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I stared at the phone. I’d overheard Dornan saying that all of the burlesque club’s numbers were unlisted. Untraceable.
Would it be the same here?
Could I risk it?
I dialled the number I had learned off by heart as a young girl. My heart pounded and I watched the door as the line rang with agonising slowness. One ring. Two rings. I was about to chicken out and hang up when a female voice answered.
It was Mama. I clapped a hand over my mouth, tears springing to my eyes. I muffled a sob as she repeated the same greeting, probably thinking she was about to be connected to a call centre.
The door swung open. Fuck! Dornan rushed at me as I slammed the phone down and jumped to my feet, backing as far away as I could get.
His face was full of barely controlled rage. ‘Who was that?’ he ground out.
I hit the wall behind me. ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I stammered. ‘I swear, Dornan —’
He rounded the bed and grabbed at me, even as I foolishly tried to push him away.
‘WHO WAS IT?’ he roared, two hands going around my neck and squeezing.
I panicked, scratching at his hands with my fingernails. He didn’t budge an inch.
‘Was it your father?’ he asked through tightly gritted teeth.
I couldn’t talk, because he was strangling me to death, so I just nodded as best I could.
He loosened his grip and looked away from me for a moment, appearing to be in thought. He nodded finally, licking his lips.
He pressed me against the wall, his entire body covering me like a heavy blanket, and he shook me roughly.
‘I fucking told you, Ana,’ he breathed in my ear. ‘I warned you about contacting anyone. And you chose to disobey me? After everything?’
I was trying to apologise, but his hands were still around my neck. I wheezed and bucked as tears rolled down my cheeks.
He nodded again, as if affirming a thought to himself. ‘I’ll show you what happens to people who disobey, shall I? Your first and final warning, baby.’
He released me and I fell to the floor, a crumpled heap of arms and legs that had no strength anymore. I managed to push myself up to my hands and knees as I hacked up a lung. My throat felt raw, bruised. I’d have a nice handprint there in the morning, no doubt. Add that to the hickey Murphy had branded me with, and I was a freaking sideshow of bruises and abuse.
I coughed and spluttered, screaming hoassly as a hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled upwards. ‘Get up,’ he roared. I scrambled to my feet, stumbling blindly as he led me out of the room. My heart was beating so fast I thought I was about to pass out, but there was no time for that. I was being led deeper into the clubhouse, past men dressed in leather who averted their eyes when they saw their VP dragging a girl who was probably about to be slaughtered.
I sobbed as he continued to drag me. Down stairs and up hallways, until it seemed like we were going in circles. We were in the basement, judging by the lack of windows. Dornan stopped at a door, his hand resting on the knob as his other hand continued to pull at my hair.
‘Remember,’ he said, his voice low, ‘when people lie to us, we kill them. But if you betray me, Ana, I won’t just kill you fast. I’ll make it last for days, you hear me?’
I nodded. ‘Please,’ I whispered, ‘let’s just go. I promise I won’t do it again.’ Somehow I knew there was something awful beyond that door, and it was something that wouldn’t be able to be unseen.
Dornan appeared to calm down momentarily. I heard a scream on the other side of the door — a woman’s scream. Whoever was in there was in pain.
He seemed to think twice, the woman’s scream apparently shaking him out of his stupor.
‘Promise me,’ he said gruffly, shaking me by my hair.
‘I promise. I swear! I was just scared after what Murphy tried to do, and I slipped. Dornan, I’m sorry.’
He breathed heavily as the woman behind the door continued to wail. I cried, pressing my hands to my ears to try and drown her out. ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Please, Dornan.’
The woman let out a bloodcurdling scream and Dornan snapped back to reality.
He started dragging me back down the way we’d just come, back towards people and the safety of the clubhouse. The safety. It sounded ludicrous, yet I knew it was much more preferable to be up there with those bikers than down in the basement being tortured. Thank God.
