Page 3 of Rage

But she was alive. She had to be. Otherwise there would be no shift change. No guards.

He stood, trying to calm the adrenaline flooding his veins.

"Convene with the men in two hours,” he said to Max.

"All of them?" Max asked.

"All of them."

2

Ruby

Ruby peered through the shadows and focused on the scratching sound in the corner.

She wasn't afraid. Not of the scratching sound anyway.

The mice and rats that had been her companions in the weeks she’d been imprisoned were a welcome distraction from her eventual fate.

Not that she knew what that was. But she could guess.

The first few nights, she'd been terrified when the creatures had emerged from the crumbling walls of the building where she was being held. She'd only ever seen mice and rats in the city or on the subway. They'd seemed dirty and menacing and she’d quickly hurried Olivia away from them.

But here she’d come to think of them as her friends. The rats were a bit bolder than the mice, coming within inches of her until she shooed them away, but they never came closer or tried to hurt her.

And anyway, what else was there to do but observe their movements as they scuttled around the room?

She pulled her two thin blankets more tightly around her shoulders — it was freezing — and drew her knees up to her chest on the dirty mattress that had been her bed since the men had thrown her into the van. She'd long since given up on an escape plan. She had no idea where she was but it was quiet, the sounds of the city distant, the building clearly set apart from the rest of civilization.

And then there was the matter of the iron cuff around her wrist. A shackle really, one that was attached to the brick wall with an iron chain. A bucket in the corner was her toilet, the ultimate humiliation, although at least they left her alone.

The shackle allowed her to move in an eight-foot radius around the bed. In the beginning she’d tried to get the iron cuff off. When that had proved futile she'd worked on the chain, looking for a weak link.

But in the end it was all pointless. They gave her one meal a day, takeout usually, and only ever provided plastic utensils. She had no tools, no weapons.

No way out.

Sometimes — on the rare occasions when it didn’t hurt too much to remember moments with her daughter — she replayedThe Princess BrideandThe Neverending Storyin her mind from beginning to end, imagining Olivia was sitting next to her on their little sofa in their cozy apartment. Other times she sang Olivia's favorite songs one right after the other.

She had to believe Olivia was okay. Adam would never allow anyone to hurt their daughter.

She ignored any memory of his meanness, refused to recount all the times he’d done things Ruby had once thought he would never do. Olivia was his daughter. He’d never given any indication that he would hurt her the way he'd hurt Ruby.

Plus, there was no way Ruby’s father and sister would allow it. Between the three of them, Olivia would be taken care of, regardless of what happened to Ruby.

And Ruby had only the vaguest of ideas of what might happen to her. She didn't even know who’d kidnapped her, although she assumed it was connected to Roman’s business.

Adam was wrong about a lot of things, but he’d been right to tell Ruby about Roman’s connection to the criminal underworld. It was the last thing Ruby wanted around Olivia. Ruby had lost her mother to New York’s criminals. She wasn’t going to risk her daughter’s safety.

Not even for Roman Kalashnik.

Which didn’t mean Ruby hadn’t thought of him. There was anger for sure. She wished she’d never met him, imagined her life continuing as it had been — devoid of color except for her daughter, but safe.

But sometimes, when it was dark and she was alone with nothing but the scratching of her rodent friends, she imagined Roman with her, closing her eyes and sinking into the memory of his strong arms around her.

It was fucked-up, but until she’d learned the truth about who he was, she’d never felt so safe.

She looked up at the broken factory windows near the room’s ceilings and studied the pale light just beginning to wash over the room’s brick walls.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com