Page 17 of Shattered Dreams

A memory comes back to me...I’m sitting in my wheelchair and he’s leaning over my shoulder. His suit smells like cigarette smoke, and he’s sucking on a peppermint.“It won’t hurt, Miss Maddox, if you tell us the truth.” He smooths his hand down the back of my head, and I want to flinch away, but I’m frozen. “Such a shame, what they’re doing to you.” He rubs the ends of my hair between his fingers, almost absentmindedly. “Pretty girl.”

The flashback is gone as quickly as it came, and as with everything I dream, everything I have nightmares about, I don’t know if it’s real or fake, if the drugs only convinced me it happened, or if it really did.

I look around online a bit more, bringing upPage SixandPeoplemagazine. I scroll past dresses and jewelry I won’t wear, and summoning all my strength, I try not to imagine what Gage and Sierra are doing tonight. I don’t know if he has any social media accounts, and I Google his name. Besides theTruth or Darephotos and his business website, he doesn’t come up often. There’s aKing’s Crossing Chroniclearticle here and there about him and Linc solving a case, a photo of him accepting Max’s award, the editor of the paper shaking his hand, and there was news coverage of his truck exploding. But he doesn’t have any personal social media accounts, nothing I can look at, dig into, to find out more about him or what he’s been doing since we broke up.

That doesn’t surprise me. Gage is a private person and wouldn’t feel the need to broadcast his every single move to anyand everyone. It could even be dangerous in his line of work, inviting people to know where he is all the time. I bet he won’t be too happyTruth or Darecaught him and Sierra together again.

I’ve run out of things to research, and I put Peggy’s computer to sleep. Patting the pocket of my pajama pants, I groan. I don’t have my cell phone to call downstairs and find out the code for the private lift. Zane said he would have security change it, and I can’t go back up to the penthouse without it. I need to buy my own laptop.

I lift the receiver to Peggy’s desk phone. The number for lobby security is programmed into her speed dial pad, but just as I’m about to press the button, the elevator dings.

Who would be coming up here so late at night? This part of the twenty-fifth floor belongs to only a few of the executives and their secretaries who help Zane. I haven’t gotten to know them, not like I knew Richard Denton and Larry Cramer. Tate and I had only that one date at the photographer’s exhibit. Zane doesn’t have friends like my father did. Ash soured him on getting close to anyone but Stella. Going out with Gage and Linc was the first time in a long time Zane bothered to do anything that wasn’t business related.

The elevator doors slide open, and on instinct, I drop to the floor and crouch behind Peggy’s desk chair. Call me crazy (and who hasn’t?), but I don’t trust anyone coming in this late. It doesn’t mean much that security let them through—they could have said anything.

“Zarah Maddox! Got your number off a bathroom wall,” a gritty voice calls out.

I shrink back.

“Where are you, sweetheart? I know you’re up here.”

How could he know where I am? I didn’t tell anyone I was going to Zane’s office to use his computer. There was no one to tell. Zane and Stella are busy, Lucille wouldn’t have cared, if shewas still awake to answer my call, and Douglas would have told me to stay in the penthouse, advice I would have ignored, much to my apparent detriment.

“Zarah! Gorgeous name, by the way. What does it mean? Whore?”

My heart starts slamming and sweat slides down my ribs. He doesn’t sound nice, and that comment tells me exactly what he wants.

A dirty romp. A filthy fuck.

It’s all I’m good for.

Stop it.Those are Ash’s words.

I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the chair’s armrest. I should let him rape me and get it over with. There’s no way I can fight him off, no way I would be able to reach the elevator and wait for the doors to open before he grabbed me, and the emergency exit that leads to the stairwell is on the other side of the room.

Peering around Peggy’s desk, I shove a plant away that’s sitting on the floor. The guy is tall and scrawny and he’s carrying a baseball bat. Standing at the desk Harper used to have when Richard Denton still worked here, he swings, narrowly missing the large monitor. “Come on, Zarah. Just give me a little. You’ll like it. I know you’re up here. I can smell your pussy.” He shuffles into another area of the office suite.

Right at this moment there’s no one in the world I want more than Gage, but I don’t have his number memorized. I could call Zane, but I doubt he would answer his phone. I should call security, or Douglas, since he said he would stay nearby, or a million other people because Gage doesn’t owe me anything, but he’s the only person I trust and maybe he still loves me enough to help me.

“Zarah, love. Come on. Don’t make me beg.”

The creeper shuffles this way, and panicking, I crawl toward the office that used to belong to Larry Cramer.

Rising slightly on my knees, I try the handle but the door’s locked.

“I’m being patient, my sweet Zarah, but bad things happen if I have to wait too long.”

Silently, I crawl to the next office. I don’t know who it belongs to—I can’t read the name plaque in the dark—but it doesn’t matter. The door’s locked.

Dammit.

He walks closer, and the city’s pale light bleeding around the window blinds turns him into little more than a shadow wearing black, his hair a dirty blond tangle on his head.

Desperate to keep space between us, I crawl as quickly as I can toward the center of the room.

“Ashton Black wants me to give you a message,” he says softly.

Ash? This guy is connected to Ash somehow.

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