Beyond Ransom (The Ransom Series) (14 page)

“Just breathe, Morgan.”

I can feel and hear Leo’s attempts at
deep, steady breaths encouraging me to follow.  My breathing matches to his
pace and we remain there, holding each other for what might be our last night together
or on this Earth.

Decision

I feel like I’m being hauled off for
execution.  My bare feet shuffle against the cold cement floor as I’m ushered
through the familiar halls of the prison back to the room where it all began,
returning me to the place where everything is about to change.

They took Leo from me early this
morning, and the hours of separation from him have been difficult to endure. 
Though I know I can get through this by myself, I would much rather face the
unknown of what’s about to happen with him by my side.

I’ve prepared myself as best I could
for the possible outcomes that await me.  I’ve accepted that I may never see
Leo again
and
that my life may end.  I’ve hoped that Leo
is okay, that I will see my parents soon,
and
that I
will make it back home.  I’ve prayed that I will survive and endure and
eventually thrive again.

I don’t know where it’s got me,
though.  I’m still here, walking straight into the horrible unknown.

Quinn and I enter the main room to a
bustling of commotion.  The men are on high alert.  There’s something going
down, and it’s big.

My chair
,
my tiny
prison within this prison
,
awaits me where it always
does, the spotlight shining brightly toward it.  The stage is set.  The
audience is ready.  They only need the star of the show, and I’m being
personally delivered so that this fucked
-
up production
can begin.

As I approach the chair
,
my heart drops to see that the chains attached to the wall are
empty.  Leo’s not here.  I ignore the tiny voice in the back of my head that
tells me he’s dead.  I have to believe he’s alive.  If he’s not, I know this
fight is instantly lost.

I sit down warily in the chair, not
fighting Quinn as he secures my wrists and ankles to its arms and legs.  Then
the wait begins.  I’m sure this is part of Mark’s plan: tie me up and make me
wait in anticipation for the big event he has set up for me.

I take advantage of the opportunity to
use this time against him, closing my eyes and focusing all my energy into
calming my body and clearing my mind.  This is my chance to be prepared for
what Mark’s going to throw at me, and by the time the door to the room opens
and Mark enters, I feel stronger and more ready to take him on and survive
this.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the
bloodied, unconscious, half-naked body that Mark drags behind him.  I can
barely make out Leo’s face behind the streams of blood that cover it from
gashes to his forehead and
from
his bleeding nose and
lip.  His dark hair looks soaked from sweat or blood or both as it dangles down
in front of his closed eyes.

When Mark approaches the chains
attached to the wall and drops Leo’s lifeless body face down in front of them,
I feel myself about ready to be sick.  Leo’s back is covered in bloody lashes,
the long, inflamed marks crisscrossing in every direction over the tattoo that
takes up the majority of his back: a beautiful phoenix, the graceful and strong
bird rising up from the ashes and reaching up to the sky.  It doesn’t look like
a phoenix an
ymore
.  It now represents pain and
suffering.  It’s an omen of death.

Once the chains are secured around
Leo’s wrists and ankles
,
the room quiets.  Mark looks
up at me, smiling brightly as if it’s Christmas fucking morning and he finally
gets to open his presents.  I want to smack that smile off his face
more
than anything
.  If I was out of these restraints
,
I
’
d be all over this man, scratching him
and
biting him
and
doing anything I possibly
could to piss him the hell off even if he would kill me for it.

I would do it for Leo.

“You fucking bastard,” I say under my
breath.  The words slide off my tongue with so much hatred my voice doesn’t
even sound like m
e
anymore.  “Haven’t you done enough
to him already?”

Mark leans down close to my ear.  “I
haven’t done even half of what he deserves for what he did to me.”

I stare at him in confusion as he takes
a few steps in front of me and turns around.  H
e sets hi
s hands his hips as he looks between me and Leo, inspecting his
handiwork
.

My eyes can’t stand to look at him a
moment longer.  I instead divert my gaze to where my concern truly lies, to the
bloodied lump of human being discarded on the floor next to me.  A profound
feeling of guilt washes over me as I look at the man who has been my only ally
through this ordeal even though we started out on different sides.

“You caused this, you know,” Mark
taunts
,
“
luring
my poor boy
to you and gripping into him with your talons, making him weak.  This is all on
you.”

“He’s not weak, and you know it.”  I
find it hard to bite my tongue when it comes to defending Leo, even though if
he were conscious he would tell me to shut the hell up.

Mark makes no attempt to deny my
statement.  “You seem to have come to know him
quite
well in your time here.  What you don’t realize is that I know him better, and
that’s what made this all so perfect.”

I’m still trying to process what Mark’s
saying when he taps the cell phone that rests on one of the tables.  It’s both
frightening and relieving to know that in just a few moments my parents will be
on the other end of th
e call and
that we will be
connected at least in this small way.  It makes my heart both ache and warm
just to think about it.

Mark turns on the speakerphone and
paces the room slowly while waiting for the call to connect.

“Mark.”  Dad’s voice sounds hollow,
void of life.  I’ve never heard this kind of anguish from him before.

“Robert, so great to chat again,” Mark
replies eagerly, a grin breaking out on his face.  “I hope you have good news
for me.”

“The money?” my dad asks.

“Yes, of course the fucking money.  Or
have you forgotten that I’m holding your daughter until her ransom is paid?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten.”  He sounds
lost and without a plan.  My dad always has a plan.  “I don’t have it yet,” he
says, his voice breaking.  “Honestly, Mark, I don’t know if I’ll ever have it,
not all of it anyway.”

Despite this news, Mark’s thrilled
expression hardly changes.  This man is crazy, absolutely psychotically fucking
crazy.

