must be feeling. The betrayal. Her own mother.
My chest threatens to cave in. The fucking room is spinning around me, making me dizzy. But if I want to think clearly enough to find her, I can’t allow myself to consider what Creed might want with Maisy. What he’s planning. If I dwell on it, I’m going to implode.
Just find her. Find her. Bring her home.
“Call the police!” I shout, urgency carrying me back out the door, grabbing the keys for my Bugatti on the way out. “I want a fucking SWAT team at the Creed estate immediately and the commissioner put through to my phone.”
Maisy
I wake up in a dark room.
My head is fuzzy and I’m slightly nauseous, but I fight through the haze, alarm spiking in my blood when I remember being kidnapped outside Jack’s house. I’m at Winston Creed’s home. He plans to…
No. I don’t want to think about it.
I won’t let it happen.
Jack will come—and in the meantime, I’m going to find a way out.
That, or fight like hell.
I struggle to my feet and feel along the walls, willing my eyes to adjust. My hands bump into shelves, built in kind of a honeycomb shape. After a moment, I realize the entire wall is a built-in wine rack. Down towards the bottoms, the tops of wine bottles poke out and I take one in my fist, ready to use it as a weapon. Slowly, the room starts to take a little more shape around me and I see the door, a faint outline of dim light around the edges. No sound on the other side, just the hum of whatever cooling unit controls the temperature of this room.
Above my head, there’s a creak, footsteps coming down the stairs.
Moving on the balls of my feet, I position myself outside the door, wine bottle braced in hand. Keys rattle and I hold my breath.
The door opens and I take only a second to acknowledge my target is indeed the man who kidnapped me. I swing the bottle as hard as I can, catching Winston against the side of his head, making a loud, sickening thwack.
He stumbles backward, clutching the spot. “Bitch!”
I don’t hesitate. I just run. I find the staircase and—still battling grogginess—I scale it as fast as possible, clinging to the railing, the walls moving in and out like an accordion. I can already hear Winston’s pounding footsteps behind me, his slurred cursing. But I throw myself into a sprint, carrying myself through a long room lined with paintings, gold statues winking at me in the dimness. This feels like a nightmare, running through a maze, no idea where I am. Only that I need to escape.
I skid into a room and make a little yelp noise in my throat.
A dozen men, staring back at me. Drinks in hand.
Blatant lust in their eyes.
Winston enters the room behind me and I’m caught in the middle, the crowd of men on one side, a seething Winston on the other. There’s nowhere to go. No exits. They’re closing in.
Frantically, I search for a weapon.
“Accept it, Miss Whitaker,” says Winston, holding a throw pillow against his bleeding head. “Play nice and be grateful. After all, we’re going to make you a very wealthy little whore. Twenty percent, remember?”
“We watched the way you rode him,” says one of the men. “Wild for cock.”
“We’ve got plenty of those right here.”
Laughter.
“It won’t be like that,” I choke out, fear fluttering in my throat. “Not with anyone but Jack.”
“You better make sure it is,” Winston grits out, lunging for me.
I feint sideways and avoid him, but my distraction gives the other men a chance to reach out, grab me with greedy hands. I’m caught. They’re dragging me toward the back of the house, the room with the red light. I try to dig my heels in, but there are too many of them. I throw back my head and scream—
Glass shatters to my right.
Three men in black vests crash into the room, decked out in helmets, goggles, semi-automatic weapons in their hands. They shout at everyone to get down on the floor with such authority that I obey without thinking, along with the stupefied group of men, folding my hands on the back of my head. When I peek up at the action, I notice another dozen armed men filling the room from the opposite end, Jack at the had of the pack with a crazed expression—and I slump in relief, sobs hiccupping their way into