Page 98 of Choosing Us

He may know my name, but I have no clue who this asshole is—other than I hate him already.

I try to reach up to wipe the blood from my mouth, but my hands are restrained behind my back. I give them a quick tug, and I would guess zip ties by the resistance and size of bands digging into my wrists.

Well, that’s not great.

The asshole claps his hands three brisk times, but he might as well have hit me over the head with a baseball bat with how the sound strikes my ears, bouncing off the concrete walls, and causing an immediate headache.

“Fuck!” I didn’t mean to let him have any reaction, but clearly this amuses him as he laughs at my pain.

“Just had to make sure you were awake. You took quite a nap there on the floor. It looked extremely uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, well, zip ties will do that to you.”

“Eh,” he tilts his head back and forth, “it wasn’t so much the zip ties as it was the taser followed by a dose of ketamine.”

The fuck? He drugged me? Where did that happen?

I’m trying to recall where I was before waking up in this damp and cold room, but I only remember leaving the airport and walking to my car, then … nothing. It’s blank.

Wait. It’s not totally blank. There was a searing pain in my body, and I lost control of my limbs. He did tase me … I hope I didn’t piss my pants in the process. I know it’s not guaranteed, but I remember reading that getting tased can cause some people to piss themselves.

Who the fuck is this guy?

“It’s logical to assume you’re trying to piece together everything that’s happened here, but have you put the big puzzle together yet?”

“Big puzzle?” I manage to cough out. My throat is exceptionally dry, and it’s hard to talk. How long was I unconscious?

He nods and starts to slowly walk from one side of the windowless room to the other. The room is coming into focus a bit more as my eyes adjust, but it looks like a nondescript warehouse storage room, which doesn’t help me identify anything that could get me out of here.

“You tried to take something that is mine, and I couldn’t stand by any longer. I’m an incredibly patient man, especially with something as precious as this, but tsk, tsk, the ring was too far.”

Ring.

Harlow.

This psychopath is implying Harlow is his? The hell she is.

I take a deep breath to try and calm the rising anger. My martial arts training may not physically help me right now while being detained, but this asshole is playing a mental game, and I’m not going to lose, not to him.

And sure as hell not when Harlow is on the line.

“You aren’t worthy of someone like her. You—ha!” He laughs as though he just told the best joke of his life. “Oh, heavens, you’re so beneath her it really is comical. You couldn’t even be bothered to be intentional with her. Typical red roses for Valentine’s Day? How boring and uninspired.”

He tilts his head ever so slightly that it feels more controlled than natural.

“I saw her face when she opened the exclusively curated bouquet of her favorite white flowers and there was no competition,” he sneers as he looks off in the distance. “Although I am still annoyed she thought Aisha sent them. Her friend sent a box of chocolates—not a three-hundred-dollar bouquet!”

The man pauses and takes three deep breaths while looking at the ceiling before turning back to me. “And yet, you still had the audacity to play along with her parents’ games? After everything they have done and failed to do as parents?”

Valentine’s Day? Her parents? “What are you talking about?”

“Harlow is a magnificent creature, but her parents are social-climbing leaches. I thought the stunt at the Christmas event was enough to shake them up, but it didn’t really affect them much. Not when you swooped in and took her away.”

“Do you mean when she asked me to come and bring her home?”

“No!” He stomps over and leans down to point his finger in my face. “No, she did not ask you to come! You took her. You took her away when she could have stood up to them and let all of those people see how terrible they are. When someone is a terrible parent, they need to be corrected. They should be revealed to the world. And you stole that chance from her.”

“And how would you know how her parents treat her?”