“Avery, stop,” Joshua snaps. He pushes me into the wall of the narrow corridor that leads to our private Capulet elevator, the security guards still a tight circle around us. But nobody interferes. They’re like a wall of muscle separating us from the rest of the world, human shields, but none of them are going to tell Joshua not to manhandle me to shut me up.
“Is he okay?” I gasp, my entire body ice-cold. “Is he dead?”
I’m still fighting Joshua’s grip, his fingernails digging into me.
“Hey!” Joshua yells, shaking me hard enough that there'll be bruises on my arms tomorrow. “He’s not dead, but you might be if you don’t stop fighting me. Look at me, damnit!"
And then his hands are holding my jaw, his grip unforgiving. He forces me to look up at him, tilts my chin up and forces me to stay like that while he speaks fevered words to me.
“Someone just put a bullet in your father, who do you think they’ll be aiming for next?” he snaps, looking out of his mind with worry. He lets go of me, stepping back and running a hand through his hair absently. “You stupid girl. Do you want to get shot, too?”
I do not want to get shot.
“Do you?” he presses.
I shake my head, thankful for the slap for pulling me out of my daze. “No.”
He points down the hall. “Then get in the goddamn elevator.”
I push off the wall, teetering on trembling legs. Joshua reaches out to steady me, and this time, I don’t try to push him away. It might be a small victory that he’s won over me already, but I don’t think he’s keeping score right now. His smarmy mask has slipped off, and his singular focus right now is getting both of us to safety.
Which, as terrible as it seems, is actually kind of a comfort. Because I don’t need anyone as much as my father needs to be surrounded by family members. Enzo and Nathan being with him, and Jennifer nearby, gives me a great measure of comfort that if he dies, he won’t die alone. I hope they’re holding his hand. I hope someone is comforting him and whispering in his ear that everything will be okay, that help is coming. These are the thoughts crawling around in my panicked mind like half-trampled cockroaches as Joshua and I stand in the middle of a tight circle of security guards, in an elevator large enough for the comfort of only one or two people, but weight-capable of many more, designed for situations just like this. I know the drill. Much the same way as school children are taught to clamber into bathrooms and under desks in the event of an emergency, so have I been taught what to do in situations such as this. I know before the doors open that we will be on the ground floor, in the loading dock. I know that there will be a car waiting to whisk us away, more security guards, the city’s traffic on lockdown from the moment the alarm is raised to allow us a quick exit.
The doors open, and two of the security guards leave the lift, moving forward into the dark loading area, guns drawn. There is a sleek black limousine sitting in the middle of the otherwise empty loading area, a standard security inclusion for events such as tonight’s. The guards motion for us to come out, and that’s when the shit really hits the fan. As soon as all of us are out of the lift and its doors are closed, a man steps out of the shadows, seemingly from nowhere, a balaclava covering his face. He raises his arm, a series of muted pops followed swiftly by the security guards dropping like flies. Joshua pulls me in to him protectively — such a stand-up guy — his eyes bugging out as the balaclava-wearing assassin steps forward, yanking me away as he presses a taser into the crook of Joshua’s neck.
My fiancé goes down like a sack of shit, his entire body spasming as he lands unceremoniously at my feet.
Fuck! In the space of less than ten seconds, this guy has picked off six security guards who are ex-marines and highly trained mercenaries, and not one of them is moving. How is this happening? I back up, turning to run for the lift, but I don’t find the smooth metal of the lift doors that I’m expecting. Instead, I smack straight into a hard chest. There are two of them. That’s how they shot everyone so fast. Leather-gloved hands wrap around my wrists, bile burning in my throat as I tip my head back, looking up at this faceless man, taking in any identifying detail that I can find on my second assassin — who, ironically, is dressed exactly the same as the first one. Black clothes, black balaclavas, black leather gloves, black motorcycle boots. This man — or his accomplice — could literally be my own father and I wouldn’t be able to tell. Except, I know it’s not my father, because my father is bleeding to death on the roof of the building.
