Until Fools Find Gold (Providence Gold 1)

“Which one of you fuckers was meant to be watching her?”

For four big guys who had just carried out some highly illegal atrocities on his piece of shit stepfather, we all swallowed audibly at the question. Then, they all pointed at me and walked toward the helicopter.

“That would be her husband,” my asshole of a brother muttered as he sped up and almost pushed Archer out of the way.

I’m not sure what part of the information he was talking about, but when he grabbed me by the beard and yanked me toward him and growled, “You’re a dead man!” I did the only thing I could– I put him in his fucking place.

Causing him pain would only hurt Luna when she found out, and no way would I ever do that.

“My wife, your sister, is being held somewhere where the piece of shit intends to offer her up as an incentive for his clientele to use his available pussy. Once he’s done, the next pimp will be doing the same– in Mexico. Once he’s done, the last dick on the IOU list is…”

“Let’s go,” he snapped, letting go of me and looking even more pale than normal. There was no doubting the rage in his eyes or the stiff set of his shoulders as he stalked to where the others were waiting for us.

Madix had been known to lose his shit hugely when it came to his little sister. He was well known for breaking bones and making no apologies for it if some asshole loser hurt his sister. Well, only the male ones. He was soft as shit when it came to women.

For the guys that he didn’t use his fists on, all he had to do was glare at them and they ran screaming.

At six-foot-eight inches tall, with an olive complexion unlike his sister’s, and eyes that were such a dark gray that they look almost black– unless he was what Luna called ‘super pissed’ and then they went lighter like the color of steel - he was like a bear. He’d filled out even more in the time since I’d last seen him too which made him look even more savage.

No, I couldn’t say it was a bad thing at all to have him along for the ride.

Apart from the fact that his eyes were now the color of the ‘super pissed’ variety– and they were pointed at me.16 LunaSomething was happening. It had started five minutes ago–the normally quiet house suddenly had sounds.

Above me, the ceiling creaked, and I heard the faint sound of a door slamming further away from my room. That was followed by the sounds of feet moving quickly in my direction.

Just as I was processing the noises, the door swung open and the man who I’d seen before, Mr. Monopoly, walked into the room holding a big plastic bag.

Without a word he walked over to me, grabbed my hand and started dragging me quickly behind him down the hallway. At the very end, was a white door that hadn’t been visible from my previous five second journey from my original cell to my bigger cell. My feet were screaming at me with every step, but the guy had a scarily good grip in his hands as he dragged me toward it.

Flinging open the door, I saw a closet with a bar hanging at the top. It wasn’t a sinister-looking place seeing as how the bar was probably to hang clothes on, but it was small and dark… nothing good was coming from this.

Grabbing my hand, he cuffed it and swung the chain between the cuffs over the bar before swiftly attaching my other hand so that I was being held up by the rail above me.

In weeks to come, I’d kick myself for not putting up a fight, not making it more difficult for him to do what he did, but at that moment I didn’t have a clue what was happening. For a big guy, he moved quickly. Plus, taking a hit to the head that is hard enough to fuck up your jaw kind of scrambles your brain– or so I was later told.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” he said, very matter-of-factly, like he wasn’t about to do what he did. “I was looking forward to our time together,” he continued, sounding almost like he was being inconvenienced.

The way I was cuffed had me facing the back of the closet, and my main concern at that moment was him closing the door and leaving me in a tiny pitch-black room. In fact, I’d already started sweating and my heart was about to beat out of my chest with the panic.

I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

I wouldn’t be able to see.

I wouldn’t be able to scream to let people know where I was if a miracle happened and someone passed by wherever we were.