He betrayed me. He lied to me. And I fell in love with a man who entered my life twice, and destroyed it. Beauregard was real. That much had been answered, but finding closure with him was more damning, than I could have ever imagined. I couldn’t stand to be in his presence anymore. I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that with him there watching me like a wounded deer. An audience to my self-destruction was the last thing I needed right now. Not even Ben and Jerry’s or a fifth of whiskey could make this situation better in a calm manner. The happiness I felt coming here was now a figment of my imagination, on my road to instability and insanity.

He did this to us.

Voodoo had played me for a fool, and I fell for it. I was ashamed of myself for not seeing this for what it really was. Our relationship was a convenience where the victim fell for the manipulator, like a witless child seeking a Popsicle from a stranger.

 

I came here seeking closure, and the only things I was leaving with were a web of lies and illusions. Everything good in my life just collided and imploded right in front of me. There was no coming back from this at all.

The cool night air rushes into my lungs, as I bolt from the restaurant. Ratchet leans against the car parked just outside. His eyes are wide, when he sees me. Did he know what V did? Or should I say Beauregard? Just thinking about his admittance too duping me kills another piece of me inside. My heart shatters knowing the two men that held my heart were responsible for breaking it.

Ratchet shoves away from the car, and then everything becomes a blur. A shot rings out from behind me, and I watch as Ratchet clutches his shoulder, falling to the ground. It’s like slow motion, when I turn around. My hair flying up in the air, like a cloud wrapping around me as I spin. Three large men, one with a smoking gun drawn, stand right me behind.

I try to scream, and I try to run, but they’re on me, before I can. I feel their large hands enclosing around my body, pulling me away from Ratchet and completely away from safety.

“Ratchet,” I finally screech. He tries to stand, but the man with the gun shoves himself between us, firing again. This time the man hits Ratchet in the leg. He stumbles back, and collapses onto the sidewalk by the car in a heap.

“No!” I scream out, before a large hand clamps over my mouth, drowning out the sound of my pleas for help.

Tears streak down my face like molten lava. The man with the gun turns and faces me. His dark eyes are cold pools of evil. He shoves his gun into the waistband of his slacks, and stalks towards me.

“Good evening, Dr. Matthews. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

His mouth curves into a horrifying smile, as I feel a pinch, and I know something has been jabbed into my neck. A warm sensation drips into my veins at the injection site. I can feel my stability slipping away from me, as my legs begin to weaken underneath me. Inch by inch, my muscles seize, losing control to the unidentified drug coursing through my body. I try to speak, but my muffled voice sounds like I have my head underwater. The man in front of me sways, as my vision blurs in front of me.

“Put her in the car,” I hear a voice demand, as a cold blackness pulls me under, closing me off from the world.

Hello? My voice calls out to the empty vastness inside my head. Can anyone here me? I try to reach out, finding something to pull me back from the dark oblivion of my mind, but I realize that there’s nothing to move. I’m trapped inside of my own head, as the world continues to tick along outside of my body.

I panic, when dark thoughts begin to cross my mind.

Is this purgatory? Am I dead? Why can’t I wake up?

My internal pleas only illicit silence in return.

Just wake up. Please wake up. I scream, but there’s no one to hear it in my personal prison. I try to will my eyes to open or my limbs to move. There’s no response. I was the voice in my own head, and it wasn’t because of a split personality. The drugs had done this, and all I could do was wait for them to release me.

Hours pass. Well, what seemed like hours, when you’re left with nothing to do, but think, stew, and worry inside your own head. I had read case studies, before about coma patients who had been in a similar situation as this. They were awake, but their body wasn’t. Where one could say they had an out of body experience, mine was purely an in-body experience.

Muffled voices speak, breaking the silence. Their words are unintelligible, but I can hear them. I’m not dead. Well, for now. There was no telling what I would see or find, when I fully woke-up.

The ripple of my body stirring rushes through me. The sensation of being moved stirs me more than the voices. I can feel myself on the brink of consciousness. Fiber by fiber, my muscles begin to stir and stretch, as the drug begins to wear off. A few more minutes pass, before my eyes flutter open.

