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“Look. Take this goddamn money, and back the fuck off. That’s all I owe you, and that’s all I’m giving you. Now, I’m leaving—I have someone waiting for me.” Rayne tried to barrel past his uncle, but things went very wrong.
His uncle slammed him against the door, the back of his head connecting with the hard wood. Rayne grunted as pain flared behind his eyes. He could smell his uncle’s rancid breath, and he wondered how he could be so strong when he was so drunk. Robert let out a sharp whistle, and Rayne tried to break free of the hold on his neck and arm as he heard Zelda’s chain-link collar rattling around her neck as she charged down the hall. He let her out!
“Get your fucking hands off me!” Rayne hollered before Robert threw him across the room. He just missed the dresser and landed hard on the flimsy twin mattress. He hurried and scrambled off the bed, not wanting to be an easy target, but the dog was there growling and snapping while Robert barely held her off.
Terror was trapped in Rayne’s lungs as his uncle stood over him with a disturbing sneer on his craggy face. “I bet you do have someone waiting for you.” Robert’s hand went to the noticeable bulge behind his zipper like he was getting off on Rayne’s fear. “But you better tell them you have another customer to take care of first.”
“Fuck you,” Rayne spat hard.
“What?” Robert acted as if he was surprised Rayne was offended. “Isn’t that what you do? Use good, hardworking men like me to live high on the hog? To buy your fancy clothes and diamond necklaces while you tease us.”
“I never took a thing from you. And you call this place high on the hog? Yeah, right,” Rayne sneered as Zelda issued him another threatening snap of her large jaws. “Let me leave, Robert, or else I’m—”
“Gonna do what? Call the police?” Robert pulled out his cell phone and held it out to Rayne, calling his bluff. “Go ahead. I have your probation officer on speed dial. He said if I have any problems out of you to call him. I think he should be informed that this is no longer your permanent residence and that you’ve been laid up with some other man. I’ll tell him you broke in here to rob me after I evicted your tramp ass.”
Tramp! Rayne balked.
“Now. When you’re ready to pay up, you just give me a holler,” Robert said in a tone that equally creeped and grossed him out.
His uncle left out the door, and Rayne heard a lock engage before he shot to his feet and ran to jerk on the knob. The door didn’t budge. His uncle had padlocked him in from the outside.
Rayne had put that lock on there the third day after he’d moved in when he’d caught his uncle snooping around in his room. Rayne had thought it was the perfect solution at the time; now, not so much.
He paced in the room for a couple of minutes, then glanced toward the window. It was a one-level ranch-style home. He didn’t want to, but he was going out the damn window, hauling ass to Trent’s truck, flooring it out of there, and never looking back. Rayne had the window raised and half his body hanging out of the frame when Zelda bolted around the side of the house and tried to bite his bottom half off.
“Fuck!” Rayne hollered, scrambling back inside. He dropped down on his ass, checking his ankle where sharp teeth had grazed his pants leg. He could hear his uncle laughing like some villain in a slasher movie. Rayne couldn’t get out the door or out the one window in the back. He really was trapped. My life has turned into one of those dark-ass Lifetime movies.
Rayne tried to spin a story that he could tell the cops, but what were the odds they wouldn’t take both of them downtown for a domestic dispute? His uncle would be released in a few hours but not him.
Rayne called Chelsea, but she didn’t answer. She was still at work for the next two hours, and Rayne had no intention of trying to wait his uncle out. He was drunk and thought Rayne was his plaything. It wouldn’t be long before he came back to see if he was ready to comply. Disgusting, filthy bastard. No wonder his wife left his closeted ass.
“Robert, open the door and let me out, and I’ll go get you some more money from the ATM and bring it right back,” Rayne lied, and of course, his uncle saw right through it.
“You’re a con artist, Rayne.” His uncle scoffed. “If I let you out, I’ll never see you again. That I know for sure.”
You got that right. “I will come back.”
“Like I said. Let me know when you’re ready to pay the only way you know how.”
Dread kicked like a mule in his stomach as he pulled out his cell. He wouldn’t call his sponsor since this was his weekend to have supervised visitation with his son. That left his best friend. He hated to ruin Trent’s surprise, but he knew Wood would come and get him. He dialed his number five times but didn’t get an answer. They didn’t want to be interrupted, and they’d meant it.
Shit, shit, shit. That left one other person. With a growing sense of dread, Rayne scrolled down his very minimal list of contacts until he got to the right name and hit the green receiver button.
