Page 20 of Cash's Treasure

She doesn’t say a word, simply smiles back at me, and I want to gush to her all about this man I am in love with when she starts to fade away. I call her back, screaming and yelling for her to stay just a little bit longer, but she fades into the light, blowing me a kiss before she does.

I wake up with a start, sweating and shaking, expecting to find myself back in my apartment, but instead, the bed doesn’t feel familiar. In fact, it’s hard and lumpy, and it takes me a minute to realize it’s not a bed I’m actually on, but the floor.

“Mom, I think she’s awake,” says an annoyingly familiar voice.

“The little bitch slept all afternoon. I told you not to drug her too heavily.” I cringe at the hard voice I’ve come to associate with my stepmother. She is a hard woman with eyes as cold as ice, but not in the same way as Cash’s. Cash can be cold, but he is not cruel or mean. My stepmother’s face would probably make a baby cry, which makes me wonder what my father ever saw in her. How did he go from an angel to the devil incarnate?

“I’m telling you, Ma, it’s a good thing we grabbed her before that biker showed up and punched me again. He broke my nose, and now I’ll have to get it fixed, but we don’t have any money.”

Henry’s words take me by surprise, and I struggle to sit up so I am facing the three people seated on the bed. I groan when my head throbs, and I fight the urge to be sick or fall back to the floor, choosing instead to lean up against the wall.

“What do you mean you don’t have money?” I ask against my better judgment, and the trio turns to me.

“None of your business, bitch,” Mark says, and I glare at him before turning my attention back to my stepmother.

“My father left everything to you. What do you mean you don’t have any money?” My stepmother glares at me but doesn’t respond, which sends bile rising up my throat. “How could you be so careless with the things he left you? He loved you.”

Grief causes a painful lump to form in my throat. When my father decided to leave everything to this woman and her adult kids, I was hurt, but I figured he must have had his reasons. When they kicked me out, I was crushed and broken inside, but I never went back to plead for them to take me in. For them to imply that they carelessly wasted all the money he left them is the first real cause of anger I experience. Heck, I don’t even care that they kidnapped me, only that they cruelly disrespected something that wasn’t theirs in the first place.

I don’t know what comes over me as I lunge at all three of them, using my nails to viciously scratch at any skin I come into contact with. I punch and bite and tear at everything in my way as I scream my lungs out, hating these three like I’ve never hated anything in my life before until they manage to overpower me, tying me down this time. I take satisfaction in the fact that they’re all bleeding.

As I fall back down on the floor, my hands and feet tied with bedsheets, I swear on my mother’s sweet soul that whatever these animals want from me, they’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.

And when Cash catches up to them, I won’t stop him this time.

They deserve whatever’s coming to them.

Chapter Nine

Cash

Something is wrong.

I sense it the second I walk into the bar. The place is busier than usual, but that makes sense because it’s the weekend. Even with the place at capacity, my table in the corner remains unoccupied.

I walk straight to the bar, people moving out of my way as I approach the counter. Two bartenders are working with at least five waitresses rushing around to serve the customers, but none of them are the girl I am looking for. Perhaps she’s in the backroom, but it makes no sense for Kayla to be relaxing on such a busy night. That is unlike her.

“Where is Kayla?” I ask one of the bartenders, who just shakes his head.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her today.”

Fuck!

I whirl around and look for Kayla’s friend, the girl with the blue hair who always seems to know where she is. When I spot her, she’s chatting up with a few patrons at a table, flashing them what I assume is her “customer smile,” wide and empty.

They tip her, which I assume is what she was aiming for with that smile, and when she spots me, her brows draw in confusion. She rushes to me when I beckon her forward.

“Sir, do you need something?”

“Kayla,” I respond.

“What? I thought she was with you. She didn’t come to work today.”

My blood chills at her words. I dropped Kayla off myself a few hours ago. How the fuck does no one know where my fucking woman is! “Are you sure?” I ask.

“Positive. I would have known if Kayla showed up to work.”

“Shit,” I snarl, rushing out of the bar. I look around the building and notice a camera pointing at the parking lot and another at the entrance. One of them must have caught something.

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