Cruel Paradise (Beautifully Cruel Book 2)

When I regain consciousness, I’m lying on my side in the trunk of a moving vehicle. My hands and feet are bound with something, maybe rope. A rough black cloth hood covers my head. I’m barefoot. Except for a splitting headache and some mild soreness on my biceps where the men grabbed me, I’m unharmed.

My first instinct is to scream.

I fight it, concentrating instead on remaining as calm as possible. I breathe in squares to control my panic, as I was trained to do as a child.

Inhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Start over again.

There’s nothing to be done yet but try to keep track of time. If I can estimate how far the men drive before stopping at the final location they’ll hold me, it will help the police search for me later. If I can somehow get that information to the police.

If the men don’t kill me first.

Inhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Start over again.

I tell myself that it’s likely I won’t be killed. If the men who took me are with the same Serbian gang that Killian said were looking for collateral in a war with my father, I have value. As long as I’m alive, they can negotiate terms. And to negotiate terms, they’ll have to provide proof of life to my father.

He won’t just take their word that they have me. Pictures won’t do it, either, because they could have been taken any time. Years ago, even.

They’re going to have to film me.

Or, worse, put me on the phone with him.

Once they’ve agreed to terms, my captors will have to produce me—still breathing and in mostly one piece—in order to get what they want.

Unless Daddy Dearest doesn’t want me back. Unless he tells them that I’m dead to him already and they can do to me whatever they want.

Inhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Start over again.

He’ll want me back. It would dishonor the family if he allowed his enemies to harm his only child. It would weaken his reputation. He’ll pay what they ask, if only to save face.

Then…oh god.

Then he’ll have me.

And there’s no way in hell he’ll ever let me go again.

I’ll be locked up. Locked down. Forced to live as a captive. He might even send me away to Italy. To live with the Sicilian side of the family, far out of reach of his enemies in New York.

I’ll be married off to one of my brutal, hairy cousins. I’ll be forced to have sex with him. Have his children. Cook his meals. Scrub his toilet.

Inhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Start over again.

I can’t let myself despair. I have to remain positive. Remain calm. Take things one minute at a time. Stay alert and non-combative. Stay alive.

And, no matter what, I can’t let myself think about Killian.

I can’t think about his beautiful dark eyes and his heartbreaking smile. I can’t think about how his voice grows husky when he wants me. I can’t think about how he touches me, or how he kisses me, or his incredibly intoxicating combination of masculinity and tenderness. How gentle he is when we make love. How passionately he fucks me.

How he has an identical twin brother.

I definitely can’t think about that, even if I wanted to, because my brain keeps bouncing off the possibilities. The impossibilities.

The total insanity of what two of them could mean.

What they could do.

Who they could really be.

Or what.

The car pulls to a stop. Doors open and slam closed. Heavy footsteps crunch on gravel. The trunk lid opens, and a rush of cool night air blows in. A male voice addresses me in a heavy Eastern European accent.

“Rule number one: be good or I cut something off.”

His tone is businesslike. Almost bored. This is the kind of threat he makes regularly. Makes and follows through on.

My heart palpitating, I say, “I’ll be good.”

I hate myself that it comes out in a whisper.

He grunts his approval. Grabbing me by the upper arm, he hauls me to a sitting position, then roughly up and over the lip of the trunk. My ankles are tied, so I almost fall forward onto my face when my feet hit the ground, but he yanks me upright and steadies me. Sharp, icy gravel cuts into the soles of my bare feet.

He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.

Though I can’t see him through the hood, I can tell he’s big. Strong, too. This is no mastermind. No strategist. This is the guy the higher-ups send when they need serious muscle. His arm around my thighs is as hard as steel. He’s got an easy, loping walk, like my weight on his shoulder is completely insubstantial.

He’s probably used to carrying weight like this a lot.

Dead weight.

Inhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Start over again.

