Chapter 34: Rebel Revenge: Chapter 34

I blinked my eyes open and quickly shut them again when pain speared through my skull. A moan fell through my lips at the pain spreading from the base of my head all the way through my body. It didn’t stop, a constant thumping starting up that pounded its way through every muscle and ligament until even my fingers and toes hurt.

Nausea swelled in my stomach, but when I turned my head to the side to vomit, nothing happened.

A jolt lifted me from whatever I was lying on before sending me crashing back down into it. My head spun in dizzying circles, disorienting me.

The party. Fang and Kian and Vaughn.

A woman locked in a room.

Caleb.

The ringing in my ears died away and was replaced with the roar of an engine.

I forced my eyes open again. This time the horror drowned out the pain.

Caleb was behind the wheel, whistling as he drove.

I twisted frantically, trying to orient myself and realized I was lying across the back seat of his car.

“Good evening, sunshine!” he called out gaily, like we were neighbors greeting each other at the mailbox.

I rolled over onto my stomach with a groan and groped the floor, trying to find something I could use as a weapon.

“Nice of you to wake up. I was worried I was going to have all the fun while you were unconscious.”

There was nothing back here. His car was immaculate. I could try smothering him with a floor mat, but I didn’t like my chances. The other option was to get the door open and just jump.

I glanced up at the world flashing by outside. Caleb wasn’t exactly puttering along at the speed limit. He drove like he was trying out for NASCAR.

I was barely dressed. A Lycra suit wasn’t exactly going to be much protection against the road.

But I’d take my chances. Anything was better than being alone in a car with Caleb Black.

I grabbed at the handle.

It moved, but the door didn’t fly open the way I expected it to.

Caleb patted his dashboard affectionately when I frantically tried the other side. “Child locks are so handy, aren’t they? Good for keeping small children safe. Good for keeping little whores safe too, apparently.”

I ignored him, lying back on the seat and kicking at the window instead.

I tried again when it didn’t break, but it took all the energy I had.

It produced zero result. How freaking hard could it be to break a car window, for Christ’s sakes?

“Don’t bother. You’ve got so many drugs in your system right now your kicks are like the pitter-patter of butterfly wings on the glass. You’re only exhausting yourself. We’re here now anyway.”

He parked the car, and I tried to sit up but found my limbs were really not paying attention to my brain. I was barely half upright when he yanked open the door from outside and dragged me out by my arm.

I peered up at the big house, not drugged enough not to recognize my own home. “How courteous of you to drive me home.” My tongue felt twice the size it normally was, and I was sure it wasn’t just the ringing in my head that slurred my words.

Motherfucker had seriously drugged me with something.

Either that or I had the concussion from Hell from where he’d smacked me in the head in order to get me out of his house and into his car.

He dragged me from the car parked in the driveway to the big house I’d moved myself into. I fought him every step, but it was like my body was surrounded by molasses. Every step felt like it was happening in slow motion.

“What’s the code?” he demanded.

I knew it. Even with drugs in my system and a ringing headache, I still remembered the simple four-digit password. But over my dead body was I going to tell him. This was my damn house. Whatever he was going to do to me, he could do it somewhere else. He wasn’t taking away the one place I felt safe. He’d already tainted Psychos. He wasn’t having this place too.

“Tell me, bitch.”

I muttered out the wrong numbers, stalling, buying time.

Fang would come. He’d bring the others. I just had to stay awake long enough for them to get here. I smiled at the thought of them finding Caleb and drowning him in the pool.

A giggle slipped out.

Caleb stared down at me. “Are you fucking laughing right now?”

I didn’t see any point in sparing his feelings. “Yep. Just thinking about how Fang and Vaughn and Kian are going to drown you in the pool. Can you swim? Won’t matter. They won’t let you live after this.”

He stared down at me, then his eyes narrowed. The smile that spread across his face was so chilling it registered even through my drug-addled brain.

His fingers tightened. “Great idea.”

He dragged me around the side of the house to the back while I tried to stay on feet that kept slipping out from beneath me. I tried to shout for help, hoping Sasha was home to hear, but he backhanded me again.

Blood seeped from my split lip, tangy on my tongue. My head rang, and I couldn’t keep up. My feet stopped cooperating and gave in.

Caleb’s phone rang halfway across the yard, and he dumped me unceremoniously on the ground as he fished his cell from the pants of his costume.

From my fetal position, I stared up at him answering the phone like he was at a business meeting. No care given to the fact he’d just abducted and drugged me.

“Vaughn! Old friend. Are you enjoying the party?”

I tried to lift my head. Vaughn? Why was Vaughn calling Caleb?

Caleb shoved a hand into his pocket. “You’ll what, Vaughn? Run off to California again?”

California?

Something that felt a lot like longing and disappointment wrapped its way around me. I didn’t want Vaughn going back to California.

Back to his wife.

I wanted him here. With me.

Caleb knelt by my side, running one finger down the side of my face while the other clutched his phone. I tried to cringe away, but he wouldn’t let me, his fingers digging into the side of my jaw. A tear slid down my face at him touching me.