“Sorry, a partial payment won’t work. 
That’s not the deal.  I expect full payment if you ever expect to see Morgan’s
pretty face again.”

Silence fills the other end of the line
for a long moment before my dad finally speaks again.  “I have almost half. 
It’s every cent I can possibly get or borrow.  I’ve tapped out all of my
resources, Mark.  I’ll have nothing left if you take this from me.  It will
ruin me.  Isn’t that what you want anyway?  Can’t it be enough?”

I drop my gaze to my lap.  My family is
broken.  No matter what happens, whether I’m held hostage forever or I’m killed
or I actually get to go home, none of us will ever be the same.

“No.”  Mark’s response is hard and
cold.  “It’s not enough, and I’ve run out of patience.”

“Please.  Give me more time,” Dad
pleads.  I can hear every bit of the desperation in his voice.  “I’ll find a
way to get you
the
rest of the money.  Give me another
week or two and it’ll be yours.”

“I’m done.  Your time is up.”

Mark pulls out the gun from behind him
and reaches me in three long strides.  He points the tip of it directly at my
shoulder.

He fires.

The
explosive
sound
of the gunshot resonates loudly in my ears before I feel the searing pain of
the bullet traveling into my flesh and muscle.  I can feel the scream erupting
from me in the air quickly exiting my lungs, but I can barely hear the sound
from my lips with the ringing in my ears.  Tears pour down my cheek
s
as I stare at the bleeding hole in the shirt at my shoulder.

My eyes are instantly drawn to the side
when I hear the faint sound of chains next to me.  For a second I forget about what
just happened as my eyes lock with Leo’s.  He’s startled and confused at first,
but when he sees the grimace in my expression I can tell he knows exactly what
just woke him up.

Leo looks from me to Mark’s face to the
gun in Mark’s hand.  “What the hell did you do?”

One step is all it takes for Mark’s
reach with the gun to smack Leo hard across the face.  His head lulls to the
side, and now I don’t know if the tears
streaming down my face are for me or for him.

With my wrists still tied to the chair,
I’m helpless to stop the warm, sticky feeling of blood dripping out from
the
wound in my shoulder
, and all I want to do is get it off me. 
My entire body
is shaking
.  I wonder if I’m going into
shock.

My attention is drawn forward as Mark
crosses the space in front of me.  I’m vaguely aware of the chaotic sounds
coming through the phone call, Dad’s voice frantically asking questions while Mom
wails in the background.  Mark ignores the phone completely, reaching instead
for a roll of duct tape.  He quickly tears a piece as he’s moving back toward
Leo and then secures it over his mouth.

Leo’s still hazy, not quite back with
me awake and in the moment.  I don’t know how our situation could possibly get
worse, but I have a bad feeling it will.

“So, Robert,” Mark asks casually,
sauntering back toward the phone on the table.  The sounds on the other end of
the line immediately go silent.  “We’re changing up the game.  Actually, I’m
going to let you in on the real game now.”

“What did you do to her?”  Dad’s voice
is hushed.  He’s barely keeping it together now.

“You’re asking the wrong question,
Robert.  Focus with me.”

“Tell me what the hell you did to my
daughter!”

Mark’s face turns angry, his joking
attitude giving way to frustration.  “I put a time limit on the decision she’s
about to make.”

I sit here confused and worried as the
silence of the phone call fills the room.  Dad clears his throat before
speaking again.  “I don’t understand.  What is she deciding?”

Mark turns to me with a
devilish
smile on his face.  “She may have already made her decision.  In
fact, I’ve bet on her since the very beginning that she would make this
decision.”  He pauses a moment to let this sink in both for my parents and for
me.  “It’s been the plan all along, and your daughter played her part
beautifully.”

I hear Leo murmuring and tugging at the
chains next to me, but my gaze remains completely focused on Mark.

“You see,” he continues, “your daughter
has been busy in the weeks that she’s spent here waiting for you to only
collect enough money for a partial payment.  With the size of my empire, did
you truly believe that I would settle the differences between us for a measly
six million dollars?  This is so much more than ransom.  It was never about the
money.  All I needed was time.”

“What are you saying?”  Dad’s voice is
trembling.

Excitement and anticipation exude from
Mark.  “You’ll see.  I don’t want to spoil it.”  Mark picks up the phone from
the table and approaches me.  “Morgan, dear, it’s time for you to make a
decision.”  He glances down at my bleeding shoulder.  “And I would suggest you
make this snappy.”

I nod.  It’s all I can do.  Any attempt
at speech is pointless in my current state.

He taps the screen of the phone as he
talks to me.  “I’ll let you go back to your old life.  I’ll leave you
locked
up
here and give daddy your location after my men and I are
long gone, but there’s a catch.  Leo stays with you.”

Catch.  How the fuck is that
a
catch?  My heart soars within my chest and relief overwhelms me at
the thought of being left here with Leo and being found by my parents and the
police, but the feeling is short-lived.  The catch becomes clear to me, and my
heart sinks again to its lowest possible depths.

Mark hits the screen of the phone one
more time with a smile.  “Robert, I’m sending you a little video clip I thought
you might find interesting.”

The air dissipates from my lungs as
gasps are heard over the call and Mark shows me the phone with the video
playing.

It’s a black and white feed of Leo’s
naked body moving on top of mine.  It’s a surveillance video of him making love
to me in my eyes but raping me in anyone else’s eyes.

I look away from it, my lips parted in
disbelief and embarrassment while my entire body shivers.  Mark had a hidden camera
on us.  He didn’t only see us in person that day. 
With his video feeds,
he’s
probably seen everything that’s gone on in that cell
from day one.

Dad’s voice rages throughout the room. 
“Not my girl.  Not my girl!”  He’s sobbing now.  “I’m going to kill you.  I
will find you and rip your fucking throat out!”