“Please,” I beg, the weight of my mortality like an anchor dragging me underwater. It’s all-consuming, this despair, the way I can’t stop my entire body from shaking with terror, the pain from the hands squeezing my wrists to breaking point. He spins me in his arms, too easily, so that my back is against his chest. He’s a whole head taller than me and then some, and his chin digs into the top of my scalp so I can’t even turn my head.
The first guy — the one I saw when the guards started toppling like dominoes — lunges forward, his gun nowhere to be seen. The one behind me pushes me forward roughly, and the one in front shoves something over my face. It’s a black bag, that feels like rough calico, and smells like pennies and leather. I open my mouth to scream, but the noise morphs into a strangled howl as something sharp stabs into the top of my arm. My suspicion that I’ve been injected with something is confirmed when a searing pain spreads across my bicep and down my arm, making my fingers go numb.
Jesus. What did they give me? It fucking hurts. Whatever it is, I don’t have too long to contemplate it’s origins, because the world outside my covered face goes quiet, sounds zooming in and out of my consciousness, my limbs softening like butter left out in the sun, until it’s as if someone has simply switched me off and sent me into a black, endless void.
Chapter Nine
AVERY
I slowly come to, and then I’m awake all at once. Awake, alone, and completely blind.
Is the bag still over my head? I wriggle around a little, trying to figure out where I am, where my limbs have gone, why I’m so slow to piece together my thoughts.
Drugs. I remember the sharp pain of a needle jabbing in to my arm, the burn that spread through my veins once whatever I was injected with began to move through my body like wildfire.
Somebody gave me something.
It knocked me the fuck out. Everything buzzed, and then shorted out. I have no idea how long I’ve been unconscious. Where was I? What was I doing? What was being done to me?
My thoughts are soggy, heavy, weighted down by the drugs. I tug at my arms again. Where are my goddamn arms? More feeling comes to me, in tiny increments.
I’m on a chair.
Wait. I’m tied to the chair.
I try to twist my wrists out of whatever bindings they’re in, and I feel the tiny hairs on my arms protest.
Tape. Whoever it was used tape.
Where are my legs? I can’t feel them. There’s only a numb buzz below my waist. I concentrate as much as I can through my haze, straining at the same time to hear anything that might indicate where I am, and if there’s anyone else near me.
Where. Am I?
Then it comes rushing in, like ice water has been poured over me. They shot my father. A single gunshot that cracked everything apart. My father, in his tuxedo, dropping his whiskey on hard tiles, the glass exploding at his feet as blood blossomed across his white dress shirt. His trajectory into the pool, the heavy splash of his dead weight as five hundred people in ballgowns and designer suits screamed and scattered, nobody wanting to be gunshot victim number two. My desire to jump into the water after my uncle, to help him save my dad. The hands that clamped around my arms hard enough to cause bruises, as Joshua and my own personal security team whisked me away, to supposed safety, and straight into a trap.
Somebody shot my father just so they could take me. As a diversion. And they didn’t fuck around. I saw where they shot him — right in the middle of his chest.
Is
he even alive to know that I’ve been stolen away?
“What do you want?” I finally ask the darkness that presses against every edge of me. My throat hurts when I speak, thirst piercing my voice and turning it into a rasp. How long have I been here?
Where is here?
My blindfold is thick, but soft, like silk. Maybe several layers of silk.
“My family will pay whatever ransom you want,” I say.
“Just tell them what you want. They’ll give it to you.”
I don’t even know if there is anyone with me.
Anyone watching me.
I could be buried alive, or in somebody’s attic, or in my own fucking house. I can’t see. I don’t know.
Fear continues to drip into my veins like poison. Behind the fear, the remains of my Capulet pride: Who on earth would be stupid enough to take Augustus Capulet’s daughter from him?
