Page 107 of Reluctantly His

“Stop struggling, bitch. I should have drugged you like Mary suggested.”

Mary? Mary who?

The second I was pushed through the double doors, freezing rain pelted my exposed skin, like icy bee stings. The frigid air burned my lungs, but I pushed past it and screamed, “Help!”

“Go ahead, darling,” Romney taunted as he yanked my hair back so rainwater went into my mouth and nose. It was raining so hard, I couldn’t even open my eyes against the onslaught. “No one is going to hear you.”

I tried to scream again, but instead, I choked and struggled to cough up the water in my lungs without breathing in more.

He laughed as he tightened his grip on my hair and leaned down to whisper in my ear, “You are mine now, and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. Your father will honor that marriage contract or face the scandal of having his precious daughter outed as a whore.”

“I’ll never marry you, you dickhead,” I choked out as lightning flashed across the sky again, followed by another deafening boom of thunder.

The other men had already reached the van and held open the back doors, waiting for Romney to roll me the rest of the way.

Then two hollow-sounding pops cut through the air.

CHAPTER 38

REID

This shit was never going to happen again.

Charlotte was soaked through, blood still dripping down one of her arms.

The sight nearly knocked me to my knees. I would never let this happen again.

When I walked into her hospital room, I realized she must have just been taken.

The blood on the floor was still wet, leaving a blood-smeared wheelchair trail.

The nurses had been on a shift change, so they had no idea where she’d been taken.

The head nurse taking over rounds hadn’t yet made it to her room.

I told her to stay where she was and lock down the rest of the floor while I followed the bloody path leading to a well-hidden service elevator.

The second I was in the elevator, I pulled my gun, not wanting to scare the nurses and then get slowed down by security.

I didn’t know where they had taken my girl, but I knew I had to get her back before they left the building.

Once they managed to get her to a second location, the chances of me finding her alive were slim to none.

I would find her, but the sooner I found her, the better.

Protecting Charlotte was my responsibility, and nothing was going to stop me from that.

There was a small puddle of her blood on the elevator floor, with two separate sets of tracks. That meant not only were the tracks heading into the elevator, but there would be tracks on whatever floor she got off on.

I started by hitting the button for the first floor, thinking that was the most obvious.

When the doors opened, there was nothing on the smooth tiles other than a little bit of dirt and grime, so at least I knew that that floor hadn’t just been cleaned.

I considered heading to the roof, knowing there was a possibility of her attacker taking her by helicopter. But first, I wanted to check the basement level.

Something in my gut told me she was on the ground, not in the air.

I hit the button for B1 and checked my gun as I waited. I knew it was clean. I knew it was fully loaded, but I had to do something other than stare at the pool of my girl’s blood on the floor.

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