Page 10 of Stolen Rival
ThenI need the biggest plate of food known to humankind. My stomach growls in aggressive agreement.
Wonder if this white prison has room service?
I have no plans to stay here and find out. I need to get out of this place. I’ve only been here for an hour, and that’s sixty minutes too many.
Once I find a way out of this room, I’ll grab my bag, steal a car, and disappear into the night.
What could possibly go wrong?
Fine, the odds are stacked against me. But I can’t stay here, or worse,marrythat man.
I’ve killed your whole family,mo mhuirnín. Not just your da, not just your siblings, every single person in your family tree.
Which is why I couldn’t reach Uncle Barry or Aunt Hazel on the phone. I didn’t have time to call Da’s other brothers, but now I know it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The sneer on his face as he told me he killed my entire family is etched into my memories.
My stomach lurches as the body count rises in my brain. I feel sick.
Shit.
Ireallyneed to get out of here.
There’s nothing stopping that arsehole from changing his mind and adding me to his kill count.
I’m completely alone. I can’t let the talons of that grief getinto me, not here, not now. If I let myself sit with the fact my whole family is gone, it might consume me. And right now, there’s a little boy who needs me. I’m his only hope.
I refuse to go down without a fight.
Cathal needs me. My captor shouldn’t know about the secret child my father was too ashamed of and angry at to bring up in our family home. As far as I’m aware, no one knows about him outside of the family. I never agreed with Da’s stance, but in this instance, it might just have saved my beloved brother’s life. He wasn’t on the list of the deceased that Mahoney took great joy in reciting to me. But he could easily be if I don’t get the fuck out of here.
Ambling gingerly to the door, I try opening it again, as though at some point someone might have unlocked it without me hearing.
No luck.
I go back through the wardrobes, nothing. Could I rip one of the doors off their hinges and smash the window? Maybe if bits of me weren’t held together with wire, but not like this.
The bedside table has a drawer. Is it connected?
A glimmer of hope flickers deep in my chest as I drag the drawer slowly from the table, careful not to make any noise. When it comes free, I give a silent fist pump. Thank you, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, all the saints, and the wee donkey.
I strip the pillowcase off the pillow on the head of the bed; I’ll need it to wrap around a piece of glass to use on whoever comes to investigate the soon-to-be smashed window.
The room’s too high off the ground to jump, so attacking my kidnapper is my only way out.
Gotta move fast.
Smash the window, grab a shard of glass, and standnext to the door ready to slit the throat of that arsehole Mahoney when he bursts in.
It’s mental, and probably not going to go how I want it to, but it’s my only hope.
I’d rather give it my all and die trying to escape than wait for that burly fucker to come back in here and do… whatever the fuck he wants to me. The thought of his ginormous body caging me on the bed sends a disgusted shudder through my body. In his fucking dreams is that man claiming my virginity.
Swinging the drawer at the window takes a monumental effort and pulls on my stitches. Bridie wouldn’t be happy, and neither’s my torso. It makes me grunt louder than I’d like, but it does the job. The edge of the wooden drawer cracks into the window and shatters the pane, sending splinters of glass tumbling both out the window and onto the sill.
I grin at the spiderwebs in the shattering glass. Old buildings like these are often protected by law which means you can’t replace the ancient windows with double glazing, making them fragile and easy to smash in with a drawer.
Choosing the biggest shard of glass I can find, I wrap the pillowcase around the end and take up my position next to the door.
The sound of thundering footsteps along the landing gets louder as they close in on my room. That’s it, come on.
