Page 83 of His Coveted Obsession

Thomas wiped his face with the backs of his hands. “You’re here now. You’ve kept your promise, never lying to me. It’s the one thing I love about you the most.”

“I’ll always come for you.”

His busted bottom lip trembled. “I know.”

Three Days Prior

“Tommy!Tommy!”Annieyells. My name echoes and rattles in my brain, like she’s calling me from a long, dark tunnel—dark because I can’t see a thing. Was I dreaming? Sometimes I knew I was dreaming, but this felt different.

She kept calling for me, over and over. I would’ve been annoyed if her voice wasn’t laced with fear.

When I tried to move, my mind cleared. As it did, my head was hit with a stabbing pain, and my body was cold. Freezing. I suddenly broke out into goosebumps, and I shivered, which only made my head throb even more. It hurt so much my stomach revolted, but I swallowed back the bile.

“Wake up, Tommy!”

The more I woke up, the clearer the hazy memories became. I remember checking on my sister when someone stuck me in the neck with something sharp before I blacked out. It had to have been drugs.

My eyes blinked open, and everything was fuzzy. There was only one overhead bulb, casting the area in a gray dimness.

That was when I noticed I had no clothes on. Or, I was naked other than my underwear. My shivering grew more aggressive, so I held myself as I sat up. Whoever put me in here must have cranked the air conditioning.

I was sitting in a cage, or a cell. It wasn’t very big, only tall enough to stand in, but I couldn’t stretch out my entire body on the floor.

Next to me was a plastic bucket and a bowl of water, as if I were some animal.

The fear started to grip me as I grew more alert. My brain still hurt, and my mind was still fighting whatever they gave me.

I blinked around the area with chattering teeth to find several other cells like mine. There were five across from me. In those cells were women and… my sister.

“Annie?”

“Thank god you’re awake!” she sobbed. “Where are we?”

“Shhh,” someone said. A man was next to me, but the other cells were empty. “Quiet or they’ll come and beat us.”

“Who’s they?” I asked.

“Shhh!”

But I knew who they were. Maybe not by name, but I knew they were tied to my father and his gambling addiction. He had reached a new low. Low enough to get his children stolen fromhim. My eyes leaked more from anger than from fear. I was fucking over this. If I ever got out of here, Dad was done gambling. I didn’t care what the therapists said online.

“Easton will come for us,” I told Annie. “I know it. Don’t worry.”

“I-I’ll try. But how? He’s just a kid like you.”

“He’s smart and resourceful. I know he can do it. He promised.”

Suddenly, the metal door banged open against the wall, and two huge men walked in, heading straight to my cell.

“No talking,” said a man with a pockmarked face in a thick Russian accent.

Jesus… Were Annie and I sent to Russia? Was that even possible? How long was I out for? Shit, Easton would never find us then. Was I still in the States? They could be part of some gang, right?

God, Dad. What did you get us into?

“Who are you?” I asked.

The man rushed to my cell, pulled out a long stick that I hadn’t noticed he’d been holding, and shoved it between the bars. Once he touched me with it, my body turned to electric fire, like I was being burned from the inside out. I stiffened and jolted, feeling like my body went into one massive charley horse.

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