Page 41 of Cruel Dominion

They were kidnapping me.

The horrifying thought echoed in my skull.

Kidnapping Annie.

I gasped for oxygen, desperate. I heard the squeal of tires on the street. A car they planned to force me into? Where would they take me?

Was my phone still in my bag? Could it be traced?

Would my father even come looking for me or would he just let his only problem vanish into this black bagged hell and say pretty words at my funeral. Use the pity of the people as a springboard for his campaign.

Oh god.

Oh god.

My throat felt thick with unshed tears and the need to scream.

I felt myself lifted off the ground—then, abruptly, dropped. My hip throbbed in protest and I shifted, trying to squirm away against the rough cracked pavement, feeling tiny stone bite into my elbows and knees.

Grunts and muttered curses filled the air. Nobody touched me. It was like I’d been totally forgotten. I stopped inching away and reached for the hood, yanking it off, blinking into the sunlight.

Six men fought on the sidewalk. The three new ones looked like random strangers. One in a crisp black suit, another in joggers and a loose fitted tank, and the third in jeans and band tee with biceps the size of my thighs.

They must’ve heard the commotion and come to help.

Fuck, I was the luckiest goddamned girl in the whole world.

I sobbed out a grateful cry, trying to get myself back to my feet without the use of my hands.

The random strangers were pummeling the baseball hat guys, kicking in their faces and slamming them against the hoods of two sleek black cars. Blue hat was already unconscious, and the suit guy loaded him into a car trunk.

“What the hell?”

I fumbled back a step, then another, seeing the chaos in a new light. Noticing details as the men finished subduing my kidnappers.

The one wearing the suit had a gun. I saw it inside his jacket as he threw the body of blue hat guy in the trunk of his car.

And the one that looked like he was just out for a run? He had a pair of brass knuckles on his fist as he landed blow after blow into the face of another blue hat, until blood sprayed from his cheek and little white bits dropped from his mouth.

Teeth.

Those were teeth.

I couldn’t move.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose and heat flooded my chest, swiftly replaced with an ice cold that left a clammy sweat in its wake.

The last guy—the one in jeans—he laughed as he held the remaining blue hat in a chokehold until he stopped moving. And at his waist, where his Radiohead tee shirt rode up enough to expose the deep adonis v of his lower abdomen, I saw a flash of silver.

He had a gun, too.

Who were these guys?

Move, Anna.

You need to move.

Blue hat guys might’ve kidnapped me, but something told me these three were going to do far worse than that.

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