Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
He was handsome in the way that evil men could be. Tall, thin, with dark hair and reasonably decent bone structure.
But the eyes, the eyes always gave his kind away.
No light.
No soul.
Just inky voids.
I felt a shiver move through me.
“You know who I am,” he said. And since I couldn’t talk, I shook my head. “No?” he asked, head cocking to the side. “Maybe not my face, but you know of me. In fact, you just very rudely turned down my very generous deal.”
I’d only turned down one ‘very generous’ deal recently.
This time, the shiver was down to my bones, down to my soul.
Because he was right. I did know who he was.
Cain Roth.
The most disgusting monster I had ever come across professionally.
I was suddenly acutely aware of where I was too.
In Cain Roth’s notorious dungeon.
And all those rooms I’d passed on the way to mine? That was where he kept the girls. The ones he and his clients would torture for fun, would film it to sell it to other sick bastards to watch and get secondhand satisfaction from.
The bile rose up my throat again, making me focus enough to swallow it back.
“Good. I can see you do know who I am. I think we can take the gag off now,” he called, and the man who’d brought me down here came back, kneeling in front of me, grabbing the tape, and ripping it off with a swift, vicious move.
He wanted a reaction.
So I forced my lips to stay closed, to fight back the sound of pain that tried to break free. I glared at him instead, memorizing his features, swearing to one day make him pay for this.
How, I didn’t know.
But he would live to regret this someday, I promised myself that, and I promised it to him with my eyes.
He backed away, walked back out of the room, seeming to know his boss’s wishes without them being spoken.
“Gags are for when you’re afraid someone can hear the screaming,” Cain said, waving both of his hands out, indicating the thick cinder block walls buried many feet under the ground. In fact, upon closer inspection, the ceilings felt taller than usual for a basement. Ten feet, maybe?
Cain Roth had created a whole underground world to hide his sins.
“If you’re looking for a woman to scream, you picked the wrong one,” I said, lifting my chin, keeping my gaze on his, refusing to seem weak or scared. Even if the fear had burrowed into my bones, become one with my marrow, with my very DNA. I would be forever changed because of it.
“Perhaps, or perhaps not. That remains to be seen.”
“What do you want, Cain?” I asked, seeming to know by the way his men kowtowed to him and his ridiculously self-important designer suit, that he probably expected to be called Mr. Roth.
Like hell.
Men like him didn’t deserve respect.
And men who got off on women’s pain would likely feel a little more off-kilter when met with defiance from one who showed no outward signs of fear toward him.
“I want my gun,” he said.
“Tough shit,” I said, getting raised brows out of him.
“That’s a lot of bravado from a woman chained in my basement.”
I chose not to tell him that I wasn’t chained, that his tape was even slipping by the moment.
“You can’t make me design your gun,” I’d told him.
“Oh, my dear, that is where you are very wrong. But perhaps you need some time to think on it.”
With that, he left, closing the door, and I heard the locks click into place.
In this dungeon, I had no delusions about being able to get out of that door. Many, many women had likely already tried.
But he would come back. That door would open. There would be a way to leave.
I yanked out of my binds and waited.
I’d been very, very sure of things in the hours following my abduction.
Sure of my determination not to make the gun.
Sure of my own resolve.
The thing was, Cain Roth did give me time to think on it.
Five days, in fact.
No food.
Just a bottle of water I found that I had to ration, feeling my lips growing more and more chapped with each passing day as the dehydration set in. Not enough to kill me, just enough to make me feel really miserable.
There was no bed in the room, just the unyielding cement floor.
There was no shower, but there was one of those toilets in prisons. With the sink on top. Only mine didn’t have any water in the tap.
I might have worked at prying the damn thing apart to get to the water in the back tank. It was clean water. It worked in an emergency.
But I was so overcome with the hunger that I could barely think, let alone act on my thirst.
The hunger grew with each passing day until it felt like the pain was consuming me from the inside out as I could do nothing but rock on the hard floor, holding my stomach.