Page 20 of Wicked Vengeance

“I didn’t tell them anything about the Shadows. No one knows I’m connected to you at all. Think about it. This can work in your favor. I can tell you what I’ve learned, and you can take him down. Come on, man. Let me fix this.”

“Where is our girl, Aaron?” Digging the sharp tip into his cock through his pants, I apply just enough pressure.

“Fuck! Stop! A warehouse! I followed the woman to one of his old warehouses.”

“What woman?”

“The one calling the shots at Twisted. She had King's men with her. I think they called her Ava. She drugged your girl and handed her off to me for transport.”

“You better tell me where that warehouse is right the fuck now, or I’m going to gut you like a goddamn fish and feed you your innards,” I growl, my voice not sounding like my own as my blood pounds in my ears.

Who the fuck is Ava?

When he sputters out the location, Royal and Alek step out of the shadows like two angels of death waiting to claim their next soul from this plane. Their faces are chiseled from emotionless stone, but the anger rolling off them screams danger as they stalk forward into the light.

Royal grabs his hair, snatching his head backward as he sneers into his face. “You better hope we find her quickly before you bleed out.”

His eyes snap to mine, and a single nod is all the direction I need. My blade sinks deep into his thigh, close enough that I might have nicked his cock– not that I care. He won’t be keeping that very long anyway. His screams fill the playroom as we turn and walk away from him, taking the steps two at a time, my brothers right on my heels.

“Let’s go get our Queen.”

Chapter 15

Raena

Pain is an old friend, welcoming me home like I’ve been away for far too long. My body aches, and not in the delicious way I’ve grown accustomed to since my Shadows came into my life.

No.

This familiar ache is unwanted and violating.

Peeling my eyes open, darkness greets me. My back presses into a mattress, my hands gripping the soft sheets beneath me–too soft to be the same ones I had in my old cell. Nothing but the pain feels familiar at all. The bed’s not hard and lumpy. The blanket covering my body is not scratchy or thin. It’s too comfortable.

Did I get rescued after I passed out?

Am I back at the Shadows’s house in one of their beds?

My body flies up in the darkness, no restraints holding me down. Hope helps me block out the pain between my legs, confusing me, but I ignore it. Throwing off the plush blanket, revealing my naked body, I try to get to my feet. But my weak legs shake as dizziness overtakes me, and I fall back onto the bed into a large, wet spot.

“I wouldn’t try to get up right now. You have enough drugs coursing through your veins to tranquilize a horse.” My mother’s voice mocks me from somewhere in the darkness. Or maybe she’s haunting me in my mind. I don’t know anymore. I can’t think straight.

“I don’t know what you did to piss him off, but he shot you up with something. He tied me up here and made me watch while he fucked you.” Venomous disdain coats her words, the darkness too thick to see where she is. “You’re a dirty little slut, you know that? Even unconscious, you gave him your pleasure. Moaning and begging. You even gave him more than one orgasm. Do you feel that? The bed is wet from you, little whore. ”

I can’t even respond as fury floods my body– adrenaline and rage making a potent mixture even with whatever drugs he injected me with.

All I can see is red.

I can practically taste her blood in my mouth, coating my tongue like acid as I slowly stand to my feet once more. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going, but I can’t listen to her anymore. She’s my mother, for fuck’s sake. And she just watched him rape me. It was one thing to facilitate my kidnapping, not once, but twice. But this.

I have to get out of this room.

There’s a window in here, and even though it’s dark out, I can see moonlight streaming in through the sheer curtains. Using the window to guide me, I find the door and flip the light switch on the wall next to it. Soft light bathes the room, illuminating the large space. There's the bed I was on, a large four-poster bed decorated in fancy cream and white bedding. It’s a lavish room, so much of a contrast to the dingy, cold cell I was in before, that it gives me whiplash. But I push the revelation aside in favor of getting the fuck out of here.

Turning to the door, I twist and pull. Throw my unsteady weight against it, but it’s no use. It’s locked. Of course, it’s locked. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems.

Turning around, I find my mother staring at me, her evil eyes peering into mine like I’m beneath her. The chair she’s tied to faces the bed where she watched her old lover rape her daughter, and instead of being upset by this, she blames me– like I destroyed her life and stole her future, not the other way around.

Red clouds my vision, and it’s like I’m experiencing my first kill all over again. There’s a dagger lying on the dresser next to the door, like it was left just for me. The weight feels at home in my steady hands, a gruesome reminder of who I’ve become– The Hunter.

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