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I have no idea how long we’re on the road, but it feels like an eternity. Gravel crunches underneath tires moments before the vehicle rolls to a stop, the trunk opens, and I’m hauled out to my feet. I expect to see an empty field where this awful man plans to bury me, but instead, there’s a two-story brick house surrounded by woods.
“Move it.” The stranger drags me by my bound wrists toward the front. He keys a code into an access pad, then pushes me through the open door and into the haze of cigarette smoke lingering in the air.
My stomach kinks and knots as he leads me deeper into the house. I’m in a house, in God knows where. I’ve watched enough crime documentaries to know this never ends well.
I’m shoved through a doorway at the end of a hall with such force that I fall to my knees in front of a large desk.
“What the fuck is that, Rich?”
The most imposing guy I’ve ever seen sits behind the desk, jaw ticcing. His palms land over the paperwork on the worktop as he slowly pushes out of his chair. My gaze traces the inkwork on his muscular arms. They disappear under the sleeves of his T-shirt only to creep out of the collar and continue along his neck. Everything about him is unrefined and lethal, a jarring contrast to the elegant lines of his face, but his brutal beauty is quickly overshadowed by the coldness and anger seeping from him.
“He didn’t have the money,” Rich says. “Kid gave her as collateral.”
A slight snarl sets on the beautiful man's lips as his gaze moves from Rich to me, like I’ve personally offended him with my forced captivity. “You took a person—a girl—as collateral?” Seconds tick by, his anger growing like a living, breathing thing. “Get out, Rich.”
Without another word, Rich retreats, the door clicking shut with a heavy finality.
And then I’m alone—bound and gagged—with the scariest guy I’ve ever seen.
3
Jude
Bound and gagged—Rich brought a blond girl, in a Vanderbilt University T-shirt, into my office, bound and gagged, like this is a damn prison. Collateral is a car or Rolex, a fucking Van Gogh, not a woman. My gaze drifts over the curves the shirt does little to hide.
I need a drink to handle this shit right here.
Her nervous gaze tracks my movements as I reach for the whiskey and pour myself a glass, then down it. She backs away from me when I move around my desk. Fear filling her steel-blue eyes. When I take her by the shoulders to spin her around, she lets out a muffled scream from behind the gag.
“Do you want to keep this stupid thing on?” I ask, tugging on the knotted material until it falls to the floor.
On a shaky breath, she glances over her shoulder, and the first thing I notice is her swollen, bloodied lip. My jaw tenses. God, I’m gonna kill Rich for this.
“Please. Let me go.” Jesus Christ, she sounds like the Queen of England. Rich hasn’t just kidnapped a girl; he’s kidnapped a foreigner. Incredible—he’s moving me right on into international crime. I’m going to need to down the entire bottle at this point.
I move back to my desk to pour another drink. “It’s not that easy...”
“Your guy took me against my will. This has nothing to do with me.”
“Unfortunately, doll, it now has everything to do with you.”
“Please…” Her voice trembles. “Just let me go. This is a misunderstanding. ”
It’s a misunderstanding, all right… I down my drink and give her a hard once over. It’s impossible to ignore that she has some damn good curves. I can imagine when her tangled hair is combed out, it’s the kind of hair I’d have a hard time not fisting, and those lips, those are the kind of lips that serve one hell of a purpose.
Pretty girl. Really pretty girl—and young.
She can’t be much over twenty-one. A college kid. She has no business here, and while what’s done is done, it doesn’t stop heavy guilt from attempting to crawl up my throat.
But she’s seen my face. She’s at my house. I let her go now, and she and that shithead boyfriend of hers could run to the cops. A plume of anger ignites in my chest at the thought that may have been that little bastard’s plan—hand his darling little girlfriend over as collateral and hope the cops would get me for kidnapping before I come back for the twenty-grand he still owes.
“Don’t take it personally or anything, doll. It’s just business.” I pour another drink because fuck my life, those lips. “You play nice, your boyfriend pays up, and I’ll let you go unharmed.” I figure I’ll leave out the part of having to threaten them both within an inch of their lives for later.