Page 205 of My Unhinged Alphas
I hear another small movement. Closer again. Right near me now. I can smell something on him. Smoke, maybe. Sweat. Soap. Male.
My skin goes cold all over. “Please,” I say again.
No answer.
“You don’t have to be this person,” I say softly. “Whatever happened to you, whatever somebody asked you to do, you can still stop.”
The words hang there, stupid and hopeful.
I hear his breathing now. Slow. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about me. And what was I expecting? A miracle? Miracles don’t exist in real life.
“Okay,” I say, and my voice gets sharper without my permission. “Then at least be smart about it. You took me from men who are going to come looking. They’re not just going to let this go.”
That gets me something.
Not words. A shift in the air. Attention.
I keep going because now I know he’s listening. “They will find me,” I say. “And when they do, whatever you’re being paid is not going to be enough.”
The man grunts.
I resist the urge to smile. Yes, at least I got something out of him.
I lift my chin under the blindfold like I can still make eye contact through it. “So if I were you, I’d be thinking very hard about whether this ends with me walking out or with them breaking every door between here and wherever you’re dumb enough to be standing.”
I barely get one breath to prepare before a hand catches my jaw and a slap cracks across my face hard enough to snap my head sideways.
Pain blooms hot and immediate.
For one awful second the room tilts under me. My cheek throbs. My eyes water under the blindfold. Every bit of anger I’d managed to summon goes thin and frightened at the edges because now there is proof of a body, proof of force, proof that this person can reach me whenever they want.
A man’s voice comes low and close to my ear. “You’ll learn soon enough,” he hisses, “what real violence feels like.”
Every muscle in me locks, and I stop breathing for a second altogether.
His breath is warm against my skin. He’s close enough that I can smell him now, soap, sweat, something metallic, and the intimacy of that frightens me more than the slap did. This is not random. This is not clumsy. He wants me to hear him. Wants me to feel exactly how near he is.
My mouth has gone dry again.
I don’t say anything now. I can’t.
Because fear has finally arrived in full, the cold, trapped certainty of knowing I am tied to a chair in the dark with a man who just promised to teach me something terrible, and for the first time since waking up, I believe completely that he means it.
Chapter 34
Knox
He opensthe door two inches and immediately regrets it.
I can tell from his face.
Marek Sava keeps a low profile for a reason. Third-floor apartment in a building no one notices, no name on the buzzer, no lights left on near the windows, no habits regular enough to map if you’re looking from the outside.
He’s a Saint, like us, but instead of going on missions, he takes care of tech-related stuff, working behind the scenes.
His hand stays on the door, trying to keep the gap narrow. “This is a surprise.”
Havoc puts his palm flat against the door and pushes.
