Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men 9)

“There she is,” he cooed approvingly. “Time to wake up now, Chocolate Tits. We got some justice to serve.”

Chocolate Tits?

I lifted my face, squinting until the flashlight moved away from my face, and I could make out the man’s silhouette. He crouched down onto his haunches, and the shadows shifted just enough to reveal the side of his face, along with a teardrop tattoo dripping down from the corner of his eye.

I gasped, my mouth falling open.

But what the hell? I thought he was in jail. The officers had said he was being arrested after he’d gotten into that fight with Colton. How had he gotten out? How had he found me? And why in God’s name had he kidnapped me?

“Remember me, do you?” he asked, resting his forearms on his knees so that his wrists dangled between them, one of his hands holding what looked like a knife.

My gaze shifted back and forth between his face where a cynical sneer contorted his features and that knife swaying lazily from his fingers.

He smirked when I didn’t answer him. “Yeah, you remember me.” Tilting his head to the side as he continued to watch me, he added, “Bet you’re wondering why I took you, huh? Probably think it’s payback for the way you and your boyfriend got me arrested. But no. That’s not it. That’s not it at all.” Then he chuckled. “Okay, maybe it is a little.”

He stood up again and spread his arms wide. “You probably can’t see it from down there, but all this land around me here is my family homestead. We owned the biggest damn orchard in the entire state. My parents, and brother, and I. It was…” His voice went breathless with awe as he gazed around him. “It was amazing.”

But as soon as the word hit his tongue, his shoulders fell.

“Until one of your fucking black brothers raped and murdered my mother when she went to Chicago for a business trip.” His entire body shook and his lips peeled back away from his teeth as he gritted them. “My father ended up killing himself because of the grief. All the workers ran off, then my brother left. Now it’s just me. Me and my nightmares. I can’t sleep for the fucking nightmares,” he screamed, pointing his knife at me as if it were all my fault.

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Chest heaving and eyes filled with an unnatural glow, he glared at me, saying, “I’ve tried drugs and alcohol and sex and violence. None of it fucking works. I still have the nightmares.”

Another tear trickled down my cheek. Maybe he should try dream catchers or rabbit’s feet. Not that I was going to suggest that, but it had to beat kidnapping.

“So you know what I finally figured out I was doing wrong?” he asked me. I didn’t answer and didn’t really think I had to. The guy seemed to be monologuing just fine without me. “I haven’t gotten my revenge yet. My justice. That’s what I’ve been doing wrong.” His arms went up as if in victory for coming up with his idea. “If I just rape and murder one of his women, all will be right in the world again. Justice will be served. And wasn’t it just handy you were the bitch who got me arrested on the very night I came up with the idea? And that I got a brief glimpse of your name and address on one of the witness reports in the file they had open when I signed my bond paperwork to get out of jail. It was as if destiny was telling me what to do, demanding what I do.”

I whimpered and my bottom lip trembled.

There was so much I wanted to say to him: Two wrongs didn’t make a right. I hadn’t been the one to kill his mother, so revenge really wouldn’t be served if he hurt me. There would be no justice in this.

Besides, making this about race was just plain stupid. Adolf Hitler had been white. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jr., the Green River Killer. All white and all brutal murderers. But I didn’t think white people were evil. Well, aside from this creep, and even then, I was smart enough to see he might’ve started off as a normal, average guy without any kind of hatred in him; his grief had fucked him over majorly.

I bet the man who’d murdered his mother had been mistreated by white people before he’d gone evil too. It was a vicious ugly cycle that needed to stop. I wanted to tell this guy he needed to let the pain and hatred go or he was going to end up somewhere he couldn’t return from, except…I think he’d just arrived there.

I almost felt bad for him. He could no longer understand logical reason or right from wrong. The man he might’ve once been was long gone. His demons had consumed him completely. But then, yeah, the fucker had just kidnapped me and said he was going to rape and kill me, so…my sympathy never quite made it to the surface.

Full of anger and fear, I didn’t waste my breath. I just tried to keep myself from having a panic attack and stared mutinously at him as he closed his knife and tucked it into his pocket before grabbing something and dropping it down into the cellar with me.

It clanged loudly, echoing around my concrete prison, making me wince and cover my ears before I realized he’d just gifted me a metal ladder.

I blinked at it, my chest growing tight with anticipation and my head spinning with the hope of freedom. When my muscles tightened, not sure if I could trust this olive branch or not, he said, “So here’s how this is going to go. You can either climb up out here and die in the sunlight, or I can crawl down there and kill you in the dark. Make your choice.”

My vision grayed and pulse quickened. Fear raced through my bloodstream. My hands and knees and probably even my hair trembled out of control.

I wanted to choose C, none of the above. But Psycho Kidnapper was already tugging his knife from his pocket again and looked like he was going to start climbing down, so I clambered for the ladder, my bloody hands gripping the rungs and knees knocking together so hard I could barely move.

I was so weak; it was a miracle I could pull myself up one step after another. My body was stiff from hovering in the fetal position for days, my blood sugar felt incredibly low and my eyes couldn’t seem to adjust to the brightness outside, though the more I climbed the more I realized it was later in the day than I had initially thought. It was probably about time I should be heading into work. I tried to remember if I’d been scheduled today or not, but my brain wouldn’t function right.

Why the hell was I even worrying about missing work while I was climbing out of a concrete pit to meet my death?

I think I was going into shock.

I looked up, my hopes sinking. My kidnapper wasn’t small, dammit. He probably stood over six feet and weighed over two hundred pounds. There was no way I was in any kind of position to enter hand-to-hand combat right now, especially with someone this big. I’d taken a total of one self-defense class in my entire life and at the moment, I couldn’t remember a single technique I’d learned. The chances of me coming out the victor were pretty much zero-point-five.

But as I gingerly pulled myself up from the hole in the ground, Colton’s voice echoed through my head.