Page 64 of His Captor

“Just as soon as you shut down Canton Enterprises, cancel all the deals you have in the works, and sign over the rights to everything we developed together over the last ten years,” Colin finished.

“You developed nothing,” I hissed. “I did all the work and you collected all the profits. I sure as hell won’t fold my own business and renege on the deals I’ve already got brewing just because?—”

There was a sudden beeping sound as the call cut off.

Furious, I pulled my phone away from my ear and glared at it.

I was ready to try calling Colin’s unlisted number back when my phone started to buzz again, this time with an incoming video call.

I tapped hard to accept it, and a moment later, Colin’s smug face appeared. I immediately looked to the background of wherever he was, but the only thing behind him was a concrete wall painted white.

“I don’t to draw this out,” Colin said. “You’ll give me what I want or you’ll have an even bigger mess to clean up than the one in your apartment.”

I let out a breath. That was more or less an admission that Colin had been behind the break-in.

“I’m dealing with some very important people these days,” Colin went on. “Veryimpatientpeople. They don’t like to be kept waiting when I promise them things.”

Something ticked at the back of my brain with the way he said that, like the people behind Colin were just as impatient with him as he was being with me.

“Victory Holdings giving you a hard time?” I asked. “Have they figured out that you’re a nobody with nothing backing up your bravado?”

Colin’s smug look shifted to one of anger.

Worse still, he moved, shifting his phone’s camera around, and pointed it to the other side of the mostly bare, concrete room he was in.

I only got the slightest flash of the rest of the stuff in the room. The moment the camera trained on Hayden’s sprawled form lying on a bare mattress on the floor, my heart nearly exploded and I saw red.

“What have you done to him?” I demanded, nearly wild with the need to rescue my omega.

Colin didn’t answer. At least, not directly. He swung the camera back around to himself, only at a slightly wider angle, like he was holding his phone at arm’s length. He held up his other hand, showing me the gun he held.

“You have until midnight to end Canton Enterprises or I end your little omega friend,” he said, then immediately ended the call.

The air rushed out of my lungs so fast I nearly dropped my phone.

He wouldn’t. Colin wouldn’t do it. He was a jerk and a cheat, but he wasn’t a killer.

I couldn’t count on that, though. I couldn’t count on anything. The carnage in my apartment came back to mind. Colin was desperate for some reason, and desperate people did desperate things.

I couldn’t think about that, though. I turned and headed back into the hotel, already swiping through my phone to find Det. Shirley’s number. My alpha sense told me that Hayden was still nearby, that Colin hadn’t taken him entirely out of my reach. But there was no telling if and when that changed. There was no way to know how much time I had to save my omega.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Hayden

The first thought that managed to penetrate my brain as I came to was the blurry feeling that Junior was not happy. That was nonsensical, of course. The baby had nothing to do with whatever set-up this alpha had put together for the kidnapping fantasy.

Except it wasn’t a fantasy. I’d deleted the Dark Fantasies Club app from my phone ages ago. And the very idea of hooking up with any alpha other than Mace was just gross.

“…said to do something firm and decisive that would convince him to do things our way,” an angry voice argued somewhere at the other end of what felt like an impossibly large room.

I ignored the voice for the moment, since it was so far away, and concentrated on trying to get my body to move. I felt impossibly heavy, like even my insides weighted a ton.

“That’s exactly what I did!” the angry voice shouted. There was a pause, then, “No, you listen to me.”

He said that, but then he was quiet.

I rolled to my side, dragging my eyes open to get a look around. I was in what looked to me like a disused storeroom of some sort. The walls were white-painted concrete blocks, the floor was plain concrete, and somewhere above me, fluorescent lights buzzed.

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