in front of their father.”
“Oh God.”
Kristine looks away, brushing her tears away. “Anyway, Ice Queen, from the moment that beady-eyed snake saw you, you were done for to be honest. Shane was using me like fucking rag doll, fucking me anyway he wanted, had me constantly high and out of my mind, and because of that, I was the perfect rat to do their bidding. I was the one who went to the cops and named you the suspect.”
Fuck. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was this twisted, this messed up.
“But it all went to shit at that party you held at your old house,” Kristine goes on, her voice low, almost as whisper. After what she just said about doing drugs, I now see that the wild look in her eyes is not just fear, it’s withdrawal. Shit.
“The night we got arrested?”
“Yes,” she says. “Julian, Cole and Liam all bested Sean and that enraged him even further. I mean, Julian beat him up pretty badly that night after Sean said something to him that made him snap and he vowed to make him pay.”
“Through me,” I whisper, seeing it all now. She nods, her eyes wide. “That’s why they beat me?”
She nods again.
“What did they use?”
“Trust me, Mia, you don’t want to know.”
What could that mean? My mind starts racing with all sorts of possibilities, trying to categorize the pain I’m in but also dreading the answer.
“What about this gash to my head?” I whisper. “You were there when they abducted me, right?”
“I was tied up at the back of the van, but I did see you put up one hell of a fight, like a banshee out of hell, you even punched Sean who then knocked you out with a blow to the head,” she says.
“God,” I whisper.
“Mia… I also overhead him tell them to do that.”
“What?”
“Hitting you over the head, I heard him tell them to do that to you.”
The thundering of my heart threatens to drown out her words, but I heard them loud and clear. But still, like I’m addicted to my own pain, I still ask.
“Overheard who?”
“Your father,” she whispers, a frown on her face that makes her bruises prominent. “Why would he do that? Why would he give such a specific instruction?”
Because he knows what happened to me the last time I sustained a blunt force injury to the head.
I lost my memory.
And now, my father wants the same thing to happen… so he can control me all over again.
“I don’t know,” I mutter, my voice hoarse and cracked.
Kristine doesn’t say a word. She just peers down at me silently assessing.
“Well, it’s stopped bleeding, but it still looks bad, but I don’t think we’re going to get out of here.”
We need to get out. Even if it’s the last thing we do.
“What else happened to me, Kristine?” I whisper, dread choking me up. “Did they—”
“Just don’t, Ice Queen,” she says softly. “Don’t do that to yourself. Right now, you need to focus on staying alive more than anything else.”
Silence.
I can’t stop the horrors in my mind or the scenarios of what happened to me when I was knocked out. Anything could’ve happened. Maybe they already raped me…
I start gasping, feeling like the walls are closing in on me. I can’t stay here a second longer. I need out.
“Kristine, we need to get out of here,” I seethe.
“You’re not listening to me,” Kristine says. “It’s impossible.”
“You just said they’re not here.”
“Yes, but they locked us in, and have you seen the windows? They’re all the way up there! Spiders and fucking rats can escape, not us.”
Looking up, I can see what she means but I refuse to think there’s no way out.
“There must be another place to escape, a hidden door they didn’t check or a window at the back.”
“I checked everywhere, as soon as they left to set up a trap for the Fitz brothers—”
“What?” I demand, snapping my head to look at her. That’s a bad move as agony rips me a new one. I’d rather someone behead me than feel this acute any second longer, but Julian… “What do you mean ‘to set a trap’?”
Kristine looks uncomfortable now, her one eye shifting from one side of the warehouse to another, and me? I can’t breathe right anymore.
My boys are in danger.
“Kristine, please. You have to tell me.”
“And then what, Mia? What are you going to do? Climb up there to get out through those tiny-ass windows so