Page 79 of Taken By the Biker Daddies

“Fuck!” Max suddenly shouted over the phone

Then I heard his fist slam his desk.

“What is it?” Jake asked, the fear in his voice echoing what I felt in my chest.

No. Lauren couldn’t have left. She wouldn’t.

“I checked the cameras,” Max said.

“And?” I asked impatiently.

“Lauren left the house,” Max answered, the words making my heart stop. “She’s gone.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lauren

Where am I?

As my senses and thoughts returned, I looked around the room, trying to discern my surroundings.

The last thing I could remember was being in the back seat of a white car. It was waiting for me across the bus station when I disembarked, just like Clyde said. A man in a black jacket opened the door for me and after I slipped into the backseat, I felt a prick on my arm. I suppose I blacked out after that.

Now, I was inside a house, in a bedroom with a large, four-poster bed and a window with dark blue curtains. It was a spacious room, the furniture expensive-looking, though without much character. I had a feeling that all the rooms looked the same. Same wardrobe. Same wingback armchair. Same practically empty bookshelf with brass frog bookends. Same blank desk with a green and white vase.

Wait a second. I’d seen this vase before. I broke one actually.

As I combed through my memory, a scene popped into my head of me and Clyde standing in a room with the fragments of a shattered vase on the carpet, gray, just like the one I was standing in now. I cut my finger trying to gather the pieces before the maid Clyde had summoned arrived.

Was this the same house? The one near Knoxville? I looked out the window and the familiar marble fountains below confirmed my suspicion. Yup. He had brought me to the same house, the one which had a room that was like a giant frog terrarium where Clyde locked me up for a good five minutes as his idea of punishing me for breaking the vase.

Frog House.

It could have been worse. I actually feared he would lock me up in some bleak warehouse or bring me to one of his fetish clubs, but at least this room was comfortable, well-lit, and with the AC was set at just the right temperature. It was still a gilded cell, though, the door locked from the outside, as I discovered when I tried to turn the knob.

Was Clyde planning on keeping me here forever?

I was still pacing the room, stewing in anxiety, when the door opened and Clyde entered, the scent of his cologne washing over the room.

I used to like the smell of it. It was an expensive combination of wood and spices, but now, I found the scent almost suffocating. I used to think Clyde was handsome, too, with the slight cleft on his chin, his mysterious gray eyes that he got from his Finnish mother, and his ash-blond hair that was the same as his father’s, but right now, I could barely look at him. All I could thinkabout was that man he killed and all the times he had hurt me, memories that made me cringe just recalling them.

“What’s this?” Clyde walked towards me. “Feeling shy?”

He tried to touch my face, but I stepped back, pursing my lips. There were a bunch of things I wanted to say to him, anger and disgust swelling in my chest, but I stayed calm, reminding myself of how dangerous he was. Besides, I didn’t agree to meet him just to whine. I came here for a purpose.

“I’m here just like you wanted me to be,” I told him. “Now, take down that video of Max Shelton and…”

His palm hit my cheek, the force enough to knock my breath away and send pain rushing across my face. “Don’t you dare mention any other man in front of me, bitch!”

I fought back the pain and the tears.

Don’t you dare cry, Lauren. Jake, Max, and Wade wouldn’t want that. You have to be strong for them.

“Oh, my sweet Lauren,” Clyde spoke more softly as he touched my cheek. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Yeah, right. I’d heard those words a million times before. Each time he hurt me, he would apologize immediately after. That was probably why I thought he wasn’t so bad, but I knew better now.

They were sweet words meant to make him feel better about what he did, not me.

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