“Go ahead,” he nods toward the knife pressed to my wrist, “do it and save me the trouble of having to marry you. With you gone, I get everything I want.”
“How?” I huff. “How am I standing in your way? What the hell do I have that you want?”
“Sir,” the taller of the guys cuts in. “Sir, we have a problem.”
Byron looks at me, the knife, then the guy. “What the hell is it now?”
The guy tips his head, calling Byron over.
With his back to me, I eyeball Trent, challenging him to stop me before I hit the button on the elevator.
Byron and the guy exchange some heated words and I tap my foot anxiously waiting for the doors to open. When they do, all eyes shoot in my direction. “Get her!” Byron shouts.
I step into the elevator and hit the button to close the door repeatedly. They begin to close, but a hand slaps between them, causing the doors to open back up. It’s the smaller one of Byron’s goons. I swing the knife at his hand, slashing it. His howls echo through my head and I turn away so I don’t see the deep wounds pouring blood onto the doors and the floor of the elevator.
With my head turned, I begin vomiting. It all just comes out with no chance of holding it back.
The next thing I know, arms wrap around me and the knife is taken from my hands. “The boat is coming. We need to get the hell out of here now. Give me your fucking phone,” Byron snaps at Trent.
Still holding me, Trent reaches into his pocket and pulls his phone out. Asshole told me he didn’t have any service. How did I not see what a snake he is?
Vomit hangs from my mouth, and I’m unable to wipe it away as my arms press tightly to my chest in Trent’s hold. Byron and the other guys ride the elevator down with us.
My mouth tastes like ass and I’m on the verge of emptying the rest of whatever is in my stomach. “We’re leaving the island?”
Byron taps into Trent’s phone and doesn’t even look at me when he speaks. “Seems we’re getting some unexpected guests.”
The elevator stops, and he slaps the phone in Trent’s hand. “I’ll take her from here. Go wait for the boat.”
Trent shoves me into Byron’s arms in the corridor of the main entrance. Everyone leaves, so it’s just us. Byron holds me from behind and I can feel the tiny hairs on my arms standing up when his hot breath rolls down my neck.
“Seems I’ve got a decision to make, Bella. I can bring you with me and keep you, even though I don’t need or want you. Or I can kill you and leave your body right here on this floor for my good friend and former client, Callum, to find.”
“I thought…I thought you planned to marry me?”
Something happened. For some reason, everything has changed.
“You know, the first time I saw you, I knew you were trouble. I fought like hell to get you out of Callum’s mind, but he fought me harder. I used to watch you for him. I saw you sleeping peacefully in your bed at night, not a care in the world. I jerked my cock while you were showering once. That was a good time. Then there was the time I saw you fingering yourself on your bedroom floor while your parents watched the evening news. Talk about rebelliousness.”
My heart kicks into high gear because what I’m hearing is sickening. All those days that I went on with my life as a normal person, and I was completely oblivious to being watched.
“Each day Callum got closer and closer to getting you, until finally, you came, just like he knew you would. You fought him hard for a while, but eventually, you caved and fell under the spell of the infamous Callum Ellis. Such a fucking fool you are. You see, Bella, you can call me a crook and a liar, but you fell in love with a monster. What I could do to you wouldn’t touch the betrayal he bestowed upon you.”
“I don’t believe anything you say. So shut the hell up!”
“Is that so? What if I told you that you were never protected when you had sex with him? What if I told you that instead of taking birth control, you were taking fertility pills because Callum was trying to impregnate you? Still want me to shut up, Bella?”
“I’d say I don’t believe a word that comes out of your disgusting mouth.” My head tilts down, and I bite into the flesh of his arm. My teeth sink deep, piercing his skin, and the bitter taste of salt and blood seeps into my mouth.
“You fucking bitch.” Byron tries to shove me away, but my mouth is latched so tightly that he’d risk losing a chunk of his skin.
When he grabs me by the hair and jerks my head back so hard I get whiplash, I finally release my bite. My head swings and thrashes as he pulls and the next thing I know, my head is crashing into the wall. My body slides down slowly as everything blurs around me.
“Hurry your ass up. We gotta go,” someone says, though I can’t make out the face or the voice. “There’s a lot of them, Byron. We gotta go, right fucking now!”
I can feel him lift me up, but I’m unable to fight him off.
My eyes close, and I allow myself to drift away to a time I was happy.
“Come on,” Cal says, taking my hand and leading me out the back door of the church.
I laugh as he pulls me, though my resistance tells him I’m not so sure about this. “Cal, we can’t. If Mrs. Webster finds out, she’s sure to kill us.”
“Nah. She won’t even know we’re gone. No one will.”
When the door closes behind us, I drop my head back, letting the warmth of the sun kiss my cheeks. It’s a beautiful day without a cloud in sight.
“Still wanna go inside for youth group?” he asks, his hand still holding mine.
My head comes forward, and I look at him, our smiles matching. “No way.”
Cal leads me over to the side of the church. Not a person, car, or house to be seen. We sit down in unison, backs pressed against the building, legs bent at the knees.
Once a week, we take a bus to youth group. Now that I’m eleven, I’ve been moved up to the same class Cal is in. It’s a two-hour break for Mrs. Webster and a chance for us to get right with the Lord—aside from our regular Sunday morning service.
“Is this where you disappeared to the last couple classes?”
Cal smirks. “Maybe.”
“And why wasn’t I invited then?”
He grabs my hand, flips it over, and begins tracing the lines on my palm. Something happens inside me. My stomach does this weird flip-flop thing and my heart begins beating superfast.
“Didn’t know you’d wanna hang out with me outside of the home.”
“Cal,” I blow out his name in one breath, “I always want to hang out with you. You’ve been my best friend since I got here. Why would you say that?”
He doesn’t look at me, just keeps drawing on my hand and causing goosebumps to ride up my arm. “Saw you with Mark and Trent a couple weeks ago. They were poking fun at my pants being too short and you laughed with them.”
The flip-flop of my stomach stops when my heart settles inside it. “I’m sorry, Cal. You never should’ve heard that.”
“You never should’ve let 'em get away with saying it.”
“You must’ve missed the part where I told them to both eat a bag of dicks.”
Cal’s eyes widen, finding mine. “You didn’t?”