar situations.
And what they thought about right before they knew they were going to die.
It was maybe a bit morbid but I was at a loss. I closed my eyes and let the images float through my head.
The first Thanksgiving after Cami decided to stop eating meat. How she got our house chef to make some weird tofu thing that was supposed to look like turkey. The way our mother looked at her with disgust and said something along the lines of her always being such a difficult child. And how she didn’t understand why my sister had to act so strangely. While I had a felt a sense of pride for her. Of course, I had to keep it hidden and I wished more than anything that I had let her know in those moments how much I loved her.
The Christmas when my grandfather gave me the necklace that had the tiny pearl and diamond. He whispered that I was his favorite and not to tell the others. I knew he probably said it to all his grandchildren but it still meant the world to me. Just like that necklace.
My mother had later scoffed and said that I should never wear something so small. That it would make my neck look fat. A woman always needed something big to make her neck look dainty. That was what she had always drilled into me. Same went for rings and bracelets. If I had heard it once in my life, I had heard it a million times. Something with a lot of diamonds, preferably, because the sparkle distracts from how big your hands are, she pointed out at every chance she got. I never thought I had big hands. To me they were slender and maybe my fingers were a bit long.
Despite her nasty words, I loved and wore that necklace. Sometimes in secret, tucked behind my buttoned up cardigan.
How I wished I had that necklace now.
As my fingers came up to my chest where it would have rested, I could almost feel the smoothness of the pearl against my fingertips.
It was stupid to wonder what would happen to it. Or where it might have been at this very moment. Was it still in my apartment in my tiny jewelry box? Did I even still have an apartment? What would happen to all my stuff?
I know I didn’t have much but the thought of it all being tossed in the trash brought tears to my eyes. I imagined that was what would happen. I imagined my fluffy white comforter all splattered with dirt and grime. And my clothes being carelessly tossed in heaps into the giant, metal trash container that always smelled like rotten eggs and dirty tampons. And that necklace, would it end up in the landfill and lost forever?
I pulled myself out of those thoughts. It wasn’t like it mattered all that much now because I would be gone and I would never know.
I tried to remember more happy things. For some strange reason, I felt the need to search out some point where I had been worthy of this life. What had I done that was so good?
It was painful to realize that I couldn’t come up with one single thing.
Sure, there were times that I organized charity dinners. And while they did bring in some money to whatever organization we were supporting, the people that went to those things weren’t there because they cared. It was never about raising awareness and helping. It was all about image and keeping up the appearance that just because you had money didn’t mean you didn’t give back to the community in some way.
It was sick.
And so horribly sad that I hadn’t seen it all while I was in the thick of it. I had been one of those people. I never got my hands dirty and I never really thought about the people that the money went to help.
This was the moment that most people would have begged God for a chance to change, or so I imagined. Vowing that they would right all their wrongs if they could just get out of whatever situation they were in. Perhaps, I should have done that even if I wasn’t all that sure about God.
Instead, I thought about the man that made me feel like I had been worthy of so much more than I was.
Bryan.
If only…
What?
If only I could have had the courage to tell him all the things I had felt for him? Let him know how his touch made me feel safe and warm? Told him that his lips were addictive and his kisses made me feel more alive than I had ever before?
Would it have even made a difference?
Or was it better that I had kept my mouth shut?
This way he would never know and what we had would remain something so shallow. Something he could forget about quickly.
And that led me to thinking about just how fast he would move on from thoughts about me.
Only, I didn’t want to believe that I meant that little to him. Maybe we hadn’t said it out loud, but there were moments I saw more in his eyes. I had thought it was best to ignore it but maybe I had been completely wrong.
Fear gripped me so tightly. Fear that this was the end for me and I would fade away with so many loose strings blowing in the breeze.
I cried, I did.
Because I was weak.
With as hard as I sobbed, I would’ve bet that the thin stream of tears could have made a river if I hadn’t been so dehydrated. I imagined myself drowning in them then, at least if I could then this would all be over.