Page 64 of Ravage
Please don’t throw up.
That is the worst feeling. And it puts me at a disadvantage while I try to figure out what predicament I’m in now.
The last I remember, I was at Joe’s house. Did he do this? I tried to take the right precautions, but that doesn’t always mean it’s enough. This entire hunt for Gifted Enterprise has been trial and error for me of what works and what gets me in trouble.
“We really should stop bumping into each other like this, beautiful.”
Kellan’s arms are crossed over his chest, his dark shirt tight and stretched over his chest as usual, while black markings scrawl up his neck and down his arms. He’s in jeans and boots, and his long brown hair is pushed behind one ear and comfortably reaching past his shoulders. His blue-green eyes check out the little dress I’m wearing.
It’s short, white, and covered in large sporadic blue flowers. The dress makes me think of innocence and sweet fun, which are words I haven’t been associated with in a long time.
I won’t admit that I’m embarrassed to have him catch me wearing something like this. I feel…pretty. And weak.
Not that his opinion on how I look matters. I should be focusing more on how I passed out next to the congressman and woke up to Kellan in a kitchen.
The sheer size and grandeur of the room screams money and matches what little I saw of Joe’s estate. Still there, then.
I attempt to lift my hands but face resistance. I finally take stock of myself. I’m zip-tied to a wooden chair.
“Why am I tied up?” I demand more heatedly than normal. I can’t promise I have my emotions completely under control, and seeing him doesn’t make dealing with them any easier. Gordon used all four guys against me in my year with him, and those memories are now fresh in my mind after that unplanned nap.
“How did you find out about this one?” Aiden asks, stepping forward out of the shadows of the room to reveal himself. He’s dressed in a black suit, jacket buttons undone and revealing a flash of a weapon on one side.
Rather than answer Aiden, I look around the kitchen for Joe.
“He’s incapacitated in another room.” Aiden walks closer again and stops in front of me with his arms folded. “Now, how did you discover he was a part of them?”
What is this? Are they interrogating me?
Well, I was found at Joe’s place in a dress. Sitting next to him on a sofa while he had his hand on me. And Aiden has claimed that he thinks I work for GE.
Fuck.
This does look bad.
I try for a loose shrug, as if that can make me seem less guilty of whatever ideas Aiden’s floating around about me. “I’m undercover looking for some information.”
Kellan scowls in the background, but Aiden talks back.
“Mm, right. Undercover. So, you didn’t just so happen to be at a known GE board member elect’s home, wearing that, and chatting like good pals when we showed up? Or did you somehow know we were planning to interrogate him and you’re here for his protection?”
“No! I’m here to snoop around. That’s it, I swear.”
His eyes harden. “And how did you plan to do that with a house full of his staff around?”
My mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. I didn’t plan for so many people being here, sure, but if I had just gotten to that desk when he wasn’t in the room… “Pee break. It’s a big place and easy to get lost in. Besides, I saw some papers on the desk in the room we were in. That would have been easy enough to look at if he left the room.”
“Pee break?” Aiden scoffs. “It looked more like you were preparing to fuck him for the information when we showed up.”
I freeze.
They saw…
Kellan slams his fist back into the kitchen cabinet behind him, breaking the door and letting it crash to the counter and floor. “You know he coerces young women to fuck him? He uses them like his own personal whore at his beck and call, and then throws what’s left to the curb after he’s done with them.”
I knew. Not the details or everything, but I’d figured with the rotation of interns and how he’d started his spiel on me.
“He finds the troubled girls. The ones who have trauma in their past or seem broken in some way. That’s how he gets in their heads. How he controls them. He manipulates them into being his play things.” Kellan keeps going, getting angrier by the second, but it’s Aiden I’m more concerned with.
