Page 122 of The Silencer

Goddamnit.

Blood trickles from the wound on my forehead, and I groan lowly against my mouth restraint.

Fuck.

Fuck, where am I?

Suddenly I feel the rasp of an engine starting, the crunch of tires.

I’m in the trunk of a car. I can smell the exhaust wafting up toward me, can hear the rumble of music. What the fuck is that?

I strain my ears and make out some kind of horn. Are they listening to ska?

Jesus, I think as I let my head thunk down on the cold metal beneath me. As the car moves forward, I’m jostled back and forth, my stomach roiling from whatever they gave me.

Shit. What did they give me?

Must have been something injected into me, a sedative. My breathing grows labored, and I try to calm myself, but it’s hard to even attempt. I don’t know where I am or where they’re taking me.

What are they going to do to me? Being in the trunk of a car is never a good sign. Don’t people usually end up dumped in a lake when they’re toted around like this?

Oh my god.

How did this happen?

I try to go over the events of the night, but I come up with nothing. Anthony spared no expense on security at his house. He doubled his guards. This shouldn’t have happened. And yet it did.

Somehow they got in. They found me. And now I’m here.

I could be fish food soon.

The thought causes my chest to clench and my mouth to go even drier than it already was. I hear my muffled sobs behind the rag stuffed in my mouth, and in this moment, I feel small and pathetic. A soul easily snuffed out by something evil.

I’ll be leaving so much behind, so much potential.

Friends. My parents. Anthony.

My hands strain against the bonds and yet they don’t break. They just continue to dig into my skin, chaffing my wrists until I lie there defeated. There’s nothing I can do but wait.

Suddenly, the car stops and I roll forward, knocking my head once more against the sharp protrusion I can’t see. I hold my breath, eyes wide when I hear the trunk pop open and light filters through. I blink against the shadowy figures leaning over me.

“Well, hello there,” a dark voice says. I can hear the slither of evil, the way he hates me and yet has never even met me.

I blink up at him, never having seen him before in my life.

He has a neatly trimmed graying mustache and white hair, tattoos crawling up his neck. He looks stern and weathered, as if he’s seen more than his fair share of life, and I wonder how that plays into my fate.

Who the fuck is this? I rack my brain but come up with nothing.

“Get him out. Put him in the cellar,” he barks and then two meatheads grab on to me, their beefy arms hauling me up. I knock against the trunk door and cry out as pain explodes down my temples and into my neck. But they don’t hesitate, even when I writhe and kick, fighting to escape even though I have nowhere to go.

I have no way to get out of here. Unless someone comes to rescue me.

He’s going to come rescue me, right?

He wouldn’t just leave me.

You’re mine. Mine.