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Headlights flashed in the parking lot, blinding me. I squinted through the bright lights, vaguely making out the shape of a truck. Luca had finally come through.
“That’s your ride over there,” I called to the women hiding in the dark. “Time to go.”
A whimper floated across to me.
Fuck, I loved the sound of her fear. It soothed every ragged edge inside me.
I drew closer, her features becoming clearer as the light from my phone lit her up. She was folded in on herself, her cries full of pain and fear.
I stared down at her. “That’s what you get for trying to run from me.” I glanced around but didn’t see any sign of Bethany-Melissa. “Your friend just left you for dead, huh? Great friend she is. Get up.”
She didn’t move. Just crouched there, shaking like a leaf between holes dug out for pylons and mountains of dirt. The excavators around her made her look even smaller and more pathetic than she already was, their size dwarfing her.
“I said, get up. Luca Guerra is not a man you want to keep waiting.”
She disobeyed me again, refusing to move. My patience snapped, my anger boiling over.
“Are you deaf, bitch? Move!” I shoved my fingers into her hair and yanked her up.
She unraveled from her crouched position, straightening.
Metal glinted around her fingers.
I opened my mouth to shout something, but her fist hit my stomach, the metal knuckles stealing my breath. Pain splintered through my abdomen, and I let go of her hair to reach for my stomach.
She followed up with a second loaded punch before I could.
A howl escaped my lips at the burn of agony. I hunched over, trying to breathe but couldn’t. I dropped my phone, the screen shattering when it hit the hard ground.
Rebel delivered another two strikes to my ribs, each one creating a cracking noise as the bones broke.
Spearing pain shattered through my entire body, radiating out from the sharp, unexpected hits I hadn’t been able to protect myself against. “You stupid—”
“Now, Bliss!”
Something hard rammed me from behind and didn’t let up. Already off balance, I stumbled forward, pain pounding through my injuries with every step.
Until the dirt gave way below me.
The edge of the pylon hole crumbled.
And I fell headfirst into a hole so deep I had no chance of getting out.
43
REBEL
My hands throbbed from the impact of the knuckle-dusters against Caleb’s midsection.
My wrists ached from the open wounds I’d given myself getting the restraints off with a combo of my teeth and pure determination and the barbed reinforcement bars I’d seen the night Kian had brought me here.
But Caleb hitting the dirt at the bottom of the pit was music to my ears. It made all the pain and the fear and the waiting in the dark, completely exposed, worth it.
I peered over the edge at his crumpled body.
“Is he dead?” Bliss gasped, breathing hard from the exertion of running her ex into a pit.
Caleb groaned from the bottom of the hole.
