Page 58 of Hidden Heir

“But I’m tired,” he whines.

“I don’t care!” I snap. “Hold her while I pack some things!”

“Alright,” he mutters, cuddling Tiffany to his chest. She’s much more docile as the drive back to my apartment lulled her to sleep, and I’m desperate to keep her that way while I pack.

“Don’t fuck this up, Ant.”

Ant rolls his eyes and mutters something I can’t quite hear under his breath but I don’t have time to care. What I didn’t grab when I packed to go to Leon’s place is now what I have to shove into a plastic bag. There’s not much but it will have to do until I get as far away from here as possible. Away from Leon, away from the Irish, hell, maybe even away from Ant.

Just Tiffany and me, no one else.

I snatch up one of my old phones from my room. Since Leon admitted to cloning mine, I won’t need it anymore. With two bags in hand, I head back into the living room.

“Alright, let’s get the fuck out of…” I trail off, a sickening wave of despair washing over me as I lock eyes with Paul Conti, the Irish mafia asshole that attacked me in my shop. My blood runs cold and defeated tears well in my eyes.

Ant and Tiffany are nowhere to be seen.

“Brooke.” Paul smiles coldly. “About time you came back.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask hoarsely. My mind struggles to work out how he even knew where I was, never mind where Ant and Tiffany have vanished to.

“Isn’t it obvious?” He claps his hands and rubs them together. “We have some unfinished business. And by unfinished, you’ll understand when I tell you that the cost has changed. In fact, it’s increased so much that no amount of fucking that wet snatch between your legs can pay it off. Do you understand?”

The bags slip from my fingers as Paul launches himself at me. I’m not fast enough, and he grabs me by the throat before shoving me up against the wall. As he punches the brick near my head with his other hand, I hear bones break but it doesn’t seem to faze him. I scream, drawing myself as far away from him as I can while clutching at his arm.

“You made a fucking fool of me, running off to the Russians like that!” Paul snarls, tightening his grip until I can’t even gasp. “I’m going to enjoy making you suffer for it.”

Suddenly, a loud crash sounds, and Paul drags me from the wall. I cry out, twisting and trying to escape his hold, but the ice-cold press of a gun to my temple halts my struggles immediately. The door to my apartment crashes open and in runs Leon.

“Brooke! You—what the fuck?” He skids to a halt, the worry on his face solidifying into cold hate. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Leonity,” Paul snarls, pinning me to his chest with his arm around my neck and the gun pressed to my skull. “I wondered how long it would take you to show up here.”

“You have five seconds to let go of her if you want a quick death,” Leon snarls, drawing himself up to his full height. “Or I will make you suffer for the rest of a painfully prolonged existence.”

“Oh, I think you misunderstand what’s happening here,” Paul chuckles humorlessly. “You see, I was expecting you.”

Leon’s brow lifts slightly as he locks his eyes on me and something desperate passes between us.

The last thing I see before Paul strikes me on the back of the head is Leon being tackled to the ground by three men who charge in from the hallway.

25

LEON

Time is an illusion.

In the beginning, the wrought-iron manacles they clamped around my wrists would ache and cut painfully into my skin. Now, I feel nothing. Numbness radiates from my shoulders where too many days of holding up my own body weight has killed the sensation in my arms. It’s a small mercy. I can’t feel my broken fingers or the edges of the metal cutting into the raw skin on my wrist.

Broken ribs make breathing a challenge, and the angle at which I’m hanging only allows me to take tiny, short breaths. I suppose that helps to keep some of the pain in my core at bay. For every nose I’ve broken fighting back, they’ve carved chunks out of my flesh and beaten me so severely that I can only see out of one eye. A broken ankle, busted knee, and torn ligaments in one leg keep me from lashing out each time someone comes close. I’ve lost track of how many times fists have collided with my gut, how many times knives have sliced into my flesh, how many tools have been used in an attempt to break me down and submerge me into a darkness I never knew existed.

Brooke is the only thing keeping me alive.

They won’t let me see her, no matter how many times I demand it. I lost two teeth to pliers the last time I asked. It didn’t stop me from asking and I bit off the finger of the fucker who tried to take a third. They gave up that tactic quickly.

She’s alive. I know that for a fact.

Sometimes I can hear her screaming. I know it’s her. The sound rakes through me like hot coals over open wounds. It kills me knowing that she’s in pain, agony that I can’t prevent. I wasn’t fast enough to save her and now she’s here. Sometimes, I hope the screams are prerecorded and that she’s already dead, no longer suffering, but they’re never the same.

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