Page 61 of Hidden Heir

I fight through the haze to look him in the eye.

I’m powerless.

Weak.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here.

Rescue isn’t coming. I have no idea what happened to Leon.

I can only take refuge in the fact that Tiffany is somewhere safe, miles away from here.

This is my end.

“You think I’ll be able to see something that small?” I croak.

With a roar of rage, Paul slams my head down against the floor and a flash of white bursts across my vision. It dazes me so intensely that the pain in my hands almost fades until Paul tears the nails free, and something snaps like a band inside my hand. Numbness spreads through my fingers, and with it comes a cold curl of dread in my gut.

It will be over soon.

My body is limp as Paul leaves and guards take his place. They scrape me off the floor and I close my eyes, willing darkness to take me. In the beginning, they’d prevent me from sleeping in an attempt to drive me insane with exhaustion, but eventually, the lack of food, water, and constant pain had me passing out regularly. My only solace was in the darkness, and I silently beg for it now as I’m dragged from the room, my hair tickling my bare shoulders and my hands throbbing in time to my sluggish heartbeat.

The floor blurs and walls fade in and out of focus before I’m thrown onto a hard, dry floor. A grunt escapes me on impact and I lay there as a door slams behind me. I close my eyes.

Please let me pass out.Please.

“Br…” Something croaks beside me and I flinch, expecting another touch of pain but it doesn’t come.

“B-Brooke…”

I know that voice.

My head snaps up with alarming speed. I blink away the fog clouding my vision to look at the man heavily chained to the wall.

“Leon?”

Though he’s seated on the floor, his arms are chained to the wall above his sagging head with blood running like a river down both of his forearms. His chest is covered in a myriad of bruises, cuts, and lacerations, all of which have bled freely over his body. There’s a terrifying dark shadow over one side of his ribcage, and one leg protrudes at an odd angle, his knee and ankle swollen and dark. He’s naked, just like me, and when he lifts his head, I glimpse a head wound along his hairline that’s so deep I can see white bone.

“Oh my god…” My own pain is momentarily forgotten as I climb onto my hands and knees, only to fall flat on my face as the numbness in my left hand makes its presence known. I can’t feel the last three fingers on that hand. I glance down and my stomach roils. The fresh wounds in each palm are red and angry, leaving smears of blood on the floor as I attempt to get up once again.

“Brooke,” Leon wheezes like air passing through a paper bag. “I’m so sorry.”

“Shhh.” I hush him the best I can as I reach him, and for a moment my focus becomes the manacles around his wrists. Unfortunately, my hands are struggling to obey me and weakness pulses through my limbs with each rising beat of my heart. Torn nails and numb fingers make my attempts to free him utterly useless, and I sag against his broken body.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I can’t, I can’t get the?—”

“Your hands,” Leon croaks. “What did he do to you?”

As I slump against him, I realize I’m resting against his injured chest. There’s a voice telling me to move, that I’m likely causing him pain, but the sudden connection of skin-on-skin contact acts like the first hit of a drug. He’s warm—sort of—and familiar. The moment I’m against him, I have no energy to move anywhere else.

“He’s m-mad,” I say, swallowing down the next mouthful of blood. “Leon, I thought you were dead. Or that…”

A sudden fear goes unsaid. I had no idea what happened to Leon. But when I woke up here alone, knowing how he made his money, I feared he had shipped me off to the Irish in a rage. After all, he sold people. Why would I be any different?

“Or what?” Leon murmurs. “It’s s-so good to hear your voice. Please…”

“I thought maybe you sold me,” I whisper, turning my face into his chest. Heat radiates from his injuries in an oddly comforting way.

“Never,” he croaks. “Never you. I’d never?—”

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