Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold 5)

I don’t know what the expression on his face said or if he even twitched, but they both raised their arms, and I closed my eyes, not wanting to see who was going to shoot first or where. Sure enough, there was a bang that echoed around the property, and then Sadie started gagging beside me.

“Oh, shitting shit. Shitting, shitting, shit,” she rasped, still gagging.

Opening one eye, I squinted over at where they’d been standing and saw Chantal lying half propped up by the wall and quickly closed it again. I didn’t need to see the details!

“Now, Mr. Knight, I’ve dealt with one of your problems, but I’ve also proven that I don’t give the first fuck about taking someone’s life. I’ve got two women here,” he kicked me in the ribs and slapped Sadie in the face, making us scream again, “and I reckon you’d like them back alive and breathing, am I right?”

I never understood what it meant when someone said that the silence was deafening, it just didn’t make sense, but at that moment, the silence from Parker’s end of the call was deafening.

“Mr. Knight?” Moodie called. “I’d advise you not to fuck around. When I speak, you answer. Remember when you came into my office, crying about what your wicked stepmother did to you? How she touched you in the dark, how dirty you felt, how you scrubbed your skin raw.”

Sadie’s growl echoed my own as I listened to him taunt the man I loved about something that’d dictated his life for the last seventeen years. Anyone doing something like that was a piece of shit, but witnessing it firsthand? I really wished I didn’t have to pretend I was still tied up so I could kick him in the nuts. Repeatedly. With both feet.

“What kind of sick fuck says that?” Sadie said quietly as we watched Moodie pace in front of us with a malicious smile on his face.

“Someone who takes great enjoyment out of other people’s misery.”

“I’m not going to ask you to say yes, but I’m taking it that happened to Parker, and that bitch in the corner was the one responsible.” When I shot her a look, she nodded slowly. “In that case, I’m not so upset her brain is on the wall behind her. Fucking cow!”

“Hmm, it seems you don’t understand the warning. Oh well,” Moodie sang, and this time when he looked over at us, I had the presence of mind to clench before I looked in his eyes, which was just as well because they were glazed and looked wild as he walked over to us. “Ip, dip, hot, shot,” he hummed as he swung the gun between the two of us with each word. “Which, one, gets, the—”

He never said the last word, he just fired the gun, and a bullet went through Sadie’s shin. I know that I screamed, but I’m relatively confident that hers would’ve been heard back in the UK.

“You just made a big mistake, Moodie,” a different voice said through the speaker. “A fucking huge one.”

I think he’d reached a whole new level of nuts because he was so focused on who he was talking to that he didn’t even blink when I pulled my hands out of the rope and reached out for Sadie.

“I’m going to take my shirt off and wrap it around your leg, okay? Just stay with me, babe.”

Because the blouse I’d put on today was transparent, I’d put a tank top under it, so I was able to take it off and maintain some dignity by not flashing my boobs at the psychotic asshole who was now screaming down the phone again.

“Stay with you?” Sadie stuttered, her teeth making a chattering noise. “Where the hell am I going to run to, Ari? Actually, no, how am I going to run?”

“Well, if you’d come running with me every morning like I asked you to, you’d be a whizz on the one and a half legs you’ve got available right now,” I snickered, doing my best to take her mind off the pain she was going to be in when I tightened the shirt around the wound.

“I don’t do sports bras—the devil invented those things. Who the hell wears something that squishes your fun pillows against your chest? And it’s like wrestling an alligator getting it off.”

She had a point, I hated the things as well, but they were a necessary evil when you were running.

“Better than spraining your ta-ta’s! Okay, honey, I need you to take a deep breath in, then let it out in a big, slow stream.”

As she did it, I tightened the knot in the fabric, scared about causing her pain, but knowing I had to get as much pressure on it as possible. Just as I pulled the last tug on the ends, she bit down hard on my shoulder, making me scream.