Page 122 of Corrupted Seduction

Like a turtle on its back, I rocked my body, but it slammed into something behind me, a post or a pole. So I clenched my abdominal muscles tighter and forced my upper body upright.

I could sit, it turned out, and I could maneuver around on my backside to the other side of the pole so that I faced the opposite side of the room. A very small room.

There were no more than eight or nine feet between myself and the opposite wall. Between myself and the man who was shackled to the pole in front of it, out cold on his side.

Amadeo.

His eyes were closed, but even in sleep, there was a furrow between his brows. There was also a nasty looking bump above his ear, just behind his temple. It would have been nearly hidden in his hair if it weren’t encrusted with blood and slicked to his head.

My pounding heart beat even harder, so hard, I could feel it banging against my ribs. He could have skull fractures, a temporal hematoma, intracranial hemorrhage, even a cerebral contusion.

There was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t reach him. I had nothing with which to treat him.

“Amadeo!” I tried to whisper-shout. If our abductors were nearby, I had no desire to alert them to my state of consciousness.

He didn’t move.

I stared at his chest, watching for proof that he was still breathing. Doubts tried to crowd in, but they were not difficult to beat back. Because he couldn’t be dead. Whether this was my world, his world, or any world at all, there was no world in which Amadeo Luciano did not exist.

His chest moved up and down, strong and steady.

He’s alive. I’m alive.It was like a heartbeat. And so long as there was a heartbeat, it wasn’t over. And it was up to me at the moment to figure a way out of this.

“Assess,” I said aloud, or perhaps, I mouthed the word. It was the first step of any triage situation, and focusing on the logical was all that was keeping me from coming out my skin.

So, I surveyed the room, and despite seventeen years in a very quiet world, I held my breath and strained my ears. Of course, I heard nothing. Nothing but the ringing that continued.Tinnitus,the perception of sound even in the absence of external auditory stimuli.It was a common side effect of a concussion.

There was not much more to glean from a visual inspection. A narrow, concrete-walled room, perhaps nine feet across and twenty feet long. The two posts were all that occupied the floorspace aside from a steep set of wood stairs that led up, but from my position, I could not see what was at the top of them. A door, presumably. There were no windows in the room, so that door—which might or might not exist—was the only means of escape.

I tugged on the shackles. At first, it was meant as a cursory tug, just to confirm that I was indeed trapped. But after the first tug, I tugged again. And again. And again. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.

I maneuvered up onto my knees and leaned forward, pulling with all my might.

My wrists and shoulder joints screamed, but I kept pulling. Tugging. This was the only way out; there was no escape from this room unless I escaped these shackles.

My wrists grew slick. Blood. I’d drawn blood, but I couldn’t stop.

My lungs were gasping for breath and my pulse thudded in my ears. My shoulders screamed; I was on the verge of dislocating them.

“Heidi!” Amadeo shouted.

I froze.

He was awake. Awake and sitting up with his arms trapped behind his back. He was leaning against the post with his legs drawn up loosely in front of him.

“Thought I’d lost you there for a minute,perla,” he said, and the corners of his lips turned up in a gentle smile.

It was utterly absurd that he was smiling, and yet, the gesture slipped inside me and helped to slow my racing pulse.

“What are they going to do, Amadeo?” I asked, not certain I was prepared for the answer. But if anyone knew what was to come, it was him, was it not?

“I don’t know,perla,” he said, but there was something guarded in his eyes.

“They want the money, right?” The money was the problem, and I was the solution. All they had to do was crack me wide open, and the money would come pouring out. Or it would, if I had the slightest clue where it was hidden.

“Si,” he said and then his gaze met mine.

He held it, silent, but a crack appeared in his stone-like mask. Just for one moment, one crack, one narrow fissure, and then it was gone. But I swear what I’d seen was jet black and ice cold. It was fury unlike anything I’d ever imagined.

---