AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After Angelina and I broke up three years ago, I didn’t expect to have true feelings for a woman ever again. I thought that I’d spend the rest of my days as a detached, condescending womanizer, using up women to the last fibers of their being before discarding them. For a while, I even got good at it. It didn’t feel right, but it didn’t feel explicitly bad either, and it was easy for me to get my needs met without having to worry about those of the other person.
Having Iris around has changed my entire perspective on feelings and relationships. Even though she was a perfect stranger when she arrived here, I’ve never felt put out or uncomfortable having her in my house. She feels like she fits there, settled into my bathrooms and couches and kitchens. She never expressed a single ounce of displeasure or entitlement, always thanking me profusely for any gift I brought to her. That’s something that struck me as a foreign trait of hers – she’s so grateful just to be alive on this earth.
The sun continues to float down below the surface of the water, and for a moment I can understand why Iris thinks I’m shallow and materialistic. I’ve had this sunset in my backyard ever since I moved here, and I don’t think I’ve ever taken the time to appreciate it the way she did. It started to become a nightly occurrence to find her in the kitchen, centered in front of the giant picture windows to watch the sun set over the garden.
If I ever get the chance to fuck her again, I’m going to make sure she knows how I feel. If she likes it rough, I’ll fuck her so hard that she’ll cry for me to make her cum all over again. She’ll never get used to how good I make her pussy feel, and she’ll never run away from me once she realizes that.
I can’t allow hypotheticals and fantasies to take over my mind yet. Iris is in trouble, and it’s my job to make sure she comes through it unharmed. She’s trusting me as I listen to her nervous breathing on the wire taped between her breasts.
Just as I’m about to put my cigar out, I hear a blaring, horrid noise sounding from the computer inside. I feel as if I’ve only been away for a matter of minutes, but it’s been at least an hour. Goddamn it!
When I check her status on the computer, the alert says that she’s been taken off-route. She’s going in the exact opposite direction of the fake methadone clinic, which means that Amy isn’t even going to waste time easing her into the operation.
She’s going to sell her as soon as possible.
She must be on to us.
My heart races as I watch her tracker speeding toward a familiar location, one that I recognize ten seconds later as my former armory. I don’t know if Vitale thinks he’s being clever by using my former inventory as his base, but he’s really fucked himself now.
18
Iris
Amy was much more adept at kidnapping than I would have expected her to be, which was a stupid miscalculation on my part.
Predictably enough, she’d drugged the rim of my water glass at the restaurant. She must have also dosed the prosecco after she’d had her share of it, but I chose not to get drunk around her. I knew I couldn’t trust her from the beginning, and allowing myself to be inebriated around her struck me as an easy trap to avoid.
It turns out that when you avoid an easy trap, another one might appear directly behind it. Someone has Amy very worried about having me sold and shipped to another country in a rapid period of time. Given what I know about Matteo’s situation with Vitale, I wouldn’t be surprised if Vitale is doing the best he can to recoup his losses and flee the country before Matteo can retaliate.
The car ride very quickly indicated to me that we weren’t going to a methadone clinic anywhere near the south side. As soon as I realized that I was in deep trouble, I activated the emergency response on the wire taped to my chest. It’s supposed to be a direct line to Matteo and the men who are in charge of managing this mission, but Matteo never mentioned to me the method he would use to save me.
Was he going to fly a helicopter above my assailant’s vehicle, demanding that I be released to him unharmed? Is he going to direct a battalion of armored trucks to my location like he did the night of the shooting at the warehouse?
I should have clarified with him how exactly he was going to come to my aid when I needed it. “When” not “if” being the active words in this equation. We all should have known that this wasn’t going to be a fair or agreeable situation. People like Amy who cheat at everything will cheat their way out of death, much less a vigilante investigation. How could this be any different?
The drugs that Amy put in my water must have been slow to act, because I didn’t start to feel them kicking in until we pulled onto the wrong highway. It almost felt like it could have been timed that way, her knowing just how horrified I would be when the realization dawned on me. That would have been an evil coincidence, at the very least.
We weren’t even in the car for very long, but it felt like hours as the drugs started to really hit me. I believe she gave me a muscle relaxer, because I feel like I’m trying to drag my own body off the floor with no success.
It wasn’t long before Amy and a few men from inside of a grey building carry me inside that I realize how out of control I am of my surroundings. I’m nearly incapacitated from the drugs, my limbs limp and hanging as they bring me to the last little prison that I’ll experience in the United States: a half-flooded basement with nothing but support beams, rusty chains, and a singular broken chair beneath a lightbulb that has been fighting for its last breath for the past four years.
I’m dumped into the chair, asking myself frantically if I ever managed to get my vaccinations up to date before I feel the rusty chains wrapped around my wrists. I’m bound to the support beam in the middle of the room, and the eerie, haunting feeling of exposure from all sides taunts me.
I try to fall out of the chair just to see if there are any weak points in their trap, but my mind and body are still untethered from one another. I haven’t ever been so frustrated by my body’s inability to function in my life. Why do drugs like these even exist?
I fight to the best of my ability, but it’s all in vain. I doubt I’d even be able to fight this if I were stone-cold sober, but at least then I could say that I gave it everything that I could. I wouldn’t be forced to go down in local history as a helpless kidnapping victim who felt every bit of pain before being forced into slavery or worse – killed.
After watching me struggle with an inappropriate amount of amusement, Amy begins to cut off my clothes with a pair of bandage scissors from an old surgical kit.Was this once a hospital?
“Damn it! I knew it. She’s wearing a wire. I fucking knew it,” she exclaims with her true voice, a much more angular and sarcastic tone than the bubbly princess voice she was using before. Despite the circumstances, I do prefer it.
“If you knew then, why the fuck didn’t you do anything about it?” asks a new member of this circus of horrors who has descended the stairs to join us.
“What the hell was I supposed to do, Vitale? Was I supposed to cut her shirt off in the middle of a five-star restaurant where I bring my business partners?” Amy whines, ripping the tape from my chest as I try and fail to scream in pain.
“I’m not sure, but you didn’t need to bring her all the fucking way here if you had a feeling she was being tracked. God, you’re fucking useless,” the new man growls, kicking the support beam from behind.
I can feel the impact from his kicking, and it feels ruthless with animalistic strength. If this man wanted to kill me, I’m certain that he could do it with his bare hands, though he would settle for kicking me in the ribs and stomach.
