Chained - Zara Novak Page 0,49
a wariness in his eye, the same one I had seen when talking with Wardorf. I just had to hope they were all afraid as he was.
“Wait here,” Casper said. He walked away from the group and pulled a radio from his belt. After a short conversation he came back over. “Don Monroe would like to see you. Your pilot will wait here. You go alone.”
“Fine.”
“Bring her,” Casper said to his men. He looked at me again before we started walking and produced something from his jacket. It was a gag. “She wears this. She doesn’t talk without permission.”
My heart sank as one of the men came forward and fastened the gag around me. They tied my hands behind my back and started marching me forward. Being able to talk was a big part of my fucking plan. I looked back at Wardorf as they led me away, seeing the same fear now in his eyes too.
I was starting to wonder if I’d fucked up in a massive way.
The guards marched me to the manor and passed the front doors. We went down a set of stairs that led into some sort of service entrance. There we crossed through several armed checkpoints, weaving through a large industrial kitchen and a labyrinth of service corridors underneath the house.
Monroe clearly wasn’t fucking around.
I started to contemplate the gravity of this situation. I had come in here with a plan and it had been taken away almost immediately. Without my mouth I had no way to win this battle.
Or did I?
If breeders like myself really had this ‘voice’ then did it necessarily have to be one that I used out loud? Vincent had controlled me several times without speaking. What if this power I possessed was the same?
As we walked along the corridor, I focused my eyes on the armed guard walking in front of me. I had no idea what I was doing really. I just stared with all my intent and used my inner voice, trying to make anything happen.
Hey you, I thought. Turn around and look at me.
To my surprise he did. The guard turned around and looked at me. It wasn’t a glance either, he turned and stared while carrying on walking. I had two guards walking on either side of me, and one of them jabbed their rifle into his back.
“Eyes forward, Mike!” he shouted.
Mike broke his gaze and looked forward again. It was a small experiment, but one that gave a little hope.
Maybe there was a way out of this after all.
At the end of the corridor another set of stairs led us up into the house proper. It was a nice building with shiny hardwood floors, oil paintings and vast white walls. The property itself definitely felt less like a home than Vincent’s castle. Monroe’s setup was more reminiscent of a drug baron’s fortress.
The journey through the fortress ended in a large parlor room that had to be at the very back of the building. The room was tall, long and wide. Huge windows looked over gardens at the back, where more armed security posts had been set up.
More guards were stationed in here, but right at the end of the room was the man I was here to see. He had a cigar in one hand and was facing the door as we walked through. The way he was standing unmistakably signaled that he was the leader.
Monroe.
The group escorting me walked me through the room, stopping short of Monroe by about fifteen feet. I was close enough to seem him properly now. He was wearing a white suit with a blue shirt. His blazer was draped over his shoulders. He had dusty blonde hair—greased back—and a short beard.
He wasn’t a bad looking man. Most would even say he was attractive, but there was something in his eye, a small glimmer that suggested he could fly off the handle at any moment.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized something in this room made my skin crawl. I only noticed what it was when I looked at the sofa just behind Monroe. There was a body on the floor.
I could just see two feet poking out on the hardwood floor. One had a heel, the other was bare. It was a woman’s foot, still and motionless. The rest of the body was lying on the ground, out of sight behind the sofa.
A large puddle of blood had run across the hardwood