“Relax. We’re just having a little private party.” He leaned in and licked the tear from my cheek. “Cry for them, baby. I bet they like it too.”

I sucked up every ounce of energy I had and screamed instead.

Caleb cut me off with another slap to the face. His words went fuzzy, the ringing in my ears taking over again. It took a minute for it to subside.

“…You probably fuck her tight cunt like that all the time, don’t you? Your other friends there too? I knew you’d all like my parties. You’re my kind of men.”

I tried to crawl away, but the drugging slowness made every movement nearly impossible. Caleb’s boot connected with my stomach, and I wheezed, blinking up at him.

He’d dropped his phone somewhere, the full extent of his hate now fully focused on me. “You had to find my dirty little secret in the bottom of the basement there, didn’t you?”

The girl. “Who is she?”

A dragging noise came from somewhere, but I was too out of it to work out where.

“What do you care? She’s as dead as you are.”

He jerked me up off the ground and shoved me into an outdoor chair. I couldn’t hold myself upright. I slumped to one side, head lolling onto my shoulder while I struggled to keep my eyes open.

He leaned down so we were eye height and ran his thumb over my lips and then forced it into my mouth. “Shame your boyfriends know where we are. I’d quite like to put my dick here and fuck your sweet mouth some. But framing them for your murder is fun too.”

He knelt in front of me. I wanted to kick him in the face, but my legs were dead weights, not moving at all.

I had no power to stop him when he spread my knees, strapping each ankle to the legs of the chair.

All I could do was watch through half-mast eyes when he roughly jerked my hands behind my back and tied them there.

He covered his hand with his sleeve and picked up Kian’s pocketknife from his work bench.

How many stabs would it take for him to kill me? Only one if he got it in the right place.

That seemed too controlled for Caleb. I braced myself for the frenzy of stabs that seemed more his style.

I was too out of it to move. Too out of it to make any more noise, even though I tried.

But my heart ached. It ached to tell Fang I loved him too.

It ached for Vaughn and the fact he was coming home to witness another murder.

It ached for Kian, whose fingerprints were going to be found on the murder weapon.

Caleb took a handful of my Lycra bodysuit and sliced right down the middle, cutting the fabric right from beneath my neck to my navel, then ripping it the rest of the way until it hung in tatters from my body and I was bared to him again.

Just the way he liked.

Vulnerable.

Weak.

His gaze roamed over me, lingering on the junction of my thighs and my tits. My skin pebbled with goosebumps from the cold. I tried to scream again, but no sound came out. My vocal cords refused to obey.

Caleb pulled out his phone, snapping photos, then grinned at me. “A souvenir for me to get off to later, since I don’t have time to fuck you now. Shame. I’ve missed your tight holes. Dreamed about having you again, and then there you were, slutting it up with my old pal Vaughn and his boys. Such a fucking shame.”

He leaned in close. “Maybe I’ll share these with Bethany-Melissa too. Maybe now she’ll finally understand how big a mistake she made when she left me.”

I mumbled something.

He grinned and leaned in. “What was that, little slut?”

I mustered up every ounce of energy I could find, refusing to go out without at least one final word. “Everyone knows you weren’t good enough for her, Caleb. That you couldn’t make her come with your tiny dick. That your fiancée went looking for better and found it in a Saint View trailer park. How. Fucking. Embarrassing.”

It was his weak spot, and I knew it. The one button I could press to really get beneath his skin.

All Caleb Black had ever cared about was what other people thought of him.

Bliss didn’t even know it, but she’d destroyed him when she’d left him. When she’d picked three men from Saint View over Caleb and his fancy house and car. She’d embarrassed him in front of the men he’d spent years trying to impress.

I was only sad she wasn’t here to see exactly how bad she’d hurt him.

It was a victory I would tell her gleefully.

Vaughn, Fang, and Kian would be here any minute. They’d kill Caleb and cut me loose, and we’d put this entire thing behind us.

Caleb couldn’t touch me.

He’d already taken so much, but now it was my turn.

I knew his dirty little secret, and it wasn’t the girl in the basement.

It was that Caleb Black was an insecure boy, desperate for other people’s approval.

Caleb’s face turned red.

His anger boiled to the surface, echoing out in a screech of frustration. “No!”

But I didn’t have to say anything. We both knew the truth.

He could kill me now, but the words were out. I wasn’t the only one who saw it. If I could work it out, then surely his colleagues already had as well.

There was no pretending for him anymore.

No convincing himself he held the respect of anyone.

Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed.

I smiled. “I win, Caleb,” I whispered. “I won, didn’t I? They’re coming. Vaughn. Fang. Kian. The police. You think stabbing me with that blunt old pocketknife is going to do enough damage I won’t survive the minutes until that siren is on top of you? You’re all out of time, Caleb. The game is over.”

He looked over his shoulder toward the front of the house but then focused back on me.

His eyes darkened. “No, little slut. I always win.”

With a grin straight from Hell, he tipped the chair backward, splashing it into the pool.

With me still tied to it.