Buttons and Lace (Buttons 1)

I didn’t think twice about it. This man was there to save me. He’d been watching me at the opera to get intel on my captor. He worked for the Italian authorities. Or maybe he was CIA. I didn’t care. He was getting me the hell out of there, and that’s all that mattered.

I came to his side, and he grabbed my hand. It felt so good to be touched in a normal way, not to be sexualized or forced. It was a hand of aid. He was there to help me, to set me free.

I wanted to cry.

He peeked over the table until the coast was clear. “Alright. Let’s move.” He dragged me with him, his gun held at the ready if he needed to take someone out. Most of Bones’s men had been exterminated, but the man was still in a rush to get out of there.

We left from the side of the house, and he opened the back door of an SUV. “Get in.”

I jumped inside and kept the tears back. I was going home. I was returning to Jacob. I was returning to my friends. Everything was going to be okay. Living with that fiend was torture, but I somehow made it through.

“Step on it,” he ordered.

The driver took off and headed to the street. With a quick turn, he skidded onto the road and hit the gas.

Bones’s house was no longer in sight. It was gone from my vision, just a distant and painful memory. I could breathe again. Never again would I have that disgusting thing on top of me. Never again would I have to take his cock in my mouth. I was a free woman again.

I was free.

“Thank you so much.” I was so happy I leaned over and hugged my savior. He was brave for breaking in to that home just to save me. That type of heroism was rare. I appreciated it more than words could say.

“Get the fuck off me.” He shoved me aside, repulsed by my touch.

“Sorry...” I didn’t mean to piss off the guy who just risked his neck for mine.

“Don’t thank me.”

At least he was humble. “You saved me. How can I not thank you?”

He pulled a pair of cuffs from his back pocket and clamped them on my wrists instantly. “I didn’t save you.”

Panic erupted in my heart all over again. I stared at the metal on my hands, unable to understand what I was looking at. What the hell was happening?

“You just left one monster to be with another.”

I tried to slip them off my wrists using my own sweat. I started to scream, hyperventilating. What the fuck was going on? Why did people keep treating me like a mule? Why did people think they had a right to do what they wanted with me? “Let me go now.” I kicked his leg as hard as I could. “I’ll break your dick the first chance I get.”

He pulled a syringe out of his pocket and pulled off the cap with his teeth.

No. I hated being drugged. I hated not knowing what was happening to me. I hated losing all sense of control. “Stop. Stop.” I shifted away against the opposite window. “I’ll be quiet. Just don’t put that in me.”

He put the cap back on and shoved it into his pocket. “Make a sound, and you get the syringe.” He stared out the window with relaxed shoulders. After all the mayhem at the house, he seemed bored.

First, he warned me about Bones, but then he broke me out to keep me himself. How did these criminals get away with this? I had so many questions, but I couldn’t ask any of them, not without fear of the needle going in my neck.

I looked out the window and tried to remain calm. Tears burned the back of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. This man couldn’t be worse than the man I just left. It wasn’t possible. Wherever I was going would be better than the place I came from.

I just had to keep telling myself that.

And try to believe it.

Chapter Fifteen

Crow

She thought she’d been saved.

Idiot.

She thought Bones was bad? Wait until she spent some quality time with Cane and me. We would show her what a true nightmare was. We would show her what evil looked like in its purest form.

She’d probably change her mind about the syringe.

She stayed on her side of the car and didn’t make a sound, quiet as a mouse. Her handcuffed wrists rested on her legs, and her eyes were focused out the window. Slight tremors shook her body. She was scared but trying to hide it.

If she thought she was scared now, she was in for a surprise.

We arrived at the base an hour later and pulled into the compound where prying eyes couldn’t follow us. We’d hit Bones and his men hard. They were too disoriented to come after us. Most of his on-site men were killed, so he’d have to call for more backup.