grab a pillow and blanket to take to Adeline’s room.
I unlock the door and creep into the darkness, shutting it behind me quietly just as something heavy hits the wall near my head and shatters.
Spinning, I can barely make out Adeline’s small body crouched at the corner of her bed, her eyes bare slits staring at me and a collection of objects she’d found in the room on the mattress around her.
She picks up another object and launches it at me. Thankfully, she has shitty aim, and I’m able to dodge it.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I roar, dropping the pillow and blanket to step toward her.
Hand clenched over something bigger, she lifts it with the threat of swinging it at me.
I stop in place, stretch my neck side to side because I don’t have time for this shit.
“I saved your fucking life,” I tell her, figuring she’s hurt and confused and doesn’t realize who I am. “You know me. Put the lamp down.”
Adeline shakes her head, her expression unreadable because her face is one big, swollen bruise.
But her voice is clear, her words setting the tone for how much shittier this situation is than I realized.
“Your name is not Harrison Nash,” she says as she brings the lamp up to swing at me like a bat.
“I don’t know who the fuck you are. And if you take one more step toward me, I swear to God, I’ll take your head off for it.”
Adeline
He takes a step back when I shake the lamp at him. My entire body is in throbbing pain, and it’s anybody’s guess how I’m even able to move. Maybe it’s the adrenaline of knowing I’ve gone from one life-threatening situation to another.
Whatever it is, I refuse to let Ari anywhere near me.
Even if he somehow stole me from Grant.
Even if he’d gotten my text and managed to come running to save my life.
I was desperate when I sent it, and I certainly didn’t expect to wake up in a strange room with the door locked from outside.
“What are you going to do with Adeline?”
“Keep her.”
“She’s not a stray pet, Ari. They don’t have babysitting services for abducted women while you’re out on a job.”
“Your services have worked out pretty well so far.”
“So, what? You’ll just keep her locked in a room until she comes around to the idea that she now belongs to you?”
“If I have to.”
“You’ve lost your fucking mind.”
I heard the entire conversation after waking up and managing to crawl from the bed to the door. Slowly pressing on the lever, I’d found it locked, and I pressed my ear to the wood despite the pain of anything touching my face.
There is so much pain and I can barely open my eyes. The drugs Grant fed me are still running through my veins, but I’m fighting against them, my adrenaline too much. I refuse to let this newest threat get anywhere near me.
Fuck. I have no one who can help me. All my friends gone. No real family to speak of. The only people I can potentially call are Rebecca and her husband. They seem like good people, the type who will help a woman in my situation.
Not that I have their number without my phone.
Ari moves slowly to flip the light switch on the wall, the sudden brightness of it blinding me.
I lift a hand to shade my eyes and feel the lamp jerked from my grip, the rest of the crap I could find to defend myself knocked from the bed to clatter loudly against the ground. I didn’t even hear him move before he disarmed me.
I scream and cower into the corner, my back against hard plaster as my feet slide over the blanket on the mattress.
Raising my arms to protect my head, I go still, waiting for a beating that never comes.
Seconds pass in silence, my body trembling.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says softly from several feet away from me. “But I won’t tolerate you trying to hurt me either.”
“Who the fuck are you?” I scream. Not giving a damn about how much it hurts my throat, not caring that it causes the pounding in my head to become harder.
“I’m Ari. The same man you met in the cemetery. The same one you danced with at the company event. The same -“
“The same fucking man that got the shit kicked out of me by playing a game against my husband.”
Tears burst from my eyes, stinging everything they