“Listen,” I say, trying to be convincing, which is hard when I’m tied to a chair, my wrists and ankles secured with what feels like duct tape, the blindfold tied tight around my face. “Just tell me—”
What feels like a large, rough palm smacks me so hard, I feel my lip split, taste the copper of fresh blood on my mouth. I let out a wail. I’ve never been so terrified in my life — I was so sure that I was talking to thin air. How long has this person been in front of me, waiting for me to wake up?
My mind struggles to catch up, to do something— but before I can think, before I can construct the perfect argument to let me go, my blindfold is ripped off, and in the same breath, shoved into my mouth. A makeshift gag that makes me retch. I swallow down the urge to vomit, the material in my mouth an invasion, an assault on my senses. My eyes are twin orbs of lancing pain at the sudden weak light that hits them, as I try to decipher my surroundings now that I have sight. The gag irritates my throat, and I try to push it out with my tongue, but it doesn’t budge.
Fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. I forget about the gag as my eyes focus on the figure in front of me. He’s tall, over six feet, dressed entirely in black, the same black ski mask from earlier over his head. He’s wearing plastic surgical gloves now, the leather ones nowhere to be seen — to keep his DNA from getting on me, or in preparation to chop me into little pieces?
I glance down at myself. The bottom half of my dress is gone, the puffy gauze skirt a remnant of a night long left behind. It sits in a heap of tulle in one corner of this room I’m in, which I can now see is about the size of a large bedroom, the floor made of rough concrete. I can see a thin mattress against one wall of the room, a small dining table on the other. There’s a large, horizontal mirror that takes up almost one entire wall of the room, and beside it, a metal door that looks thick and heavy. That’s my escape route, I think, filing that information away for another time. I steal little glances around, trying to learn as much as I can about where I am, but at the same time never taking my attention away from the man in front of me.
The room is lit only by a single blue lamp on a table in the corner, the shadows in here long and menacing against the blank, grey cement walls. My captor reaches for something on the table, and I crane my neck to see what he’s holding.
A knife.
I start to hyperventilate, which is kind of fucking hard to do when you only have your nose to breathe through. He brings the knife up to my belly and rests it right between my breasts, still wrapped in the top half of the dress that I was sewn into just hours ago. Or was it longer than just a few hours ago? How long have I been down here?
It can’t have been that long, I think. My bladder is uncomfortably full, but not painful, yet — so it can’t have been more than a few hours that I’ve been here. I’ve not used a toilet that I can remember, and my underwear doesn’t feel wet. So by those calculations, it’s probably the early hours of the morning.
I recoil, squeezing my eyes shut as balaclava guy cuts my dress corset clear down the middle, yanking the material away from my body with a desperation that almost borders on hunger. My breasts bounce free from the once-tight material, my nipples immediately stiffening to hard peaks against the bitter chill in this tiny room. The dress corset had a bra built into it, so cutting it away leaves me naked from the waist up. All I have on now are my plain flesh-colored panties, seamless at the edges so that my dress sat properly, without a panty line. Even those are taken from me, the knife nicking the material at each of my hips so that the material falls away. My legs are parted slightly on the chair, and the cold air reaches inside my thighs, pulling a painful sigh from me that nobody will ever hear. My knees are shaking so badly against the cold, it’s a wonder I don’t make the chair topple onto its side, and me with it.
I wince as my captor places something cold on my bare thigh. The knife. I protest through the gag in my mouth, nothing but a garbled, muted noise filtering through the material. I’m naked, I’m begging, I’m shaking, I’m fucking sobbing, but he doesn’t pay my pleas the slightest bit of attention. My eyes go big and round as I watch him take that knife and press it into the flesh of my inner thigh. The pain is so hot, so acidic, that vomit rushes up my throat. I choke it back down with great difficulty, my nose burning with the sudden rush of bile that would have probably poured out of my nose if I hadn’t swallowed it back down. I stare at the burgeoning wound being sawn into my thigh, as if I’m a patient who’s just sat up in the middle of a major surgery and seen inside herself.
There is a major artery that runs through the inside of the thigh. I remember from biology class. What’s it called? If he hits it, I could bleed out in minutes.
