AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m in New York. I know you’re not home, and you can’t tell me where you are, but I need you. I don’t want to be alone. Please let me come to where you are.” She’s crying now.
“Why aren’t you in Texas? How did you get back to New York?”
“Please, Aurora. Your brothers are looking for me.”
I can’t betray Lennon’s trust by bringing her here and thus giving up the identity of the person who has me, but I can’t leave her out in the cold either. I will have to go to her, and once I know what is going on, I will call Lennon and tell him. I don’t have the penthouse key card to regain access once I leave anyway. Lennon will have to understand. He will know what to do. If my brothers are after her, I have to help her.
“Okay. Look just tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you. We’ll figure something out.”
She gives me the name of some seedy motel she managed to check into. It’s all that she could afford. I will leave Lennon a note in case he comes back before I have a chance to call. I know I should probably call him now, but I don’t want him to stop me from helping her. And if my brothers are on her trail, I wouldn’t want Lennon to run into them blindly. I have to make sure to get Amerie in the clear before I alert Lennon. I scribble the note explaining what I’m doing and why I couldn’t tell him beforehand, but I will call him I know more. I dress quickly and throw on one of Lennon’s coats with a hood. I slip out of the high-rise apartments without being seen or approached—no security detail to stop me. I walk the endless blocks it takes to get to the motel where Amerie told me to meet her. The soles of my feet are on fire from the long trek, and the jacket and my jeans are soaked from the downpour halfway here. I’m about to reach into the jacket pocket for the phone to call Amerie when a cloth covers my mouth, and I’m pulled into someone’s tight hold. Is it one of Lennon’s men abducting me again? I can’t even scan my surroundings to look for a van. My limbs are weak, and my eyes are heavy. It doesn’t take long for me to succumb to the darkness.
* * *
“Don’t hurt her too bad,”I hear a familiar female voice. “We need her to be able to help us. Not dead.” Light begins to filter out some of the darkness behind eyelids as a foot meets my ribs. Two more kicks and I can see Amerie tugging on the assailant’s arm. “Stop. She’s coming to. Let’s just get this over with.
I’m lying on my side, my face in contact with grimy carpet. I look around the cheap motel with the suspicious bedspread. I try to catalog everything I can.
“Get up, Aurora,” Amerie demands.
I look up at her, my ribs throbbing. I don’t understand. “What’s going on? I thought you needed me?”
The nerdy guy with shaggy hair, who has been doing a number on my ribs, yanks me from the ground and tosses me on the bed.
“I fucking needed you when your father had me in that dungeon of his having me tortured everyday. I had to shit and piss in a bucket and fuck for my food, Aurora. And that was the easy part.”
Tears begin to run down my face. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. I had no idea, but I got help for you as soon as I found out.”
“And that’s just it. How the hell did you manage that? I took all kinds abuse for you and all this time, you were in the hands of someone who was willing to help you. Who did you run off with because it sure in hell wasn’t the guys I was working with.”
Something isn’t adding up here. She just said the guys she wasworking with. “Amerie… what are you talking about? What guys?”
“Ugh, you’re pathetic, you know that? You were supposed to be an easy mark. I worked in your ivory tower to help my mom, and when I got old enough, your father gladly hired me on. My mother was satisfied with the little money, but I hated watching you have the best of everything and still complain about your life. It was exhausting pretending that I cared. Then one day, I had someone reach out to me with a plan that would afford me to finally have a life that I could be proud of.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying someone spotted you on one of your trips out and put two and two together who you were. The funny thing is, it was some of your fucking father’s soldiers. They wanted more too. They waited until I left the house one day and approached me with an offer. All I had to do was alert them when you left the house again. They were supposed to grab you and hold you for ransom. Once they got their money, I would get my cut—one hundred thousand dollars. That’s enough to leave New York and start a life somewhere else.” She slaps me across the face before spitting on me. “Only you fucking let yourself get taken by someone else other than your father’s soldiers. At first, I thought everything was going according to plan until the same two soldiers stopped me on the street because they thought I had worked their plan with someone else. Your father beat me until I admitted that I had been covering for you. He didn’t believe that I had no idea where you went or how you got out of the house.”
“I didn’t let myself get taken,” I yell, rubbing my face where her hand connected with my face. “I wasn’t on some goddamn vacation. I gave away my virginity to save you. All the while you have been a traitor from the beginning.”
She laughs in my face. “Oh, this is gold. Wait until Daddy discovers that his precious princess is nothing more than spoiled goods. I’ll ensure that nugget of information gets out. Say adios to that engagement to Niccolò.”
She lacks any sort of sympathy for what I just revealed. I was only telling half of the truth. Yes, I slept with Lennon as an agreement to save her, but our arrangement is so much more than that. I love him, and ultimately, I chose him over everything else.
“Fuck you!” I scream. I can’t believe that someone could hide who they really are for that long. I thought that she was my friend.
“No, fuck you, Aurora. I’m going to call Alessandro and let him hear your voice as proof of life. Once he wires the money Marty is asking for, we will end your miserable life. This works out better because now we get to keep all the money.”
I don’t know how she plans to get away with what she’s proposing. I see all kinds of flaws with that plan, starting with my brother wouldn’t give any ransom money without ensuring that I’m safe first. Second, no way she and this nerdy kid could take on any of my brothers. I’m content to let them try. My burner phone rings in my jacket pocket, and Amerie loses her shit.
“Moron. You didn’t check her pockets?”
“I didn’t have time,” he says under his breath, wrestling me unnecessarily to get the phone from my pocket. “But at least now, we can use it to make the call to her brother.”
“There has been a change of plans. I have a better idea,” Amerie says deviously. “Strip her naked and put her in the fucking tub.”
I begin to fight the moment he starts trying to remove my clothes. I endure some punches, kicks, and hair pulling from them both before they’re successful in their quest. By the time I’m thrown into the equally disgusting tub, I’m exhausted. I can only curl into a ball as the Marty guy records me on the burner phone. I listen to him state their demands, adding that I’ve already been beaten, my virginity taken, and next would be the end of my life if they didn’t get three million in unmarked bills by tomorrow night. He said that he would be in touch.
“Let’s take this a step further.” Marty grins. “I’m going to send this video to some of the news outlets. Let this hit all the papers and news to gain public outcry. Her family is not exactly on the up and up. Media attention is not something they’d want. They will want to end this as quickly and quietly as possible.”
