Page 40 of Abduction
“I don’t have it,” the man replied, his head sinking to his chest. I reached out to grab his throat, pulling him up so he could look me in the eye while I spoke to him.
“We’re not leaving until we get paid,” I told him, leaving no room for argument. “So either you come up with the money, or we make sure your little girlfriend finds out about your gambling problem. Okay?”
He looked terrified, and I got some gratification out of knowing there was at least someone here who knew how to pay me the respect I deserved. I had felt so out of control lately, this was what I needed to pull me back into it. Someone who would have done anything I asked of him, just to get me away from his house, from his life. He had another think coming if he thought it would be so easy. I was ready to do whatever it took to get the money out of him, and I didn’t exactly know where that limit stopped in that instant.
“Please, I don’t have it,” he repeated again, his voice taking on the tone of a pissed-off teenager. Guy like this had probably had everything handed to him on a platter, and he had still thrown it away on his obsession. I wished I could be surprised when I heard about men like him, but by now, it had become all but normal. He had no idea how much I would have given to live a life as normal as him, but he had actively opted out of it.
“Find it,” I growled at him, and I glanced over my shoulder at Kieran. He was hanging back, looking like he didn’t want to get involved.
“Get inside the house,” I ordered him. “Take whatever money you can find.”
“No, please, my fiancée—”
“I didn’t ask you,” I snapped at him, cutting him off, then jerking my head toward the house to get Kieran to hurry the fuck up. In a place like this, it wouldn’t take long for the neighbors to call the cops, and I wasn’t interested in that kind of hassle tonight.
Kieran shoved past Ronald and into the house, but before he could get far, he spotted something at the top of the stairs.
“There’s someone else in the house, boss,” he called to me.
The man cursed under his breath. I reached into my holster for my gun. He might have claimed it was just his fiancée, but I wasn’t sure I trusted him. I pushed him down by the door, levelled my gun at the figure on top of the stairs—and then stopped dead in my tracks when I saw who it was.
“Amber?”
It was her. She flicked on the light, and I had no doubt. Standing there in a pair of cut-off shorts and a tank top, clutching a baseball bat, her eyes wide as she stared at us. I lowered the gun at once, grabbed Kieran, and tossed him back outside.
“You keep an eye on the guy,” I ordered him. “I’ll handle this.”
I could tell Kieran wanted to protest, but he knew better than to argue with me when I was in this kind of mood. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Amber. What was she doing here? She must have been the fiancée he was talking about—which meant his cheating was far from the only thing he was doing behind her back.
“Josh?” she whispered, her voice strangled and scared. I instantly felt awful for scaring her, wishing I could run up the stairs and hug her and promise her she had nothing at all to worry about.
“Amber,” I murmured.
“What’s going on?” she asked, peering outside, to where she could just see Kieran holding Ronald in an arm-lock. “Is this...are you here because of me?”
“No, fuck, no,” I assured her. “We’re here because Ronald owes my father money.”
“Ronald?” she asked, screwing her face up. “You mean Aaron?”
Aaron. So he’d been giving us a different name. Another mark against him.
“Why does he owe your father money?” she asked, sounding utterly baffled by this whole thing.
“Gambling,” I replied. Normally, I wouldn’t have been so quick to spill everything, but honestly, I wanted any chance I could take to push her away from this shithead guy who seemed to have such a hold on her. He deserved to have his life fucking ruined, but I knew how much it was going to hurt her, too. She had clearly been hanging on to the idea he was a remotely decent person, and I genuinely hated having to be the one to break it to her that he wasn’t. She deserved better than this.
“Gambling,” she muttered as she let the bat fall to the floor. “He owes money from gambling?”
“Guess that’s what he’s been staying late at work to do,” I replied, and her eyes flashed with anger.
“Oh, no, it’s not,” she replied, her voice dropping furiously. “I know he’s been up to more than that.”
She stormed down the stairs—he should have been more scared of her than he was of me right now, though I doubted he would have seen it that way. She glared at him, and he looked back at her as though he was waiting for the ground to just swallow him up.
I followed her, eyeing him as he stood there in front of me. He had hurt her. Hurt her badly. And this furious part of me wanted to finish him off for it right then and there. It would have been so easy to just wipe this little prick off the face of the map, free her from every bit of a hold he had on her and make sure she never had to think about him again.
But I had already let my emotions get the better of my work more than I should have. I had to hold back. Besides, it wasn’t as though this guy had anything to fall back on right now. He had ruined every part of his life, and I could tell from the look on his face that he knew it.
“Well, Aaron,” I told him, watching as he started with shock hearing his real name spoken out loud like that. “Seems like you have something bigger than me on your hands to deal with.”
