Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98035 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98035 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
The fear she had for Tate before he left was nothing compared to what she felt now.
Now, she was petrified.
Tiago wouldn’t have taken her unless Tate’s mission was compromised. How else would Tiago know she existed?
That left some devastating questions.
What happened to Tate? Was he still alive? Was he imprisoned within these very walls, gagged and forced to listen to her screams?
Despair crushed her heart in a suffocating vise.
She never mentioned Tate, just in case she was wrong about his connection to her kidnapping. Instead, she spent the past month telling herself he successfully rescued Lucia and escaped unscathed. If he’d bested Tiago, it made sense that Tiago would go after Tate’s loved ones in retaliation.
Of all the people in Tate’s life, she was the most vulnerable. The loner. The weakest fighter. The only woman without a companion. Of course, she would be the one to get snatched.
That must’ve been it, but she needed to know for sure.
“Tiago!” She faced the corridor and raised her voice. “I want answers, and I won’t shut up until I have them!”
The door held still.
Restlessness twitched her muscles, reaching into her bones and rattling her sanity.
She paced toward the window and halted a foot short from the glass. It was as close as the rope would allow, but the angle supplied a view of the dusty, barren landscape.
Two stories up, she couldn’t see the exterior of the building or any other structure in the vicinity. Two cars sat off to the side, where a burly man loitered, smoking a cigarette with a rifle strapped to his back. Farther out, a dirt road meandered around woody shrubs and cacti before fading into the sandy horizon of nothingness.
She didn’t know if the guards lived downstairs or somewhere else. They seemed to come and go in shifts. Five men and one woman, by her count. All heavily armed.
Her journey here had been foggy, muddied by sedatives and shrouded by a blindfold. Multiple transfers between cars, a long flight on a private plane, and more blindfolded car rides had obliterated the odds she was still in the U.S.
Venezuela was the logical assumption.
But this wasn’t Kidnap Alley.
While Tate had prepared for his mission, she saw videos, photos, and maps of the slum where he was headed. This wasn’t it. Not this arid, desolate wasteland.
She knew her friends would never stop looking for her, but how would they know to come here? She didn’t even know where she was.
Her throat closed around a hard lump of reality.
There was a good chance she would never be found.
The day she arrived, two guards brought her to this room, stripped her down, and took everything. The cheap necklace from around her neck. The fitness watch from her wrist. The ponytail holder from her hair. They stole her damn dignity.
Then they bound her arms and left her with nothing but a handmade, strapless dress thing to wear.
How long would she sit in this room before she endured the real reason she was here? Her captor wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of transporting her unless there was something in it for him.
His specialty was kidnapping. For ransom.
She learned through Tate’s intel that Tiago’s goons tortured and raped their captives, sent video footage of the brutality to family members, and demanded payment in exchange for the victim’s release.
God, how she hoped this was a ransom deal. She and her roommates had plenty of money—millions—thanks to the peace offering Van Quiso had given them. If there was a price for her freedom, her friends would pay it.
But in the month since her capture, there had been no mention of payment. No torture. No video recordings. Other than the rough handling during her transport, the guards didn’t touch her, talk to her, or visit her room.
If this wasn’t a kidnapping for ransom, it was something worse.
She didn’t have to imagine the worse. She’d lived it. In a windowless, soundproof attic, Van Quiso had whipped her into an obedient slave. An object to be sold for sex. Not to take pleasure but to give it. With her hands, her mouth, and her pain.
Her virginity had been a valuable commodity then. Maybe that was still the case?
Would Tiago sell her virtue to the highest bidder?
Or would he take it for himself?
It was her biggest fear. Her heaviest burden.
At age twenty-two, she should’ve explored her sexuality like a normal, healthy woman. But she wasn’t normal. When she escaped Van, her virginity was all she had left. A precious mercy, and she didn’t want to squander it. She longed to give it to someone she trusted. A man who would appreciate the significance.
The naive notion resonated a hollow thud in her head, silencing all other sound.
She managed to escape Van without getting raped. So what? She wasn’t stupid enough to believe that would happen again.