Page 85 of Reckless Seduction
“Hello?”
Nothing. Fucking shit. Where the hell am I?
That is a stupid question. I am obviously in a basement of some kind, waiting for the auction to start.
My father planned this all along.
No.
Not my father.
The man who stole me from my father. The man who used me as a pawn to control my actual father. The files in his office safe had been more than eye-opening. My entire life, since I was three years old, was in those folders.
Now I know everything.
Mostly everything.
Now that I look back on it all, the pieces have come together in my mind. I can’t believe I have been so blind. The woman I remember as my mother had been nothing more than a jealous woman. She had stolen me and bartered me away, thinking she could fill the empty space in my biological father’s life.
She had been wrong.
God, am I pathetic. The number of people who have used me for their own gain before throwing me to the wolves is increasingly growing more every day. The junkie woman, Richard, the Kavanaughs.
Kiernan…
That bastard handed me over to whom they believe to be my father without a second thought.
Why? Had that been part of the plan the entire time? Use me and then throw me to Crowe when they have had their fill?
God, why had I been so stupid? Of course this had been the plan. They used me. Gotten what they wanted, then they got rid of me like yesterday’s trash. All of them. There was a point they hadn’t made me feel like a captive, and maybe that was the red flag I should have been paying attention to.
Instead, I let myself believe the lie they sold me. That they wanted me. Cherished me. Loved me.
They had been honest about the man who calls himself my father. Richard Crowe is a despicable man. Wretched as they come. Maybe this is part of the plan. They are going to catch him in the action. Take everything down.
Right?
Before I can be swallowed by the pity that threatens to overwhelm me, the silence is broken by the sound of several abrupt cries. Heavy footsteps thud outside my prison, stopping directly in front of my door. The lock twists and disengages, and the door swings open on its rusty hinges.
My heart races, and I prepare myself to use whatever tactic necessary to get out of this hellhole. I won’t allow myself to be sold. There was a reason I caught on to Seamus’s training so well. The style of fighting is different, specialized, but Crowe’s men had taken me under their wing growing up. They taught me how to defend myself. How to fight dirty.
The heavy wooden door swings open, the light from the hallway outlining the broad frame that fills the doorway. He steps into the cell, and I don’t waste any time launching myself at him, hoping to catch him off guard.
I manage to catch him by surprise, since he probably wasn’t expecting a docile submissive to fight back and land a blow to his face, knocking him backward.
“Little bitch,” he sneers. His accent is thick, but I can’t place its origin. It isn’t Russian, that I know, and it sure as hell isn’t Italian. I don’t bother to stay and ask before I dart out the cell door and take off down the hallway without bothering to look back.
Except that it’s full.
I run smack dab into the hard chest of another mountain of a man, and he doesn’t look particularly pleased at my escape attempt.
Then my body lights up like the Fourth of July.
I hit the floor hard, my body convulsing as shock after shock of electricity courses through me like hot magma. My muscles are locked tight, and my teeth are clenched together so hard I think they might shatter. The current pulses through me again and again until I am begging him to stop.
The man whose nose broke curses at me in another language as he bends down, a cattle prod swinging loosely between his legs. His hand comes down across my face. I groan in pain as he drags me to my feet by my hair before tossing me to another guard.
“Get her in line with the others.”
