Tag: mystery

Natasha felt … empty.

Like her soul, what made her her, was just gone.

Ripped from in the basement of her own brother’s home. Even if by some miracle she was rescued there was no way she could ever go back to the woman she’d been before.

That woman was gone now.

“Our good friend Tony is on his way down to retrieve his newest toy,” Brandon said, ignoring her question asking what she’d ever done to make him hate her so much.

Seemed today was the day she was to be sold. Her faith in Tony had vanished, he’d never come for her, and now he was going to buy her. She had no illusions that she would be any better off with him than she’d been with Brandon.

How much more could she endure? She was done. Just … done.

Ready for it all to just hurry up and end.

Speak of the devil Tony came strolling down into the basement. When his gaze landed on her crammed into the dog cage she searched it for some sign of empathy, of compassion, of goodness. A hint that the man she had trusted still existed.

She found none.

Just cold eyes and an even colder expression.

Natasha knew she’d been stupid to blindly trust that he was a cop, that he was a good guy. Now it was too late to do anything about it.

“Ah, Tony, we were just talking about you,” Brandon said, standing from the leather sofa where he’d been sitting taunting her. “Your new pet is all trained and ready for you. Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you,” Tony said, hungry eyes staring at her like he couldn’t wait to devour her, tear her to pieces like the prey that she was. “I’ve been waiting two months to get my hands on this beauty. I don’t think I can wait a second longer.”

If there had been any doubts about her future those words ended them. She was about to leave the frying pan and jump right into the fire.

Finally.

It had been a long eight weeks.

Tony had gotten to the point where he was barely able to function. Guilt over using Natasha and then failing her so drastically was eating him alive.

Given the amount of time she’d been her brother’s prisoner there was no way he could pretend that Natasha wasn’t going to be horribly scarred for life. The woman he’d met that night that felt like a lifetime ago would be gone by now, he just didn’t know who would be in her place.

He was about to find out thought.

Because today was the day. He’d gotten the call he’d been waiting for in the early hours of the morning. Brandon was ready to sell his sister and he’d arranged a meeting at his house. Case wise this couldn’t go any better. He was going to be taken to Brandon’s headquarters which would mean being able to dismantle the whole operation. If you’d asked him a couple of months ago that would have been all he cared about, not he found himself caring less about that and more about getting out the woman who had made this all possible.

It was only because of Natasha that her brother was going to be caught, yet the price she’d paid was much too high.

Now the driver who had been sent to pick him up was pulling into a long driveway, at the end of which sat a gothic mansion. Anxiety and anticipation hummed in his veins. Natasha was in there and as soon as he got her safe he was going to do whatever it took to help her heal.

A man was waiting for him on the front steps, and Tony was led inside, through a myriad of corridors and then down a steep staircase.

Just as he was nearing the bottom, he heard a soft, broken voice whisper, “Why do you hate me so much?”

Natasha’s voice.

She was alive, now he just had to pray she was strong enough to make it through this ordeal and out the other side. If she wasn’t he was never going to be free from the knot of guilt that took up permanent residence in his gut.

He didn’t deserve to be free of it.

Each day that passed Natasha felt like she lost another piece of herself.

Her body was littered with bruises and blisters, she was starving, and she ached from sleeping on the hard floor of the dog crate. Muscles were stiff from being crammed in the too small space, yet as much as she hated it in there she hated being outside of it more.

Because at least once she was in there she was left alone.

Starved, deprived often of water and sleep, but at least no one touched her.

Salvation seemed … to have drifted out of reach.

If Tony was going to find her then he would have by now.

In her darkest moments Natasha wondered if he was even looking for her. Maybe he’d gotten the in with her brother that he wanted and he no longer cared about what happened to her, she was just collateral damage. Or maybe he wasn’t even a cop, maybe he was just another person who worked in the same circles as Brandon and just wanted to make a business connection to him.

What did she really know about Tony anyway?

Only what he’d told her.

No.

He hadn’t been lying.

He was a cop and he was looking for her, Natasha just hoped Tony knew he needed to up his search and start following Brandon around.

“Morning, sister,” Brandon sang as he strolled down the basement stairs. In his hands were a collar and leash, and she gulped, not needing an imagination to know what he had planned for her.

When he stopped outside her cage she was overcome with the urge to squeeze her eyes shut like she used to to when she was a little girl and make everything else just disappear. Only this situation wasn’t going to go away just because she wanted it to.

“Come along, sister, I have another lesson for you. You’re doing much better than I thought you would, hardly put up a fight at all.”

Because she believed Tony was coming for her and she’d quickly learned that fighting only earned her more punishments.

“I have a buyer all lined up for you, I think you know him, his name is Tony and he works for you,” Brandon told her with a wicked grin like he hadn’t just knocked the bottom out of her world.

If Tony wanted to buy her from Brandon then she’d put her faith in the wrong person and the salvations he’d been holding out for was never going to come.

He felt ill.

Why hadn’t he put a tracker on Natasha?

At the time it had seemed pointless, she wasn’t supposed to leave the building, and he and his partner were right outside. He thought he’d be able to keep an eye on her until he got Brandon’s attention then he would have sent her off to Garret.

Now that mistake could cost Natasha her life.

If he hadn’t been so caught up in his own goals, his own reasoning for needing to destroy Brandon Jenkins then Natasha would be safe right now instead of in the hands of her evil brother.

How was he supposed to find her and get her out?

When he’d walked away from the bar that night over a week ago it had seemed so easy. Now nine days later it was starting to seem like an impossible task. Brandon had been in touch several times, but the location that got from the calls showed he was in his apartment in the middle of the city, there was no way he was holding a woman captive there.

Knowing what Natasha was going through right now left him so twisted up inside he could barely function. He wasn’t sleeping, eating only when Garret forced his hand, was working out and pushing his body to the extreme because it was the only time he got a break from the images running rampant inside his head.

Losing Natasha would destroy him.

Tony was beside himself, how could he be so invested in Natasha, so soon? “I’m coming for you, Nat, stay strong.”

Although he sent the prayer out into the universe he couldn’t help but feel like he was wasting his time. Each second that passed Natasha slipped further away and he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to get her back.

This wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

Surely she was just trapped in a nightmare and was going to wake up any second now.

Only Natasha knew that wasn’t what was happening.

This wasn’t a dream it was real.

All too real.

Natasha’s in shock at what she discovered. Talking to the other women in the basement, locked in their own dog cages she’d learned more about her brother than she could believe.

In fact if she wasn’t right here, experiencing it for herself then she wouldn’t have believed it.

But she was here. Along with four other women, the youngest was only fourteen, the oldest just nineteen. Girls. Just kids. Yet what they’d already suffered was horrific.

She was going to suffer those same things.

Hard as it was to accept it was true. Had to be. There was no way Brandon would have ordered her here if he was just going to let her go. He couldn’t. She knew too much.

Even though she hadn’t told the others, hadn’t wanted to get their hopes up, Natasha was clinging to the hope that Tony would come. He wouldn’t leave her to the wolves now that he had what he wanted. He’d come for her. He would.

He had to.

Footsteps on the stairs had her head whipping around. Her worst nightmare came into view and she shuddered and pressed back against her cage as her brother strolled over to stand before her.

“Hello, little sister,” he said with a wicked smile. “It’s time to begin your training. Turns out I already have a buyer lined up ready to take you as soon as you learn your new role in life.”