Distorted blobs of color fill my sight, and my head aches like I have a major hangover. I try to focus on my surroundings, but it’s too soon. My eyes need to adjust. The voices continue to talk, not noticing that I’m stirring. I try my eyes one more time, before shutting them again. The drugs haven’t fully released me, and if I fought, they’d notice I was awake.

“She’s been out for two days, man. How much Ketamine did you give her?” a thick accent mutters near me. His voice is low and unfamiliar.

“I didn’t exactly check the dose, Ricliss. We were exposed. I just shot her up,” a different voice replies. This one person is local without a trace of foreignness to his voice.

“The boss will kill us, if she dies,” the first voice declares.

I test moving my lips next. The small movement is met with the resistance. My tongue explores the barrier preventing them from parting, and the bitter taste of glue hits my taste buds. Tape. There’s tape on my mouth. My throat feels like sandpaper, as I try to swallow the taste of the adhesive.

“Did she just move?” the local man asks. I still. His footfalls come closer, and I can feel his gaze peering down at me, without even having to look at him through tiny slits. I count the seconds, before he finally moves away. Forty-five seconds pass, before he shuffles away from me again.

I wait unmoving, until I hear two sets of footsteps leave the room. A heavy lock clicks, as the door shuts, and my eyes fly open to assess the situation alone. The room is dark with very little light peeking in from the single barred window. Bars only mean one thing. That this isn’t exactly the first-time the people keeping me has done this. Reinforcements such as those aren’t just a fly by night addition, when the mood to hold someone prisoner strikes your fancy. This is a professional set-up, and not a good sign for my chances for escape. There’s no denying that I need to get out of wherever I am, but the chances were becoming slim to none, the more I take in my surroundings. A silent prayer slips from my lips, as I sigh in relief to find myself still fully clothed in what I wore, when they grabbed me. At least, I hadn’t been touched in my drugged state, and that was a miracle in itself.

My hands are bound behind me. My fingers stretch out and feel a rough, thick cord tied around them. I try to move my feet, but the tug on the cord around my hands pulls with the motion. They’ve bound my legs and feet together. My muscles scream with each movement I make from stiffness. If the men were telling the truth, I’d been out for two days. Far outside the normal forty-eight-hour recovery rate. My chances of being found were growing slimmer by the minute.

Had Ratchet lived or did he die? What if they went back for Voodoo? Thinking of him jolts my heart. I couldn’t think of his betrayal right now. My sole mental pursuits had to clearly focus on how to get out of here. My judgment of his actions had to wait, until I escaped. That’s if I survived long enough to do that in the first place.

The springs of a thin mattress creak under my weight. The squeaking gets even worse, when I shift my body to see more. I shuffle my feet trying to reach the edge of the bed, when the door slams open. The man who shot Ratchet stands in front of me, smiling down at me. His suit is now gone, and he has changed into a pair of worn jeans and a black shirt. I freeze in terror not knowing what to do.

“Sleeping beauty is finally awake,” he declares. His accent is thicker, than the man earlier. This man’s tones are gravelly dulcet tones. Fog still clouds my mind, but I force myself to focus on his face. His olive skin is almost perfect, and contrasts with his deep, dark eyes that resemble black holes of pain and despair centered on his face. A swatch of stubble dots his thin, angular chin. His hair is slicked back tightly against his scalp.

My worst nightmare has finally come true, and I’m helpless to stop it. The Zezza’s have me.

The man approaches me, leans down by my body, and rips away the tape from my mouth in one brisk movement. The stinging pain informs me that the adhesive pulled away my skin and small hairs with it, and it brings hot tears welling in my eyes.

He eyes the tape, before wadding it up and tossing it in his pocket like a seasoned professional. My DNA would have been on that tape along with his fingerprints. His mind was already erasing the ties between us and tying up loose ends. I knew in that moment that I wouldn’t make it out of here alive, unless someone came for me soon.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. Dr. Matthews, or should I call you Dr. Sanders?”

My face gives me away, and his demented smile broadens. His hot breath blows down on my face causing me to shiver. I peer up into his dead eyes, and it’s like looking into the face of the devil.

“Let me introduce myself, my name is Gio Zezza, but I think you probably know that already.”

