Page 12 of Kept By the Bratva

But I have to.

She wouldn’t be mine. There was simply no damn way, no matter how much I wished otherwise.

6

AMY

Time stood still. I rolled back to the other side of the van’s cargo space as they sped away. My head hit the cold metal surface hard. I wasn’t knocked out. My eyes worked. I saw the darkness back in this windowless space.

But I was stunned, suspended in this numbing paralysis of stark, sickening terror. My heart thundered a furious beat against my ribs, and I couldn’t suck in enough air. I didn’t think. I couldn’t. My body did what it had to do, and I couldn’t control any motion. Thoughts didn’t file through my mind.

I locked down, frozen with the utter doom that I’d been kidnapped.

A gag was strapped down over my mouth, roughly and hastily tied there by one of the masked thugs as they’d carried me to the van.

Hard braids of ropes cut into my wrists and ankles, coiled there by yet another thug.

In the blink of an eye, I was captured, mercilessly thrown back here with no hope. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even sit up. No options were available to me.

All I could do was stare out at the walls of the cargo space, zoned out and too worried and frightened to register a single damn detail. They sped through the streets, taking me away from my distracted walk home from work. Hard and rumbling, the growl of the engine reverberated up from the bare, cold floor I rocked and rolled over.

Fuck!It was the only thought, only reaction, I could scream in my mind. With this nasty strip of cloth over my mouth, I lacked the ability to shout or make noise beyond a grunt.

I had nothing prepared to say. Nothing to demand, other than the obvious request to be released.

Time remained stuck in place because I was trapped under the pressure of freaking out. It happened so quickly. So suddenly. I hadn’t been able to run or fight with them outnumbering me. A stubborn part of my brain resisted accepting that this was my reality. In a flash, my fate was changed. I was kidnapped, and without any coherent thoughts or actual visions in my mind, I dreaded what would come.

Another hard turn had me swaying, rolling, and sliding to the opposite side of the cargo space. I closed my eyes and winced, bracing for impact. My limbs were bound. I couldn’t stop the hit against the opposite wall from coming, but it didn’t hurt.

I didn’t crash into another hard wall. Something soft cushioned me and stopped my momentum, and I blinked my eyes open to see what it was.

NowI screamed. A woman. She slumped there unmoving with blood streaking over her brow.

My reaction was muffled, and the effort of screaming had me panting and straining to breathe. I shuffled and wriggled, using my whole body to edge back away from what looked like a corpse.

A dead person. A woman who lookeddead. Shivers raced along my skin as my previous terror escalated into a gut-wrenching horror.

They’d killed her. I couldn’t reach out and know it. I couldn’t check her pulse, but the freakish stillness of her limp weight had to indicate she wasn’t doing well.

They’re going to kill me.Seeing evidence or the implication of this unconscious woman sliced through my thoughts as I snapped further out of that paralyzed state of shock and fright.

They’re going to kill me.I'd never wasted time thinking about life or death. About when my time would come. I’d always had a busy experience of trying to make things work, to get jobs, study, stay out of trouble. All those things prevented me from having idle time to wonder about my mortality, and I'd never been philosophical like that. I preferred to get shit done, to focus on the now and work my ass off to be successful and seek a stable life.

Now, I knew it was over. Unfairness panged deep in my soul, and I wanted to cry at the cruelty of facing my end. I was only twenty-two. It was too soon. I had so much more I wanted to do. I had so much more to give to the world, and I scorned these criminals for daring to snatch me off the streets and?—

I slid again, and I braced for the hit. My feet smashed into the divider between the cargo space and the cab up front where the thugs drove. Bending at the knees helped, but my calf dragged along a rivet or screw on the floor. Blood oozed, slickening the floor and my leg, and the warmth of the sticky liquid made me want to gag.

They’d stopped. The brakes had been hit so hard, the whole vehicle had lurched. But that woman remained limp and heavy where she was.

Dead weight.

I focused on breathing and not puking. If I threw up from this traumatic reality, I’d choke with this gag on.

In. Out. In. Out. Breathe. In and out.

My pulse still pounded fast, and I tensed, fearful of what would come next.

The engine remained running, giving a steady vibration that shook me from lying on the floor. Footsteps hurried around the van. I heard the steady thumps of many people moving, and further out, the sounds of men arguing, yelling, or laughing reached my ears.