Page 68 of Blind Sin

As we reach the safety of the house, Nolan sets me down roughly on the couch. I wince as my back hits the cushion, but I don't have time to dwell on the pain. The boat is getting closer.

I stand up and rush towards the window, watching as the boat approaches the shore. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I can feel the sweat starting to bead on my forehead.

“Is it him?” Lauren asks anxiously beside me. It hits me that she doesn’t know what our father looks like. I’ve never once described his physical appearance to her. We talked about him as little as possible in her room. With horror, I realize how vulnerable that makes her.

“No,” I whisper back.

“It’s no sightseer though.” Beside me I feel Nolan’s body stiffen. And then I see it. The police sign on the side of the boat.

“Get them in here!” I scream to Nolan, but it’s too late. The police are already pulling into the jetty behind Dacre’s parents’ boat. I watch as they step out onto the jetty, guns in hand. I count three of them.

Lauren's breath catches in her throat as we watch Alexander and Josh approach the jetty, where they're met by the police officers. A sense of dread washes over us when the officers handcuff them and escort them onto the boat.

"Damn it!" Mercier curses under his breath, watching two other officers head towards the house. "We need to hide, now. Follow me."This time it’s Lauren that stops him. “What’s the point? They know we’re here, Nolan. I’d rather go out there with the police then spend my life hiding from my father’s men.”

“We’ll go to prison. All the fucking lot of us,” Mercier mutters as he runs his hand over his scalp.

“And when we tell the police the truth, they’ll have mercy on us,” Lauren adds.

“I’ll tell them it was me,” I say quickly. “I was going to give myself up anyway. I’ll say I forced you all to help me because I was being abused by my father. He practically owns the police force in New York, but in this part of the world, the police have to listen to me.”

Nolan shakes his head. “You obviously don’t know the police like I know the police.”

I don’t know the police and my heart is pounding as they storm in through the front door.

Moments later, I find my arms restrained behind me in handcuffs, and I'm being led towards a boat and at that moment I realize that this is it. The end for our new family. Because one way or another, I’m going to end up at Waldgrave house without the three men and without Lauren.

45

NIX

The holding cell stinks of piss and puke and fuck knows what else. They’ve separated us from the girls although no one has been to take our statements in the fifteen or so hours we’ve been here. The cell is filled with men who look either drunk or drugged up to the eyeballs. Anger courses through me at all the shitty decisions I’ve made to get us to this point.

I should have handed myself in weeks ago. I should have claimed responsibility for kidnapping both Lauren and Luce. I grip hold of the bars, fighting back the rage. I don’t care about me. I can rot in this hellhole for the rest of eternity, but the thought of my friends spending another second in a cell makes me sick to my stomach. I daren’t even think about what will happen to Lauren and Luce because of what we did. Lauren barely survived the last time her father captured her. He won’t let her live this time. I’m sure of it. A black hole where my heart should be drags me down into despair. I love her. I’ve always fucking loved her, from the second I knew she wasn’t Luce. I loved Luce too once upon a time and even though I don’t feel that way about her now, the thought of losing her has me sick to my stomach.

“Will you sit the fuck down? Squeezing the bars isn’t going to break them,” Dacre snaps. I loosen my grip and turn to look at him. He looks like shit. Black circles darken his eyes and his usually well-kept hair is a mess. He didn’t sleep last night any more than I did. Mercier hasn’t said a word since we were brought in and I wonder if we’ve finally found the one thing that’s able to break him. My unbreakable friend has been brought down by love. No, not love. Our love being dragged from us screaming out our names. I wanted to fucking smash the faces in of the guards that took her, but my own hands were being clamped behind my back and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t save her.

“What do you suggest we do then?” I snap, taking a seat on the bench next to Dacre. My voice is hoarse with thirst. We’ve been in this cell all night and so far no one has officered us so much as a drink of water. “He’s going to fucking kill her and you know what he’s going to do before he kills her? He’s going to fucking torture her.”

“Don’t!” Mercier screams out. He jumps off the bench at the other side of the cell and squares up to me. He’s never raised a fist to me in my life before, but I have the feeling that’s exactly what he’s about to do now. I want him to. I want him to share his pain with me. I deserve every blow I get.

“Sit down,” Dacre commands. “They’ll extradite us back to the US and then we’ll hire lawyers to deal with this shit.”

“With all our millions of dollars? Mercier. How much do we have left?”

He shrugs and slouches down next to me. “A couple of hundred or so and Jonathan Dacre’s Rolex. We might get something for it on the black market.”

I take a long sigh. Between the five of us, we once had a combined net worth of some small countries before the deaths or the disowning of our parents. Now we have fifty dollars each and we are stuck in a flea pit cell in French Polynesia with little chance of getting out.

“Neither Lauren or Lucinda have real passports, so it’s going to be a while before they get that sorted.” Dacre points out. “The US embassy will have to be contacted and by that point, the media will find out about Lauren. Her father won’t be able to touch her.”

Hope springs in my chest. He’s right. Lucinda and Lauren never have to see him again. He might have the money to control the police and he can try to control the media, but once the news of Lauren goes viral, no amount of money will be able to recap that bottle.

I’ll never see her again though. No matter what happens with Lauren and Luce, Waldgrave will bury me and my brothers. Quite probably literally. He destroyed my life before and when he finds out where I am, he’ll do it again, and this time it will be permanent. I can’t tell Dacre and Mercier this. They are hurting enough.

“They’ll survive,” I say.

“Visitor.”

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