“Good evening,” I whispered. “Please, where’s Mr Grant? I’m waiting to speak with him.”
I thought Brandon’s laugh was cold and sterile, but the laugh that came out of this stranger’s mouth was enough to make me scared.
“Mr Grant won’t be around for any further conversation,” he told me. “Your sixty days are about to take a substantially different turn.”
I couldn’t help myself staring up at him with wide eyes.
His were icy. Calculated. Hard without even a sliver of raw soul behind the cold.
“Please, sir,” I said on instinct. “Please, sir, I don’t understand…”
“Oh, you will understand, little one,” he told me. “You’ll understand perfectly clearly soon enough.”
He held out a hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to take hold of it.
His fingers beckoned, demanding mine. “Come on now, Miss Emmerson. I’m taking over your contract from here on in, the rest of your sixty days belong with me. The more willingly you come along with me, the easier you’ll find the process.”
“But I…” I began. “But I thought…”
“Let me introduce myself,” he offered, but I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to know him at all. “I’m Brandon Grant’s business partner, and as far as you’re concerned, I’m the only one who now matters until your contract is done.”
I wasn’t expecting his nod to the figures at the side of me. I wasn’t expecting two of them to lunge forward and take hold of me under the armpits. I wasn’t expecting them to sweep me up and onto my trembling legs.
He reached out and trailed his fingers over my nipples as they held me there and I couldn’t stop the sobbing tears.
“Please let me go,” I said but the man just laughed at me.
“Get her out of here,” he said and the two of them half dragged me out the door.
“Please, let me see him!” I cried out to the main man over my shoulder. “Please, let me talk to Mr Grant just once before I go!”
The stairs went quickly. My feet barely touched the steps as they took me down. And there, at the bottom, were the regular men I’d seen in this place.
I called out to the one I recognised. The one who looked a little too much like Brandon to ignore.
“Please!” I cried. “Please get Brandon for me!”
It was only when he turned his face to the side that I saw the blood running down from his temple. And then I screamed. Oh hell, how I screamed, but it didn’t make the slightest difference.
I was carried outside into the cold night and shoved into a blacked out vehicle before I could muster my senses.
I was alone in the backseat, a blacked-out glass panel separating me from the driver.
Alone. I was alone.
Alone and terrified.
The car rumbled at speed down the driveway as I slapped hard against the windows, glaring out frantically at the convoy of vehicles behind us as the huge house disappeared out of sight.
Please, no. Please, God, no.
The buzz of the intercom sounded loud and clear as we made it out onto the open road, but my cries were rife and frantic. Heart pounding hard.
“Welcome to a whole new world of sixty days,” the voice said from behind the glass screen. “I’d save up your tears for later if I were you, we have a whole host of purchasers who’ve paid serious money for them.”
That laugh again, so cruel. So horribly cruel.
And there was no way in this world I could save up a single one of them.Chapter Thirty-TwoBrandonThe car tyres screeched on the drive as I came to a stop. My soul was buzzing, flying high, flying crazy with my need to share the three magic fucking words to the girl who’d defied every scrap of my common sense and snared them.
I didn’t bother locking the car as I piled out, just raced my way up to the front porch and burst my way inside with a stupid grin on my face.
And that’s when I saw the carnage.
The utter fucking carnage of the scene before me.
Eric was slumped down in the main hallway, with a towel pressed tight to his temple. A few of the security detail were hunched over desks in the office, my breath catching hard in my chest as I registered the damage.
No.
No.
No fucking way.
I threw myself down next to Eric, my hand crushing his shoulder and rousing him to some semblance of consciousness.
“Where is she?!” I asked. “Where the fuck is she?!”
“Drake,” he croaked. “You should have checked the fucking messages, Bran. Why the fuck didn’t you check the fucking messages?!”
Sickness lurched from my gut. I retched up nothing, struggling to catch myself as the full weight of the implication hit home.
“He came here?! Drake came here?!”
Eric’s eyes struggled to focus on mine, and I felt guilt as well as terror. “Yeah, he came here. Of course he came fucking here! She’s worth too fucking much for him not to!”