Page 196 of Hunting Pretty

An alarm jangled in my head.

They.

This was bigger than Dr. Vale and the fact that he was abusing girls in his care.

Dr. Vale was covering for someone.Someones.

“Cormac, who isthey?” I asked fearfully.

The confident Darkmoor golden boy was gone. Cormac’s eyes darted from place to place and he again checked his Rolex wristwatch, a gift, I knew, from his father, a high-ranking Irish politician.

“Theyare everywhere,” he said as he advanced upon me. “Theyare everything.Theytake what they want. Always have, always will. Andtheywant you, Ava.”

Cormac stopped in front of the dirty mattress, hands stuffed in the pockets of his tweed pants.

“Cormac, please. You haven’t done anything wrong yet,” I lied. “I don’t have to tell anyone. Just let me go.”

The metal chain rattled above me as I yanked at the hook that my wrists were tied to. Dirt fell from the ceiling, but nothing gave way. Nothing even budged. Imagining how many feet of solid stone was above my head made my chest tight with fear.

Cormac was my only hope of escape.

“We cared about each other, right?” I begged. “We held hands by the river. We shared bottles of wine at The Vault. We made love.”

Cormac leaned his head back and released an uncontrolled howl of laughter. “Your attempts at garnering empathy from me are pathetic.”

I shrunk from him like he’d raised his fist. The sound of it chilled me to the bone.

But I couldn’t give up.

“Please,” I said, “I’ll give you whatever you want if you just let me go.”

Cormac sneered, bending at the waist to be near eye level with me. He mimicked my pleading voice when he added, “Cormac, please.”

I cringed away from him and his sour breath.

He pushed back a strand of hair from my face and I flinched away from his touch. “Whatever you can give me pales in comparison to what they will reward me with when I hand you over to them.”

I fought to keep my breath steady, to wet my throat. “W-What do they want with me?”

Cormac chuckled a dark, evil laugh. “They want to shut you up.”

My blood drained from my limbs. “They’re going to kill me.”

Like they killed Liath.

“If you’re lucky… they’ll kill you.”

I was almost too afraid to ask. But I had to know. “And… if I’m not?”

Cormac’s face twisted into an evil smirk. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for you. Just know that if they decide to keep you, you’ll be wishing for death.”

Flashes of torture and rape went through my head. Fates worse than death.

“You pin dick son of a bitch,” I snarled. “You won’t get away with it.”

Cormac backhanded me across the face.

I gasped against the blinding pain as Cormac paced back and forth, shaking the hand he’d struck me with.

---