Page 10 of Love Set Free

“Son of a…”

I start unspooling the fabric from around my left wrist again.

“Pare.” I freeze, completely still, as gruff, foreign words are spat in my direction. “O que você está fazendo?” Thankfully, that’s all that comes flying at me, though. No bullets. At least, not so far. “Caralho que idiota.”

There’s a soft scraping noise and then another noise that I’m more familiar with—the jangle of his keys. And then I can make out the clanking snick as he unlocks my cage, followed by the grating squeal as he opens it.

“Não se mexa. Stay. No...no funny job, está bem? Or...or...boom.”

I only understand about half of what he said, but that doesn’t stop me from frantically nodding my agreement. I’ll go along with anything that isn’t “boom”.

Rough hands grab and yank on my arms, pulling them out away from my body. Two hands. And if my brain weren’t as frozen as the rest of me in fear, I’d use this moment as some sort of opportunity to try to overtake my captor. Both of his hands are on me. Which means, wherever his gun is, it’s not in his hands, ready to shoot me with.

But I just got done blindfolding myself and I can’t see for shit. And he’s holding onto my arms. I’m frozen in place, letting him move and manipulate and do whatever he wants with me. Fight or flight is nowhere even close to being on my radar as options. Nope. I’ve opted for freeze.

And now my captor is successfully completing the task he ordered and that I was unable to do—he is wrapping the strip of fabric around both of my wrists. Briskly and efficiently. Tight, snug, secure.

Once my wrists are bound, he even gives his knotted handiwork a tug just to make sure it’s good and tight. And absolutely without any possibility of coming loose or for me to work my way out of the restraint.

“Venha. Come,” he barks out as he pulls even harder on the fabric tied around my wrists. “You come. Agora. Uh,now.”

I’m dizzy and disoriented when I land on my feet after tumbling/falling/getting dragged out of the cage I’ve spent the last six days in. My feet and legs barely feel connected to the rest of my body, taking those first stumbling, wobbly steps as he uses his hold on my bound hands to pull me behind him.

I don’t even need the use of my eyesight to know he’s enjoying this. It’s there in his voice, and the gleeful chortles that intersperse his words, as he says, “Look at you. Rich filho da puta. Tied like um cão. A dog.”

My left foot hits something sticking up from the uneven and rough floor, causing me to trip. With a grunt, my captor pulls even harder on my restraints and the cotton fabric digs into my skin. A few stuttered steps and I regain my balance.

With the blindfold on it’s hard to tell, but something... Does the floor feel slightly different under my shoes now? Is the quality of the light struggling to seep through my blindfold different? Does the air feel different, or the echo of our steps, as I resignedly play follow-the-leader, sound different?

Whatever it is, I have the feeling that what I tripped over was a threshold, from the room my cage was in to a different room or a hallway. Now I just have to wonder where I’m being led and what is waiting for me there. Possibly, who.

The level of continued enjoyment in my escort’s voice as he states, “Things happen. Next part. Finalmente,” doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence in me that I’m going to find as much pleasure in whatever it is that’s coming next.

Chapter Seven

Phoenix

It’s the fourth or fifth time the toe of my shoe has caught on an uneven or raised section of the floor I’m being escorted along. This one somehow feels bigger and when I cautiously raise my foot and tap along the protrusion in front of me with the tip of my foot, I discover that this new obstacle is indeed bigger—an actual whole step.

I quickly step up before my captor decides to prod me along with a tug of my bound wrists. I’m not sure how long he’s been leading me and urging me forward that way—certainly it can’t have been more than a couple minutes—but my wrists already feel abraded, red and raw, and each ungentle, unspoken demand has only made the cotton feel more like rough sandpaper against my abused skin.

Anticipating a second step after that first one, I stumble again when my foot meets only air and then jolts ungainly back down to the ground. A brief spate of quickly muffled snickers and snorts cuts through the fear- and anxiety-concentrated cocoon of silence around me—ones that don’t sound like the smuglyamused noises I’ve become accustomed to from my familiar jailor.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like Jackson was correct in saying that there is more than one kidnapper involved in this shitshow we’re in the middle of. I’m still not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or not.

The scrape of wooden chair legs across hard flooring assaults my ears as I’m unceremoniously shoved down onto it. The chair is hard under my ass and against my back and six days spent in a cage has left my body unused to the feeling of sitting up straight at a right angle. My mind can’t figure out whether to feel uncomfortable or relieved at this return to a position I’ve so taken for granted prior to my current situation. It’s something I never spared a thought to before.

My stomach dips when somebody pushes me forward in the chair and it barely has time to settle before I feel rough fingers tugging at the strip of cloth wound around my head, removing it. Those same fingers then pull and tug at the fabric tied and wound around my wrists until that’s removed as well. Even newly unbound, my arms and hands feel strangely heavy and like they’re not even connected to the rest of my body. But then, fleeting moments later, I register the air hitting the scraped-up abrasions on my wrists. The piercing, fiery sting is painful, but somehow welcome.

I blink several times as my eyes adjust to no longer being covered, not that the room I find myself in is very well lit. It seems as though my blindfolded journey has taken me from one gloomy, windowless, cement walled room to another gloomy, windowless, cement walled room.

In front of me is a rickety looking, dinged and nicked up wooden table, and I cautiously rest my hands on top of it.

Sitting across the table from me is a man. One whose appearance is night and day from that of the only other one of my kidnappers I’ve seen before now.

This other man’s hair is an incredibly pale blond color that I would assume was the result of a visit with a truly excellent hair colorist if it weren’t for the fact that it went so perfectly with his milky-white skin tone and eyes of the purest arctic blue. His features are sharp, with a thin, narrow nose, high cheekbones, and severe-looking, pale pink lips, along with eyebrows of the same barely-there blond shade, set in a neat, straight line over those cool, translucently blue irises. And, actually, if he isn’t so clearly one of my kidnappers…if I were to only casually run into him somewhere… No. Even without him saying a word, there’s something effortlessly cruel andwrongabout him that prevents his features from coming together into handsomeness.

The small curl of the corner of this man’s mouth doesn’t even hint at amusement, not with how cold and emotionless his eyes remain. Nor does his voice as he calmly states, “Welcome, Mr. Wilding. I’d hoped that our first meeting would be our only meeting, as myself and my fellow compatriots bid you farewell, but alas… It seems as though we’ve hit an impasse. One that now requires us to gain your assistance.”

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