Page 52 of Crave Me

Asher whistled. “Incredible save. You were moments away from being flung from this slick Maserati at one-hundred-and-sixty miles an hour.”

I grinned. “He’s not wrong.”

“Well, shit. After me coming out here to do this with you? Being on my best behavior? Having Skylar’s back through all of this, while you’ve been doing the opposite and pushing her away?”

“And the being-flung-from-the-car option is right back on the table,” Asher commented with a roll of his eyes at Damien’s lack of sense and self-preservation.

Oftentimes, he really didn’t have a filter. It was because he rarely thought properly before he spoke.

Luckily for him, he was saved by my phone ringing from its handsfree setup on the dash.

I eyed the call display and shook my head to myself. Unbelievable. He was actually being saved by Skylar.

I’d taken my focus off him to tend to higher priority matters and now this strange connection had developed between them.

Hell.

I answered the call, “Skylar, everything well?”

“Caspian, hi. How far out are you?”

“Thirty minutes, give or take,” Asher answered.

“Good,” she breathed with obvious relief. “There’s still time.”

“Time for what?” I asked.

“Bastian woke up a few minutes ago and told me exactly what happened. Thanks to him I now know where they’re holding Caleb. And it’s a good thing he was able to tell me because he says it’s like a maze out there and the place is incredibly well-hidden. It could’ve taken you ages to find it.”

“What’s the location?” Asher asked, readying his phone to take down the details.

She reeled off the address and precise directions Bastian had managed to ascertain. Particularly impressive given the state he’d been in.

“Very good,” Asher murmured as he jotted it down, then tried to pull up blueprints for it.

“What else?” I asked down the line.

“There were twenty guys, plus Elijah. But Caleb took out five of them.”

I started. “Caleb did? So he was free?”

“They weren’t being held together. Bastian was able to break out of the basement of a guesthouse he was being held in. He fashioned a couple of weapons and then broke Caleb out from a bedroom in the mansion where he was being… tormented. It also looked like Elijah was trying to turn him, brainwash him, or something. He was subjecting him to video footage of the people he’d saved with his facilities being abused before they’d been rescued, while he was forced to… uh… find release. He was also being used by the guards to… relieve themselves on in various ways. Bastian warned of Elijah mentioning some girls arriving soon to further the torment. And the bastard himself… he’s taken him as his pet. Fuck, it’s… I can’t… just uttering these words is… but you need to know what you’re walking into.”

My fingers dug into the steering wheel and I was close to shattering my teeth from how hard I was grinding them in a bid to temper my reaction.

I was already aware of Elijah playing with Caleb from that awful photo he’d sent me as proof of life. It was why I’d become so… on edge as Dante and Luke kept calling it.

But this… what she was reporting… it was beyond even that.

I could barely breathe through the pain and rage rolling through me.

“Caspian? Are you still there?” Skylar asked, her concern bleeding into me.

“He’s here,” Asher answered for me. “Just absorbing your report, sweetheart. We’ve got it from here. This is very helpful. Thank you.”

“Okay, please just… be careful.”

“You got it, Bluebell,” Damien called from the back.

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