We go up steps. His boots make a different sound on wood than they do on gravel. A heavy, hollow sound. He stops for a moment. I hear a metallic clang, then the complaining creak of unoiled hinges. Then it sounds like a large door is being pulled open—no, rolled open from one side.

The pungent, distinct scent of horses and damp hay hits my nose, followed by the fainter scent of fresh water.

We must be in the country. There are no sounds other than the gentle chirping of crickets and tree leaves rustling in the cool breeze. I probably have been unconscious for a long time. I’m far away from the city.

If anyone’s looking, they’ll never find me.

Inhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Start over again.

My captor starts walking again. He changes directions a few times, disorienting me. The building we’re in must be large because we walk for quite a while until we stop.

We abruptly begin to descend.

When the elevator lurches downward with a loud creak, I suck in a startled breath.

“Rule number two: be silent unless you’re told to speak.”

I bite my lower lip and swallow the scream clawing its way up my throat.

When the elevator stops, the air is warm and stale. I smell cigarette smoke and the low drone of a radio tuned to a talk channel. There’s a burst of electronic noise, then a voice crackles over a ham radio.

The voice doesn’t speak in English, so I can’t understand what it says.

I’m flipped upright and deposited onto a hard metal chair. The hood vanishes. I blink into blinding white lights directly in front of me. Beneath my feet, the floor is dirt.

From beyond the lights, a man says in English, “State your name for the camera.”

We’re doing this already? They’re not wasting any time.

I moisten my dry lips. Breathe slowly. Sit up straighter in the chair. “Juliet Moretti.”

“Louder.”

“Juliet Moretti.”

“State your date of birth and birthplace.”

He’s totally dispassionate. Emotionless. This is only a job for him. I’m nothing more than a means to an end. He probably doesn’t even see me as human.

Behind my back, my hands shake so badly I can’t curl them to fists.

“January twenty-eighth, nineteen-ninety-five. New York Presbyterian Hospital, Manhattan.”

“State your mother’s maiden name and the name of your favorite childhood pet.”

I have to use the toilet. My bladder is so full it feels like it will burst. “Elizabeth Bushnell. Pippi Longstocking.”

The blinding white lights shift to reveal the shadow of a man behind the video camera. The camera is on a tripod. Three more men stand to one side, silently observing. I can’t see their faces, but I feel their eyes on me. I feel their focus.

One of them has a short leather whip in his hand.

I start to hyperventilate. Breathing in squares does nothing to help.

Killian. I’m so sorry. I was an idiot. I was a fool.

If I could see him right now, I’d tell him that none of it matters. His secrets, his past, his whole life—I don’t care. All I care about is how I feel when he looks into my eyes.

All I care about is him.

No matter who. No matter what.

Just him.

“Say hello to your father, Juliet.”

My eyes are full of water. I blink rapidly to clear them. My pulse is like the roar of the ocean in my ears. I whisper hoarsely, “Addio, papa.”

Addio is the formal way in Italian of saying goodbye to someone you believe you’ll never see again. It’s what I was trained to say in this situation if I felt that the odds of my survival weren’t good. A code to let my rescuers know they needed to hurry.

It’s what I said to my mother’s closed casket the day they lowered her into the ground.

All the little pieces of her they could scrape together.

The man behind the camera steps forward. His head is shaved. He’s wearing all black. A skull tattoo covers his Adam’s apple.

He puts a hand on my shoulder and shoves.

I crash backward. My head hits the floor with a horrible dull thud. I gasp in pain, instinctively rolling to my side, but the man grabs my tied ankles and whips a plastic cable tie around them, binding my feet to one leg of the chair.

I lie on my back with my feet in the air staring up into darkness, panting, convinced I’m about to die.

But death isn’t what they’ve got planned for me. At least not yet.

For now, it’s a little light torture.

I hear the zizz of the whip cutting through the air a split second before it hits my flesh. The tender, unprotected flesh of the sole of my right foot, between the ball and the heel.

