Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
He ignored me, just like the million other times. No one said shit and that drove me crazy. Not knowing why I was here or what they wanted. Well, maybe that was ending today.
He pressed the button at the bottom of the screen and it flickered a multitude of colors for a second before an image appeared.
My heart stopped.
My insides froze. It was like shards of ice stabbing me as my life tilted on its axis.
No. Fuck, no.
Alina?
My Alina. No. It was impossible.
My mind was a whirlpool of confusion and I was unable to grasp what the hell was going on. Why the fuck was Alina on the video screen? I hadn’t seen her in almost two years. Not since the note.
The fuckin’ note. A note I’d destroyed along with the pages in my journal that contained her answers to the questions and little details about her. I’d erased her. And I fuckin’ hated her.
She was dead to me. I hadn’t told Deck about her. I’d told no one because Alina Diaz was a lying, cheating bitch and no longer existed.
Until this moment.
My stomach dropped out and my heart stopped before it started again in a stampede of beats.
“What the fuck? What the fuck is this?” I yelled.
I yanked violently on the cuffs, my body swinging back and forth banging into the wall as I tried to get free. Blood trailed down my arms, my sides, and finally soaked into my pants.
“What the fuck is this? Where is she?”
Why? Jesus, why would they have her, too?
Seeing her on screen raised all the buried emotions I felt for her and they rushed back into me like a wall of bricks.
The guy leaned in front of the screen and pressed a button. Then the video played.
I froze. Staring at the screen as my mind tried to catch up with what I was seeing. The date. The date of the video was in the corner of the screen.
No.
Fuck no.
It was a week after she’d left me. A week. The video was almost two years old.
Cold dread washed over me as I watched.
Alina was on her knees sobbing uncontrollably. Her face pale, hair a mess and covering half her face with strands stuck to her wet, tear-streaked cheeks. Blood splattered her clothes as she rocked back and forth, a man’s head cradled in her lap.
She softly stroked his hair as she cried.
After a minute, she glanced up at whoever was in front of her but out of camera shot.
“Why? Why?” she choked out.
“You need to know what will happen if you ever disobey me,” a man’s voice replied.
She shook her head back and forth. “I came back. I came back.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
No, Alina.
But the pieces were coming together in my fucked-up head. The note. Why she’d left me.
Who was the asshole behind the camera? She was obviously forced to go back to him.
The man in the video laughed and it was like tires squealing. “Yes. You did. But unwillingly. And you refused my offer.”
She collapsed on top of the dead man, her body violently shaking. “Oh, God, Juan. Juan.”
Fuck, it was her brother. The dead body she cradled in her lap was her brother. She’d left me to go to this man because he’d had her brother.
The man off camera said, “You ever try and leave me, there will be severe consequences, Catalina.”
My blood boiled and I curled my fingers into my palms.
She lifted her head. Her lower lip trembled and her voice quivered as she said the words. “I won’t. I swear. I won’t. Please leave my mother alone.”
No fuckin’ way. This couldn’t be happening.
Then all hell broke loose and I lost it.
“Alina! Jesus,” I shouted.
The ring I was cuffed to clinked against the cement as I flailed back and forth. I knew better than to fight. It only gave them pleasure and made shit worse for me. There was no escape or winning here. I won by being calm. By zoning out.
But zoning out failed me as the video played then stopped and started from the beginning again. I tore at the chains that locked me to the wall.
Her sobs broke through my rage and I stopped. Breathing harsh and ragged as my eyes darted to the screen again.
Crushed. It was like my insides were in a garbage disposal, spinning around and around, the blades chopping me up into tiny mashed-up segments.
Whoever these people were, they’d had her since she left me. I’d gone and done my training with JTF2, done missions and all that time I’d hated her while she was the prisoner of a psycho.
Why? What the hell was going on?
I swallowed the bile as it threatened to rise. Everything inside me was a war of emotions as the video on the screen blared in my head.
“You bastards.” I had no other words as the pain ripped through me. Not the physical pain, I could handle that. This was worse. So much worse.