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My heart is pounding so hard against my ribs that my chest aches. Drawing in deep breaths through my nose, I try to force my heart to stop beating so hard. So loudly. I can barely even hear anything over that panicked thumping.
I’m zip tied to a chair, my wrists and ankles secured to the metal legs and armrests, I’m gagged, and there is a dark hood over my head. The hard plastic edges of the zip ties dig into my skin. I can’t move. I can’t speak. And I can’t see.
But I’m unharmed.
Back in that alley, I did what Jace told me to do. I didn’t fight my abductors. I gave them no reason to hurt me. I handed over my phone when they told me to. I held out my wrists when they told me to. I stood there quietly and let them gag me and blindfold me and lead me into their van. I walked willingly when they pulled me out of the van again after we stopped. I sat down in this chair when they told me to. I let them zip tie me to it.
And because of that, I am unharmed.
They threw my phone on the ground in that alley and crushed it with a boot.
But I’m still wearing my watch. My completely analog wristwatch that is somehow still going to lead Jace here.
My heart squeezes hard.
Jace.
His final words to me echo inside my skull.
I’m coming for you.
Drawing in unsteady breaths through my nose, I try to block out my hammering heart and my racing pulse and instead focus on that one simple fact. Jace is coming for me.
The metallic creaking of a door being opened comes from somewhere on my left. My heart leaps into my throat at the sudden sound. I once more try to force it to calm down so that I can hear over the blood pounding in my ears.
Several sets of footsteps echo between the walls.
The door falls shut with a thud.
The footsteps continue in my direction.
I draw in shuddering breaths.
“I gave you three months to get your shit together and pay off your debt to me,” a gravelly voice says. “And you’re almost out of time now. I’m here because you promised that you could pay it all off tonight. With interest. And yet, that does not look like a mountain of cash.”
It’s a man, that much I can hear. But I don’t recognize the voice at all.
I force myself to remain completely still as the man stops right in front of me. The other footsteps fall silent as well. My treacherous heart slams against my ribs.
“It’s something better,” another man replies. “It’s a blank check.”
This voice, I recognize. But before my panicked mind can sort through the memories and place the voice, the bag is yanked off my head.
I blink against the sudden light from the fluorescents above.
When I open my eyes again, I find myself in a warehouse. A man in his fifties is standing right in front of me, staring down at me. His brown hair has started to turn gray but his brown eyes are hard. He is wearing an impeccable dark gray suit and a single gold ring on his finger.
My heart stalls. Because I know who this is. I had never heard him speak before, so I didn’t recognize his gravelly voice. But I know what he looks like.
This is Gregor Doyle. He’s a loan shark who runs one of the biggest gambling empires in this state. His business practices are as slimy as they are cut-throat.
“This is Kayla Ashford,” the second man says. The man whose voice I recognize.
I tear my gaze from Doyle and flick it to the man standing next to him.
My eyes widen, and I jerk back in my chair, as utter shock slams into me.
“Lionel?” I blurt out. Or I try to. The gag muffles it into garbled mumbling.
