Page 5 of Taken By the Dark Billionaires

Her lips were parted, and her mouth was stuffed with a gag made of a ball. Panic soared through her, but her anguished cries were nothing but unintelligent sounds. As her gaze skittered wildly around her, she did a double take when she saw a crystal-clear reflection of herself in a pane of glass, but not without it taking her moments to accept she was looking at herself.

A thick black veil covered her face, concealing her features completely, and a red ribbon was tied around her throat to secure the fabric to her face. She was able to see only because of the strip of thin, gauzy fabric that ran across her eyes.

The rest of her body was also covered in the same transparent, tissue-thin fabric, leaving her essentially naked underneath the flimsy material draped over her.

What had they done to her?

Shifting her glance from the glass pane, she skimmed her new surroundings and then drew back at the sight of a multitude of men in crimson robes, with their heads covered in hoods, concealing their faces completely, standing in three or four rows before her.

She suddenly became aware of their chanting in a language she didn’t understand, let alone be able to recognize. She pleaded around the ball gag to be released and yanked at the leather cuffs restraining her but to no avail.

How had her coming to their house to apologize and beg them not to fire Tammy turned into this? And she didn’t even know whatthistruly meant.

Just as she started to wonder what was going to happen to her next, a lever was pulled, and the floor beneath her opened up.

Frantically trying to stop herself from the draw of gravity, she was lowered to another level as if she were descending deeper into hell. But she could do nothing to save herself.

The only light on this level came from a series of lit torches secured to the stone walls around her, their flames illuminating the cave with sinister reddish shadows. She hoped and prayed that it was a nightmare that she could force herself to wake up from.

But the pulsing bruise on her cheek from where the man had hit her smarted aggressively, and every time she winced in agony, she proved that this was real. What was happening to her was real.

Feeling as if she were drowning in tar, Sutton started to gasp for air. Breathing with the gag in her mouth while under such duress added to her torment.

Her wrists and ankles were secured so tightly against the wooden structure that no matter how hard she jerked to be set free, her body remained trapped and immobile, keeping her inescapably bound.

Her muffled screams sounded horrendous in her ears, and an icy cold layer of new fear drenched her entire body when two men dressed in the same crimson red robes with their hoods pulled low over their bowed heads started toward her.

No. No. No.

Please god, she prayed fervently. She just wanted this harrowing ordeal to end.

Her gaze followed as one of the men diverged to a hearth, spitting orange flames into the air. He picked up a poker of sorts. But her attention was soon ripped away from him when the other man approached near enough to touch her.

He started to rip into the tissue-thin cloth, serving as her only shield to protect her nakedness underneath.

Oh god, please, no.

She couldn’t see his face because he still had the hood of his robe pulled low over his head. He had already exposed her breasts and half of her midsection before he took a better hold of the fabric, his intention to render her completely naked.

The other man started to approach her as well. Sutton almost fainted at the sight of the iron rod with its head red hot from having been steeped into the fire.

They were going to brand her.Just as the woman had said.

Tears soaked her face and soaked into the thickness of the veil covering her face. Her stomach dropped, and she thought she was going to throw up, but with the gag in her mouth, her fear of choking to death increased the level of her terror.

“Enough.” A voice echoed around her. It wasn’t loud and thundering, but the quiet power in the tone changed her heavy breaths to fearful whimpers. An array of flamed torches suddenly gave sight to a scene that staggered her.

Sitting on three thrones wrought with metal that had been twisted into nightmarish designs, all of dragon-like serpents in deadly poses, of darkness and doom, and of spine-chilling skeletons of human heads, were three men dressed immaculately in suits.

Sutton blinked away her tears as her whole body started to burn up.

Ezra Collins.

Jensen Flynn.

Maxim Black.

There weren’t any images of them online or in business publications; absolutely nowhere could their faces be found. Not even Tammy had fully seen them, but she repeated what other people had said about them. They were scary in the most fascinating way possible.

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