One of these days, I would learn to listen to my instincts rather than let my stupid, stubborn pride rule my actions. Would it really have been so damn hard to take Austin up on his offer? It wasn’t like we hadn’t kissed before, and fuck knows I was attracted to him despite my better judgement.

Nonetheless, my pride held me back from returning to that office and demanding that bitch Peyton leave so I could balance out my magic drain. Oh yeah, that’s what I was calling it. Because to admit to myself that I really just wanted to rip that soaking wet tuxedo from his body and let him do me on the desk was just too much for my exhausted brain to process.

Picking up the front of my ball gown, I descended the few steps into the main room and scanned the crowd for my guys. Stupidly, I no longer had my comms receiver, so I couldn’t even ask Wesley where they were.

Just as I thought I’d spotted the back of River’s head across the far side of the room, a commotion broke out, and I was bumped sharply from behind. Exhausted as I was, I lost my footing and hit the floor hard in a puddle of dress.

“So sorry,” a man apologized. “Here, let me help you up.” His hand wrapped around my upper arm like a band of steel and hauled me to my feet like I weighed no more than a wet kitten.

“Do you quite mind?” I snarled, pushing weakly at the heavyset man to try and dislodge his hand, but sadly it seemed I also had the strength of a wet kitten too.

You raging idiot, Kit. My eyes darted from the hard-faced man holding my arm and past him to the shadowy figure lurking in a doorway with a grin on his slimy fucking face.

“You’re supposed to be in Miami tonight,” I snapped, not wanting to believe what I was seeing.

“Amazing what a few well placed bribes will achieve, isn’t it?” My old nemesis Mr Gray sneered at me.

My gaze darted around the room, looking for my backup, but whatever was happening on the far side of the ballroom had caused a crowd of people to block me from view. The coincidence was too great to be believable.

“Come along, then,” Mr Gray ordered, and the oaf began dragging me through the doorway Gray had been standing in while I dug in my heels and weakly tried to fight him off.

Twisting in his grip, I slipped my free hand into one of the many strategically placed slits in my ball gown and pulled out a knife. My exhaustion made my movements sloppy and slow, but I still managed to cut a deep slice across the goon’s wrist, causing him to yell and release my arm.

The second his hold dropped, I turned and ran, only to run headlong into another solidly built ogre who made a much better job of both disarming and disabling me, pinning both my arms with wrist locks and shoving me ahead of him in the direction Gray was heading. The fucking bastard must have known how weak I was because he hadn’t even paused to look back when I made my pathetic attempt at escape.

“You know you’re not getting away with this, you pathetic heap of shit,” I snarled at his back as he led the way through the sitting room to a small almost secret door concealing a narrow staircase.

“We’ll see about that,” he smirked, leading the way into a bedroom at the top of the stairs. Once inside, he held the door open for the oaf to shove me through with both my wrists still locked and immobile. “This here was a secret room that the owner of this property kept for entertaining his mistresses. That door at the base of the stairs has a bookshelf which my companion here will slide in front of it, hiding it from view, and there are no other ways in or out.” He grinned like a bloodthirsty Cheshire cat. “Oh, and it’s completely soundproof. So go on, scream. I dare you.”

Yanking against the goon’s grip on me, I briefly considered letting him break my wrists in order to get free, but what good would that do? I was already barely keeping my eyes open without then needing to heal two broken wrists and try and fight my way out of here. So in a nutshell, I was fucked.

“Check her for weapons,” Gray ordered his guys. “This little bitch has surprised me one too many times. But not this time, little girl. Oh, no. I took steps to ensure that not only would you be weak as a damn child, but also that your little friends downstairs were well and truly detained for the foreseeable future. No one is coming to rescue you, Foxy Girl. Not even yourself.”

The stronger oaf held me immobile while the other one stripped my beautiful gown from me and let out a low whistle when he saw my arsenal of weapons. Or, at least, I assume that’s what he was gaping at. Slimy motherfucker.

“Bit pointless being so well armed when all it took to disarm you was a poor, innocent drowning victim,” Gray snickered, watching with hungry eyes while his goon unstrapped my many weapon harnesses and tossed them all into a pile on the dresser. Once again I cursed myself for being so stupid. Of course it was a goddamn fucking set up. Of fucking course it was!

Once totally divested of all my weaponry, the first man pulled out a couple of zip ties and bound my hands together in front of me before releasing the wrist lock he’d held me in.

“Secure her and then leave,” Gray ordered, and I was roughly manhandled onto the queen-size bed, my zip-tied wrists then zip-tied again to the slatted headboard and my ankles to the base board. Fear spiked in my belly at being so helpless and vulnerable, but I squashed it down hard. I was better than that, and men like Mr. Gray, Richard Liath, didn’t deserve to see my fear.

The two hard-faced men worked in silence, but I knew better than to waste my breath pleading with them. Too many times in my short life I’d encountered goons for hire like them. Nothing and no one was going to talk them out of their assigned, and well-paid, task.

They left the room, closing the door behind them with an ominous click, and Gray locked it by shooting an old-school bolt across before turning his predatory eyes on me.

“You’re a sick piece of shit, you know that?” I sneered at him, curling my lip in disgust. “Preying on the weak and innocent, taking your sick pleasure from children and helpless women. People like you don’t deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of the world, and I promise you, I’ll make sure you don’t for much longer.”

He didn’t respond, loosening his tie, tugging it over his head, and laying it over the back of a chair before rolling up his shirtsleeves.

“I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve here,” I scoffed at him. “A bit of revenge? Are your feelings hurt that I publicized your disgusting proclivities?”

When my foster home had been raided by Omega team some nearly six years ago, Jonathan had done everything in his power to press charges against Mr. Gray and his revolting compatriots. Despite them being able to wiggle out of the charges due to their impressive ability to clean the house and the kids of any and all DNA evidence, it had still been a huge scandal in the media. Gray was still stupidly rich and powerful, but considerably less so than he had been.

Still, he didn’t respond but climbed onto the bed and straddled my waist. His weathered, leering face looked down at me with victory clear in his eyes just seconds before his huge fist plowed into the side of my face. For a brief moment, my vision darkened then returned along with the pain, and my ear began ringing. The pain was sharp, but I’d endured far worse at this despicable man’s hands, so it’d take a whole lot more than a couple of hits to the face to break me this time.

He barely waited a few short seconds for me to suck in a shocked breath before his other fist crashed into my other cheek, whipping my head to the side and sending a spray of blood from my mouth as my lip burst open in a deep gash.

“Oh, that one worked nicely,” he murmured, taking my chin in his hand and inspecting the damage he’d just inflicted. Blood streamed down my neck from my mouth, and I spat at him.

“Now, now, none of that.” He chuckled a sick laugh, wiping my bloody spit from his face and waggling a hand at me to see. “See what I just used to bust up that pretty mouth of yours? Poetic, don’t you think?”

I sucked in a sharp breath, my gaze locking on the ring sitting just below the knuckle of his pinky finger. A large, oval-shaped sapphire set in an ornate yellow-gold band etched with what looked like runes all the way around it, it was unmistakably the ring we’d come here to steal.

“You know, when I heard from Suzette that you were coming for this piece of trash, I almost didn’t believe her. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, so I had Amelia submit it into this stupid gala in the hopes of flushing a fox out of her hole, and here you are.” He punctuated his victory speech with another punch to my face, and the ring dragged a gash open across my cheek. “Don’t worry Foxy Girl, we have all night together. May as well get business out of the way first so I can take my time and really... savor the experience.”

He hit me again, and this time I really did black out.