I clenched my jaws tightly, picturing Elsie right there. With her dark straight hair flowing around her shoulders, her big beautiful smile. Her body shuddering in my arms. I wanted to hold her again. I didn’t want her to be hurt again.
“We want to help you find her. She deserves to be kept safe for how she helped the family. Davey wants that too,” Killian added.
My mind whirred with ideas. The more I thought about it, the more confident I was we’d missed something crucial.
“We need to speak to Davey,” I said.
“Are you even listening to us? We spoke to him this evening. He confirmed what we thought of Elsie,” Colin said.
“Not about Elsie. We need to speak to him about Aldo. Maybe he knows more than we realize. He’s just a kid, he doesn’t know what’s important information that he should be sharing with us. We need to ask him the right questions,” I replied.
Twenty-Three
Elsie
I shouldn’t have wasted my time daydreaming about Tristian. What was the point? Aldo would never let me go.
But I couldn’t help myself. It was love at first sight, and in a way, I was glad I met him.
I remembered it clearly, the moment he first came into my line of vision.
His brother, Brendan, and Davey’s mom came charging into the abandoned farmhouse where I was hiding out with Davey in the dark. We heard their voices and Davey went running out towards them.
They shone their flashlights around and it was only after I was sure it was safe to come out that I stepped into the halo of their lights.
I didn’t see Tristian at first. He was at the back, behind Brendan and the woman who were both hugging and kissing Davey. It was an emotional moment. A union between parents and a little child who never deserved what had happened to him.
At that moment, I was glad Davey was reunited with his parents who’d keep him safe. Nothing else mattered as much, not even my safety. My parents’ death had changed something in me. I didn’t care what happened to me, as long as Davey made it out of there, safe.
I had tears in my eyes as I watched them, and then I saw Tristian. He stepped away from the others and came towards me. His silhouette was lit up in the flashlights and my first reaction to his physical presence was fear. He was very tall. Very muscular. The kind of man who’d crush me between his thumbs if he wanted to.
Then my vision adjusted and I saw his face.
He was the most handsome man I ever laid eyes on. Chiseled features, a light stubble and very bright green eyes. Just like Davey’s. There was no mistaking they were related.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked me.
I nearly fell into his arms with relief. I couldn’t believe we’d made it out alive to the other side. That Aldo’s men hadn’t apprehended us already. I nodded vigorously at him, quaking at the idea of being touched by him.
I’d never wanted a man as desperately as I wanted him.
The striking clash between his intimidating physical appearance with the softness in his voice, the look of concern on his face—fired up something in my loins I didn’t realize could be awoken so quickly.
I was surprised by my own reaction to him.
“They’ll kill me if they find me,” I whispered to him.
Tristian watched me closely, his eyes narrowing on me. He had tried to figure me out at exactly that moment.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe,” he’d said.
And he stuck to his promise.
This was all my fault.
I’d been given very little to eat, very little to drink—since I was captured by the Barons and imprisoned in this windowless room. I was aware of the armed men outside the door because I heard their muffled voices through the walls. Aldo wasn’t taking any chances this time. The last time, he’d been too lenient with me and I managed to run away.
I spent most of my time now thinking about Tristian and how foolish I’d been for running away from him.
I couldn’t even remember why I did it.
Why did I leave his apartment? That was the one place I would’ve been safe. Aldo wouldn’t have been able to touch me. Libby would still be alive.
Was my ego so much more important than my life?
Just because he’d rejected me, I put my life in danger?
I should’ve known from the beginning that Tristian Doherty and I would never have a future together. Our worlds would never meet. Maybe I wasn’t even his type.
He took me because I was available for the taking.
The things I felt for him when we had sex—it had to have all been one sided. It wasn’t real.
When the door of the room burst open and two men marched in, I barely had any energy left in me to react to their presence. They came straight at me and started untying the chords that bound me to the chair. They left the gag in my mouth so I couldn’t ask them what was happening.
Not that they’d tell me.
They held me tight, dragging me out of the room and through the building until they deposited me in another room.
This was an office with cabinets and files. Another room I was familiar with because I had worked here before.
I knew why I was brought here.
The men forced me to sit down behind a desk and finally took my gag off.
I gasped for fresh air, sucking in lungfuls of it and trying to get my breathing back to normal. I was sure I would’ve passed out pretty soon if they hadn’t removed it now.
“You will continue your work,” one of the men growled at me.
“You know what to do,” the other one said.
I looked up at them with my lips pursed tightly together. My hands were shaking. I wanted to spit