The pain is worse than fire. Worse than a hot metal brand pressed against my skin. It’s searing. Stabbing. It goes through me like a spear. I jerk violently, but I don’t scream. Not then. Then I still have hope that it might be over quickly.

The man with the whip extinguishes that hope with ruthless efficiency.

As the camera rolls, he lashes the soles of both of my feet over and over again, until my flesh is shredded and bloody and my screams are so loud, they drown out the sound of his laughter.

Sometime later, when I swim up into consciousness through a throbbing red sea of misery, I find myself in a room. A cramped room dug out of the earth with no windows and no doors, and only an empty metal pot for—I assume—a toilet. The ceiling is an iron grate, about twelve feet above me.

Okay, it’s not a room. Technically, it’s a hole in the ground.

It’s a dungeon.

I look around, fighting panic.

On the plus side, there will be no chance of developing a pesky case of Stockholm Syndrome, because unless one of my captors jumps down here with me for a chat and some brainwashing, it looks like I’m going to be in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future.

On the downside…it’s a dungeon.

I sit up, surprised to find my hands and ankles unbound. I’ve still got my clothes on, which is another plus. But judging by the state of my feet, I won’t be able to walk for a while, much less run away.

Not that it matters in any case, because there’s no way out of here unless someone lowers a ladder.

I peer up at the bars of the grate, wondering if they’ve sent the video to my father yet.

Then I decide I have to pee.

I discover quickly that being unable to walk is a big hindrance to going to the bathroom. Or using a pee pot, as it were.

When I’m done rolling around in the dirt and cursing, I spend several horrified minutes wondering what the hell I’m going to do when I have to go number two. I can’t crouch, and there’s no toilet paper. Things are going to get ugly, fast.

I get distracted by the sound of shuffling from above.

“Head’s up.”

It’s the one who whipped me.

I sit silently against the wall with my legs folded to one side, staring up at him. I’m careful to keep my expression neutral and not glare. I don’t want a follow-up performance of his whipping technique.

He lifts a small square in the grate and lowers a red plastic bucket attached to a rope.

When it comes in contact with the dirt floor of the cell, he jiggles the rope, releasing the bucket. He retracts the rope, closes the grate, and leaves without another word.

I crawl over to the bucket. In it, I find two bottles of water, aspirin, a protein bar, a banana, and a thin wool blanket folded into a square. There’s also a pack of baby wipes, a tube of antibiotic ointment, and a pair of white athletic socks.

I’m not stupid or stubborn enough to refuse these gifts. I know I need to keep up my energy, so I scarf down the power bar and the banana. I pop four aspirin and guzzle a bottle of water. Wincing and gritting my teeth, I clean the bottoms of my lacerated feet with the baby wipes, then apply the ointment.

Then I put on the socks and sit back against the wall.

If I thought jail was good for serious thinking, a hole in the ground is a thousand times better. And it all keeps coming back to Killian.

The possibility that I might never see him again is far more agonizing than my feet.

I must fall asleep, because I wake up with a jerk in total darkness. For a moment of sheer, blinding panic, I think I’m dead. But then I smell cigarette smoke and look up.

Someone sits smoking in darkness above me.

I stay silent. He told me not to speak unless spoken to: this could be a test.

After what seems an eternity, he says, “You did good. No crying. No begging. They always cry and beg. Even the men.”

It’s pitch black, so I feel safe flipping him the bird with both hands while baring my teeth. But I keep my tone mild when I answer.

“Thank you.”

His voice drops an octave. “I like the way you scream.”

Inhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold it for four counts. Start over again.

After another long pause, he says, “Your father’s a hard man to get a hold of.”

Oh shit. My mind goes a million miles an hour, scrambling for anything to offer him. He’s clearly telling me they haven’t been able to make contact with my father yet. He hasn’t seen the video yet.

They don’t have their money yet, or whatever it is they’re after.

