AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Eight
Kaja
––––––––
IHAD NO IDEA WHEREthisvärdjas—thisbastard—was taking me. I’d expected him to drive towards Tallinn, but instead we were heading deeper into the country.
I’d given up any hope that my father or his men was on our tail. If someone had heard the gunshot, they might have put it down to hikers or hunters. Assuming no one had even noticed I was missing, there was no reason for them to think it was something more sinister.
I must have dozed for a while—the movement and low hum of the vehicle lulling me into a daze—because the next thing I knew, my kidnapper was stopping in front of a one-storey log cabin. How long had we been driving for? An hour? More? The sun was high and bright in the sky now, the grey of yesterday replaced by a deep blue. At this time of year, it was getting dark early and the sun rising later, so I knew we must have been travelling for some time.
My shoulders ached from my arms being tied behind my back for so long, and the material stretched between my lips tasted rank.
Decking ran around the cabin, and a path led from a set of double glass doors down to the lake where a jetty stuck out over the water. The sun glinted off a huge window that offered a view across the lake.
If I hadn’t been kidnapped, I’d have been happy to be here.
The English man stopped the vehicle and turned off the engine. He climbed out and left me sitting in the back while he approached the front door. He looked as though he was searching for something on the wall, and then he spotted whatever it was and used his finger to press what I assumed to be a security panel of some kind. I guessed he’d retrieved a key as he used it to open the front door.
He turned back to the vehicle and approached the rear door. I pressed myself back into the seat, wishing it would open up and swallow me.
He opened the door closest to me. “I’m going to unhook these now.” He was referring to the ropes. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I most likely was going to do something stupid. If he thought I was going to make this easy for him, he could think again.
He reached past me to unhook the ropes. The proximity of him, the scent male and tangy, the heat of his skin pressing against mine did strange things to my insides. My hormones were clearly working harder than my brain right now. I blamed it on my age.
The moment he’d freed me, I threw myself onto my side, so my feet were at his end, and drew back my legs and let fly, kicking out as hard and fast as I could. My bare feet meant I couldn’t do that much damage, but as he grappled for me, I caught him in the jaw. The blow sent his head rocking backwards, and even though he recovered quickly, I still took great pleasure from it.
He grabbed both my ankles and yanked me from the vehicle. With my hands tied behind my back, there was little I could do to protect my fall, and I hit hard, smacking the back of my head against the ground. Stars burst in my vision, and I groaned and tried to roll to my side.
The Brit towered over me. “Is that how you want this to go? If you want me to hurt you, I will, and I’ll take great pleasure in doing it. In fact, I’ll film the whole thing and send it to your father so he can see just how much satisfaction I’m getting from causing you pain.”
I’d been right in my instincts of believing this had to do withhim. What had my father done to upset this man so much that he felt the need to kidnap me and, it seemed, torture me just to piss him off? I experienced a surge of fury towards the man who’d given me life. Not only had he spent every moment of my existence trying to control me, he’d now done something that had put me in danger.
Hell, who was I kidding? I’d always known the things my father did would put me in danger. Normal people didn’t live in a compound surrounded by eight-feet-tall wire fencing with armed men patrolling it. They didn’t print out sheaf after sheaf of foreign money and meet with strangers who shook hands and spoke in low voices and always carried guns.
I allowed him to haul me to my feet. A red mark had already bloomed on his annoyingly square jaw, but he didn’t rub at it or do anything else to acknowledge I had hurt him in return.
