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“Get your hands off me,” João said, shoving me away. “She said she had to work until six. She’s supposed to watch Ana in fifteen minutes. I don’t know where the fuck she is. I’m not on her ass twenty-four/seven.” João eyed my uncle. “And the fuck is Avery doing here?”
Avery stepped forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. “The mob took Vera.”
João’s face dropped. “No, they fucking didn’t.”
As I heard the words come out of his mouth … they made me weak again. So fucking weak that if it wasn’t for Avery holding me up by the fucking shoulder, I would’ve collapsed onto the floor yet again.
“You need to help us find her,” I pleaded, knowing that Avery could only do so much.
One wrong move by Avery, and the mob would have no problem killing him, especially if he tried to stop this. He might’ve done work for them, but … they weren’t as forgiving as they had been years ago when they refused to kill Vera’s father. They had started a fucking sex trafficking ring, for fuck’s sake.
Poison took one long look at each other, and then João finally turned back to me. “What do you need?”
ChapterSeventy-Eight
VERA
Cold.
I was so cold.
Blindfolded and bound, I sat on what felt like a concrete floor in the middle of a silent room. I couldn’t remember anything after Jim had thrown me to the ground and kidnapped me at the library. But from the goose bumps rising on my skin, I knew that all of my clothes, except for my bra and underwear, had been ripped off me.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I stared at the darkness through the blindfold, trying to make out anything in the room, but I couldn’t. I wanted to scream, to cry, to beg for my life, but I didn’t even know if anyone was around.
I scrambled around on the floor, crawling around like a madwoman to find a wall or a door or something. I couldn’t just sit around and wait for terror to happen to me. I needed to find Blaise.
He’d help me.
“Blaise,” I murmured, knowing that he wasn’t here but his name kept me sane. “Blaise.”
Continuing to crawl on my knees alone, I bumped into a concrete wall. I twirled around, pressed my back against it as hard as I could, and tried to use it to help me stand. With my feet bound, I drove my weight through my heels and pushed myself a couple inches into the air.
Then, I fell.
Flat on my ass.
I tried again, getting what felt like a foot in the air before I fell shoulder-first into the ground once more. My body smacked against the concrete with a thud, and I whimpered softly, biting back a sob.
At this rate, I’d never make it out of here.
What is Jim planning on doing with me? Holding me here forever? Raping me?
All I had done was told him no. Why couldn’t boys take no for an answer? Why did they think they were entitled to everything we were, to our bodies and our minds and our time? It … it wasn’t fair. I wanted to go home.
“Please,” I cried. “Let me go home!”
When nobody answered, I scrambled to the wall again and desperately attempted to stand three more times—failing every single fucking one of them. I lay on my stomach with my cheek pressed against the concrete and my salty tears rolling onto my lips.
“Let me out!” I screamed, kicking my bare foot against the wall. “Please!”
No answer.
“Jim!”
Silence.
“Blaise will kill you if you touch me!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, wanting to intimidate him. Jim had never been one to fight or even seemed like he had a hard-core, bone-breaking bone in his body. “He’ll kill you, like he killed Skylar!”
