Page 22 of Velvet Deception

The Cartel.

The night they?—

No! No! Please, no!

Another man stood on the other side of the living room, or what remained of it. Red and green décor had been pulled down. Twinkling lights and Christmas trinkets I’d saved over the years lay strewn all over with the pillows, books, and other things in my home. The coffee table lay on its side. Pictures had dropped off the walls, the frames splintered and the glass cracked. A bureau was shoved over, the drawers hanging out and emptied.

I didn’t slow to take in all the details, too consumed by fear, but the general scene of disaster bled into my numbing mind in a blur.

Focusing on the man in the living room, I fought and kicked to get free from the one holding me captive.

I never let men into my home. I never trusted a man to get close.

Only Diego. He was theonlyexception, and I’d only taken the risk on him because my bleeding heart was too big for me to walk away from someone helpless and vulnerable in need.

Diego wasn’t here, though. Nor was Ramon, and that gave me the brave resolve to fight back.

Ramon was safe at Señora Vasquez’s until I’d walk over to get him.

These men couldn’t get him.

They couldn’t take him.

Shadows hung too dark for me to make out who this man was. It wasn’t Diego. He was taller and more muscular, and at seeing him gone, I worried about what had happened. Everything was going too fast for me to catch up.

“Where are they?” the man demanded as he stalked closer. With the light from the windows, I saw that he was younger, too.

“Where are they?” he shouted.

Where are what? Who? Ramon and Diego?I feared someone had been watching to know they were here. I was alone right now, but I refused to be defenseless.

Biting down on the first man’s hand was all it took for him to release me with a shove. Before I could step to the side, the other man lurched forward, grabbing my arm then slapping my face.

“Bitch, where are they?” He held up a knife. “Tell me!”

I opened my mouth to scream, to alert anyone on the street, but he hit me again.

“Tell me where the drugs are,” he ordered as I reeled back from his hit.

Oh, no. No, no, no.He wanted drugs, not people. He wasn’t here for Ramon—or Diego—but drugs. As I glared at him, standing fuller, I recognized him as a druggie who’d come into the clinic before. He knew I was a nurse and assumed I’d have drugs. And he was wrong.

“I don’t have anything! Get out!”

“You’re lying,” the first man argued, grimacing at his hand where I hadn’t bitten hard enough to break his skin. “You have to have something here. Tell us where they are!”

“I don’t have anything!” I retreated, not letting them get into my personal space again and trying to find something that could be used as a weapon.

“I don’t believe you. You’re a fucking nurse. I know you have to have something here.”

“I don’t?—”

The skinny one slashed out his knife at me, startling me. As I reared back, the first man shoved me down to the couch, slapping me again. “You do, you lying bitch.” Leaning down, trying to catch my arms as I fought back, he snarled and panted. “I’ll rape you until you tell us. I’ll fuck your pussy until it’s ripped, bitch. You want that? You wanna tell me you don’t have anything here and see what happens when you lie to me?”

No!His words elicited stark terror. Rape me? No. I couldn’t survive it. Not again. I just couldn’t.

“You pay up one way or another, you fucking bitch!” the other man said as he kicked over drawers he’d yanked out from the side table. “With your cunt or with drugs. Now which is it?”

The stinky man forcing me down to the couch reared his arm back to punch me. I tensed, trying to block him and hit back, readying for the impact of his knuckles on my face.

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