Tag: suspense

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.”

Okay, he couldn’t do this.

Tony couldn’t pretend that he was okay with delaying going after Natasha. There was no telling what would happen to her in that time, her brother was a monster and the men who worked for him would have no conscience.

He had to get what he could out of Brandon then he could go after her. Her big blue eyes, so trusting, believing in him even though she had zero reason to given how he’d grabbed her from her house and then dropped the bombshell of her brother’s true nature.

But like the brave woman she was Natasha had agreed to be part of this, to help in whatever way she could.

There was no way he could fail her even worse than he already had.

“The woman … she looked familiar,” he said to Brandon as he followed the other man inside and over to a staircase that led up to the second floor. “Kind of looks like … what was her name … Natalie? No Natasha.”

Throwing a wary look over his shoulder, Brandon continued up the stairs. “How do you know my sister?”

“Your sister? Didn’t know you were related. She works at the same company as me. She’s the vice president, I just started. Been trying to get her into my bed but so far no luck.” Tony snickered even though he hated talking about women in that tone. But he needed a lead as to where Natasha was being taken. Then he could go and find her, get her someplace safe, and then he’d focus all his energy on bringing Brandon down.

Brandon chuckled. “Sounds like my sister. Stuck up that one. Little Miss Perfect, thats how I always think of her. Thought of her anyway. She’s about to learn that she’s no better than me.”

The sinister sound of laughter had his blood turning to ice, and it took everything he had to keep the smirk on his face.

“If you’re interested in keeping her, once I break her I’ll give you first offer at buying her,” Brandon offered like it was nothing.

If everything that had happened with his sister wasn’t enough to break him then knowing what he’d gotten Natasha into cracked the last pieces of his soul.