“Why am I here?” my voice cracks. My throat burns with each word I force out. My throat screams for water that I know is probably not coming. Why would you give a condemned prisoner a drink, when their life was nearly at an end? The answer is you wouldn’t.

“Don’t play coy, Doctor. You know why you’re here.”

I lay silently, while my mind tries to plan its next move. His hand lazily grazes my dirty hair with his hand. He starts to speak again, before an older man walks into the door. He’s in black suit, and the air shifts around him. He was someone important to the crime family, and to Gio as well. The new man speaks in a foreign language to Gio, as they both stand over me. Gio speaks back to the man in a clipped pace. I try to listen to pick up what I can, but I don’t understand a single world. The older man looks back down to me, before turning on his heels, leaving the room.

Gio re-focuses his attention back to me. He roughly grabs my shoulders, pulling me from my forced fetal position and shifting me upright. My knees and calves scream in pain with the uncomfortable position. He releases me, before turning his back on me.

“You and I are going to have a little talk. Let’s get you a little more comfortable, shall we?”

He calls out to the hallway, and two huge giant-like men walk through the door. The only way I can describe them is if the Incredible Hulk was Italian instead of green. These were the muscle to Gio’s crazy. In another life, these two monster sized men would probably be on one of those fake wrestling shows in spandex. If they could have only gone down that career path.

“Tie her to the chair,” he orders them. A chair appears, and in a blur, my hands are released and then retied to a stiff back wooden chair. I stifle a sigh of relief, as my legs and arms stretch for the first time in a few days

Gio moves in front of me, as his men finish securing me to the chair.

“She’s all yours, boss,” the man with a foreign accent utters, as he and his partner leave the room again.

Gio’s thin lips purse, as he takes me in. I notice the glint of metal seated at his left hip. He smirks, when he realizes what has my attention. The long fingers of his hand slip to the gun, and he un-holsters it. He spins the gun in his hand, before turning the muzzle towards me. I flinch, and he looks on in joy. He knows I’m afraid, and he’s toying with me. Gio is a Grade A sociopath, and I would have known that without even having to be his captive. His mind was a dark place of death, destruction, and disease. No amount of medication or counseling could ever alter the way it ticks.

“Where’s the girl?” he orders, inching the gun closer to me.

Could it be? Does he not know Ginny’s real name? I stow a sigh of relief because Gio would be able to sense my ease. I had to play my cards the right way for as long as I can. My brother would come for me, and I had to try to keep the game going, as long as I could.

“Go to hell,” I spit back.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Dr. Sanders. That’s not how you speak to someone who has a gun on you. Didn’t you cover that at Stanford?” he sneers.

Fuck. Not only does he know my real name, but also where I went to college. That can only mean one thing. He knows about my brother, and his club.

Oh god. No, this can’t be real. No. No. No. I’ve put them all in danger.

The rescue plan I was clinging to was just pulled out from under me like a rug, if my brother was even still alive. Gio and his family could have already attacked the clubhouse for all I knew, and this was a sick fucking way to use them against me. I would not break.

“Someone just figured it all out,” he smiles, pushing the gun in his hand into my forehead and giving me a shove backwards. “I know all about you. The club your brother runs. The men in it, and even their families. You really should be more careful, Presley. Did you really go out for a nice dinner knowing we’re looking for you? Someone with your education should be much smarter than that.”

Gio paces around me, tapping the gun against my head with each rotation.

“The minute you walked into the restaurant I had you.”

“The waiter,” I croak.

“See you are smart,” he laughs, tapping the muzzle of the gun against my head several times in a row. “There’s that education coming out.”

My head drops in shame at how stupid I was to believe that I could have met Beauregard slash V, and not have been made. My mistakes have put the crosshairs on every single person involved with the club. And for what? Love that may have never been real.

“Now it’s sinking in,” he utters with a pause. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Where’s the girl?”

I remain silent. My death would not be for nothing, if I stood my ground, and protected Ginny with my last breath. In death, I would be able to save her, even if I couldn’t save myself.

“Kill me because I will never tell you where she is,” I hiss.

Gio kneels in front of me. The gun is between us, terrorizing me with every movement.

“All in good time, Doctor. All in good time.”