Page 6 of Captivated with Them

Chapter Three

Dillon

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MY HEAD POUNDED LIKEI was suffering the worst hangover of my life.

What the fuck had happened?

I tried to think back, but my thoughts were muddled. I remembered Rue and the forest, and men with guns. But, no, whatever had happened to me had happened after that.

It took a monumental effort to get my eyes to respond to my brain’s command to open. Even when I did manage to get them open, I had a moment when I wondered if I’d imagined doing so. I was surrounded in darkness. The floor was cold and solid beneath me.

I tried to sit up, but my hands seemed to be bound behind my back. Every movement sent fresh stabs of pain through my skull. The skin on one side of my face felt tight and crusty, and I realized blood must have run from my scalp as I’d lain unconscious and had since dried.

How long had I been unconscious, and where the hell was I?

I blinked again, straining my eyes against the dark. As I stared, I realized it wasn’t fully dark. A faint light came from just above the floor on one side, perhaps a small slit beneath a closed door.

I tried to edge forward but was yanked back. Fuck. My hands weren’t only bound behind my back, they were also tied to something. From the cylinder shape and the texture of metal, I figure I was bound to a pipe.

“Hey!” I’d wanted my voice to be strong, and powerful, and unafraid, but instead it was a broken croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hey! What the fuck is this? You need to come and untie me, right now!”

Or what? What kind of power did I have to make them do that?

I guessed I was lucky I was even alive.

It was all coming back to me now—being brought back to the city, being in the restaurant the Capellos used as a cover business to hide their shady dealings, then one of their men hitting me. After that, there was nothing.

What had happened to the others?

They were all still alive when I’d been knocked unconscious; I was sure of it. Those fucks had hit me for a reason. They wanted to make a point, or they wanted to use me as leverage.

If it was leverage, it meant they wanted something from the others and were using me to make it happen. For Rue, the reason was obvious. They still wanted her to testify against Joe Nettie. But what about Kodee and Ryan? The Capellos could have just killed us all, but they hadn’t, which meant they planned on using us.

I had no intention of just sitting around and waiting for the Capellos to figure out what they were going to do with me. I was pretty sure whatever they planned wasn’t going to result in them sending the four of us off to the horizon to live happily ever after.

I strained my ears, trying to pick up on any clues as to where I was. Was the low hum in the background that of traffic? Or engines of some other kind?

Whatever it was, it didn’t give me any clue as to my location.

My head was pounding, and my stomach rolled. The result of the bang to the temple, I guessed. I most likely had a concussion. I yanked my hands back and forth, trying to loosen the binds holding me to the pipework. It wasn’t as though I’d been attached with handcuffs. It was only tape, and tape could be torn.

I guessed I was in a cellar, since there didn’t appear to be any windows. Was I beneath the pizza place? If I was, this couldn’t be the main part of the cellar. I’d done enough bar and restaurant work in my life to know the cellars of those kinds of establishments were filled with crates of soft drinks and barrels of beer. The scent of them was distinctive, too, and I wasn’t getting that same sense from this place. I also knew the size of the restaurant, and even though the darkness made it near impossible to see, I was sure the space I was enclosed inside of was far smaller.

I needed to get my hands free from this pipe, and at least then I’d be able to explore my surroundings properly.

Gritting my teeth, I focused on trying to free my hands. I twisted and yanked and pulled, each movement feeling like it was taking yet another layer of skin off, leaving my wrists raw. My shoulders ached from the exertion, and as I gave one final tug, a low guttural growl of frustration peeled from between my lips.

It was no good. I wasn’t going anywhere.

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