Just hours ago, I was joking about how being married off was a fate worse than death. But I didn’t really mean those words, because I’d do anything to stop the slow, methodical slice of the knife’s teeth against my skin. I scream as my skin splits open, the knife impossibly sharp, my skin impossibly fragile. I stare down at the spot on my own body where a neat red line appears, and then starts to spill out like the water that gushes over the edge of a waterfall. There is so much blood. I’ve seen plenty of blood spilled in my short life — a by-product of my family name — but I’ve never been so intimately acquainted with my own blood as it pulses from my body. I’m unbearably cold, my teeth chattering. I have no idea if it’s actually cold in here or if it’s because I’m losing so much blood, so quickly, but either way, I’m so cold that every bit of exposed skin on my body breaks out in gooseflesh.
My captor dips a finger into my blood and brings it up to my chest. I’m folding forward, straining to see what he’s doing to my thigh, and so he takes a fistful of my hair and yanks, making me sit straighter in the chair. I shiver as the air in the room turns colder, my exposed nipples tightening painfully, or perhaps it’s me that is growing colder, as I swiftly lose blood.
Fingers paint letters between my breasts, a macabre action that reminds me of the crude paintings a small child would create with their hands and brightly colored paint. My faceless captor takes blood from my thigh wound several more times before he steps back, apparently satisfied, and it’s only then that I can see what he’s written on me.
Two letters. XO.
I blink in confusion as I stare at the two letters, my chin against my chest as I try to make them say something — anything — else. Everybody knows the XO killer doesn’t have any surviving victims. He only leaves death in his wake, naked and scrubbed clean and with a neat calling card painted on his victims' chests.
XO.
It’s so obvious now. He doesn’t want a ransom. He wants my terror. He wants my life.
This silent psycho circles behind me, hands in my hair again, and then lower, exploring my face, my neck, pinching a nipple hard enough to make me yelp. He pulls my hair, forcing my head back and to the side, at the perfect height to grind his erection into my cheek. Under his black pants, he’s as hard as the steel the knife is forged from. I start to cry. He’s going to hurt me.
He’s going to murder me.
I raise my eyes to look at him agai
n, in time to see him place the knife on the ground at his feet. My captor comes at me, crouching in front of me, placing his gloved hands on my knees and pushing them wider. Without the pressure of my other thigh, my wound bleeds faster, more urgently, as I struggle to get enough air through my nose. He takes one glove off, making a show of trailing the limp plastic across my skin, throwing it to the ground as he aims his index finger toward my vagina and pushes in. I groan through my gag in protest, the breach of my most private place horrific, his finger large and rough and trying to push somewhere with zero lubrication. I tighten up every muscle involuntarily, wanting to keep him out, wanting to fold in on myself and die right here before he can molest me any more.
The resistance frustrates him, I can tell. He stops trying to finger-fuck an unwilling orifice and turns his attention back to my thigh. He pushes his fingers into the cut he’s made in my thigh, and a muffled groan tries to fight its way through my gag. Sharp white pain rings clear all around me as the damaged nerves in my leg scream for mercy. He uses his blood-slicked fingers to breach me again, and this time, he finds purchase. I’m impossibly tight down there, from fear and my body’s desire to expel the painful intrusion, but all that does is tighten my walls around his finger as he pushes and pulls, in and out. His thumb finds my clitoris, nothing more than the gentlest brush over it’s protective hood, but the motion causes my entire body to jump in response. He tips his head to the side, cupping my ass in his palm as he pulls me forward in the seat.
I scream again; but really, what’s the use? Nobody will hear me. Nobody will help me. How would they? My ass is now right on the edge of the chair, the position causing the back of the chair to dig into the exact spot in my spine where I laid against the hard edge of the mausoleum alter less than twenty-four hours ago while Will drove himself inside me. Was that a different life? It feels so far away, so hard to grab onto the memory, but with every bite of the chair’s hard edge into my back, the memory of being with Will sharpens.