And the longer they can’t contact him, the longer I rot in this hole.

“It’s August. He’s probably on his yacht.”

Silence. He smokes, waiting.

“He takes three weeks every August to sail around the islands of Croatia. The name of the yacht is Penetrator.”

He snorts in derision.

I agree. My father is many things, but he’s not a romantic.

I hear a creak above me, like my captor is leaning forward in his chair. If he’s even in a chair. Maybe those are the bolts in his neck making the noise.

“Okay. We find this yacht of daddy’s, you can come up out of the hole. We find out you told me a lie, we fill up the hole with dirt.”

He leaves me alone with only darkness and my own growing fear for company.

For the longest time, I hear nothing. No one comes to tell me anything. I’m so hungry my stomach starts nibbling at itself around the edges. I’ve finished the other bottle of water, and there’s nothing left to eat.

They still don’t come. For hours and hours. Maybe days. I have no idea how long I’ve been in this dark hole, only that no training I had as a child prepared me for this.

For the possibility that I’d be left so utterly alone.

I’ll die down here. I’ll starve to death. No—first I’ll die of dehydration.

And no one will ever find my body. Nobody knows where I am.

Killian. I would give anything to see your face one last time.

That thought is what finally makes me break down and cry.

I lean against the dirt wall with the thin blanket wrapped around my shoulders, shivering like a dog, tears streaming down my face, and let myself sob. I let it all out. All the pain and confusion, all the regret and despair, all the dashed hopes and lost dreams.

I cry for Max and Fin, who’ll never know what happened to me. I cry for the life I could’ve lived, for all the warm summer nights and glorious winter sunrises and dinners with friends I’ll miss. For all the years I had ahead of me.

Years I might have spent with a man. Raising a family. Being in love.

Being loved.

I cry until I’m empty. Until I’m as hollow as a shell.

Then I wipe my face on the blanket, blow out a hard breath, and stand. On my heels, because that’s the only way I can do it without collapsing from pain. I take one of the empty plastic water bottles and use the uncapped end to start digging footholds into the dirt wall.

Because of all the things I am, a fucking quitter isn’t one of them.

I’ve only been digging for maybe five minutes when an explosion nearby knocks me onto my ass.

There’s an abrupt change in the air pressure, followed by a shower of dirt clods raining down onto my head. That explosion is followed quickly by several smaller ones. Then I hear bursts of automatic gunfire and the sound of men screaming. There’s more gunfire, closer, then an enraged, unearthly roar, like nothing I’ve ever heard. It comes again, raising all the hair on my arms.

It’s a scream of fury. Of vengeance. The scream of a demon thirsty for blood, its frenzied bellows echoing down the tunnels.

But it’s not a demon. It’s a man.

It’s my man, and somehow, he found me. He came for me.

And from the sound of it, he’s kicking some serious ass.

My heart takes off like a rocket. I scramble to my knees, craning my neck up toward the grate, toward the flickering orange light and the billowing smoke.

At the top of my lungs, I scream, “Killian! I’m here!”

Footsteps pound on dirt. Closer and closer they come, until a figure appears to one side of the grate and skids to a stop, looking down at me.

He looks like something out of a doomsday movie. He’s a soldier after the apocalypse, combing the ashes of the world for his lost love.

Clad in a military-style camouflage combat uniform, he’s wearing night vision goggles, heavy boots, kneepads, and a black helmet that Darth Vader would approve of. It covers his entire head and face. On his back is a tactical rucksack. The belt around his waist carries a huge knife in a sheath and several sidearms in holders. His chest is covered by a vest that has Velcro pockets stuffed with ammunition cartridges and grenades. Gripped in his gloved hands is an enormous black rifle with an infrared scope on the end.

I can’t even see his face because of the helmet, but I know it’s him.

I’d know that man anywhere.

I gaze up at him, my heart expanding inside my chest. With a hitch in my voice, I say, “Hi, honey. What took you so long?”