Nolan.
No. Not him. What did he want with me?
“Sweetheart, calm down. You’re safe with me.” His hands gripped my upper arms, pushing me down. “Here, let me help you.”
My teeth chattered as cold seeped into my bones.
“Where the fuck am I? What’s happening to me?”
“We are on my plane. Just relax; it’s going to be okay. I’m going to remove your wet shirt and dry you.”
Sickening nausea overwhelmed me. As my stomach heaved I rolled to my side and vomited.
“Jesus, are you okay?” Nolan sounded shocked, and it took me by surprise. Wasn’t he the one responsible for my situation? The scene at my apartment was coming back to me. The men. The needle. The blackness. The drone of an airplane.
This isn’t a dream.
Turbulence caused the airplane to dip and shake.
I emptied the remainder of my stomach’s contents and sank back onto the bed, weak and dizzy. Air travel wasn’t something I handled well without taking motion-sickness tablets. And whatever the hell they’d injected into me—
Spasms hit my stomach and I pulled my legs up and rolled into a fetal position, groaning as my head throbbed and palpitations seized my heart. I just wanted to curl up and fucking die.
Someone knocked at the door of the private bedroom. Trust Nolan to have a plane with its own bed. How many of his sluts had he fucked there when he went on ‘business’?
More voices.
“Sir, the pilot recommends you and Miss Ryder take your seats and buckle up. We’ve hit heavy storms.”
“How bad are the conditions?”
“Pretty bad, sir. He’s instructed everyone to strap up.”
The plane dipped again. My stomach cramped and I retched once more, the pungent stench hanging in the air.
“Shit. Whatever the fuck you injected into her is making her sick. And throwing water over her hasn’t helped. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“I suggest you leave her on the bed, and you take a seat until conditions improve. We just have to ride it out.”
“Fuck. You said it would be okay. You didn’t tell me she’d be violently ill.”
“She must be having a reaction to the sedative. It happens.”
“Now you fucking tell me that?”
“You didn’t ask. There is always a percentage of risk involved. Surely you were aware of that?” A pause, and another dip. This time it felt as if the plane was free falling for a few seconds. Good. I’m going to die anyway. Better in a plane crash than from this excruciating pain.
“Senator, take a seat and buckle up. I’ll take a look at Miss Ryder.”
A long pause, and then the shuffling of feet.
“Okay. Take care of her.” Typical. The fucker only cared about himself. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised.
“Jesus, the stench. Fuck.”
I don’t care. Leave me the fuck alone. I just want to sleep.
The man gripped my arm and yanked roughly. “Eva, don’t go back to sleep. You’ve got to wake up.”
“Fuck off,” I mumbled.
“Listen, I really don’t care if you die. You’ll just be one more on a long list. So don’t make this hard for me.”
“Let me die.”
“Turn over so I can take your clothes off.”
“Fuck you.”
“Christ, you really are a piece of work.”
Strong hands gripped my hair and yanked hard. I was too weak and in too much pain to put up much resistance. He flipped me onto my back and grabbed hold of my shirt. With one hard yank he ripped it open, and with another tug it was off my body.
As a last defense, I reached out with every last bit of energy left in me. My nails dug into his skin and scratched across his cheek.
“I said . . . fuck off.” In my head I was screaming, but the words were hardly above a whisper.
“Little bitch.” The slap that hit me across the face caused white spots to flicker behind my eyelids. With a thump, my head fell backwards and hit the wall behind the bed.
I prayed for mercy.
I prayed to die.
Everything went black.
Mercy. At last.
Chapter 28 — Eva
When I awoke, a rush of cool air over my skin was accompanied by a whirring sound of a fan. I tried to move my arms, but they were heavy and impossible to shift.
I never imagined heaven to be like this.
Quiet. Dark. Motionless.
What would I see if I opened my eyes?
Afraid, I lay still, hardly breathing as I tried to piece everything together. My brain was still fuzzy—as if I was still drugged.
My life passed before me. A little girl in pigtails who adored her daddy. Fun years at college. My engagement to Nolan. My mother’s illness. Her death and funeral. Discovering that my father had had a mistress and I had a stepbrother. Meeting Ryder and Jade. Falling for Harrison. Finding out I was becoming an aunt.
Wait. Falling for Harrison?
What the hell was I thinking? Those drugs they gave me were making me delusional.
And where the fuck was Harrison?
He’d freaked out and left me without saying a word. Not even the obligatory “it’s not you it’s me,” or any other explanation.
One day he was in my life and then he’d disappeared.
I sighed. The ache in my heart hurt so much more than the physical aching of my body.
Nolan. Abduction. The man. The slap. They were nothing in comparison.
I tried to move my arms again, but I still couldn’t budge. Something cut into my wrists and held me down.
It took me a long time to convince myself that I should at least try to see where I was. I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves and slowly opened my eyes, allowing them to adjust to the dark as I stared at the ceiling without moving.
At least I knew where the whirring sound came from. A large bamboo fan was positioned above the bed and I watched, semi hypnotized, as it went around and around and around.
Moving my head slowly, I looked down at my arms. No wonder I couldn’t move. I was strapped to the bed. Panic rose up in my chest, threatening to make me scream. I pushed down the urge as a scream bubbled in my throat.
That would be a bad idea. A very bad idea.
My breath quickened as my heart raced, hammering against my ribs. I wasn’t dead. I was trapped in a fucking nightmare. Held against my will. As for mercy? There was no such fucking thing.
Not for my mother and neither for me.
How long had I been there? Did anyone even know I was gone? A thousand questions ran through my mind.
I gritted my teeth and steeled myself. This wasn’t the time to cry or play victim. If nobody—Daddy, Ryder, Harrison—came to rescue me, I had to figure out a way to free myself. The more the haze lifted from my brain, the more determined I was to get my life back. No man was going to control me or keep me against my will. Not in this fucking lifetime. Not ever.
“Eva, you’re awake.”
Shattering the stillness, Nolan’s voice scared the shit out of me. Where the hell was he?
And even more to the point—where in fuck’s name was I?
The only thing I knew was that we weren’t on the plane any longer.
So where then? How long was the flight?
From the far side of the room, I heard a chair scrape and footsteps fall on a hard floor.
I closed my eyes and pretended to still be asleep, or comatose, or whatever the hell I’d been.
“You can’t fool me. I know you’re awake. Your breathing has changed.”
A hand cupped my face. I tried to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t there, but everything inside me screamed. It felt like it was burning through my skin and into my flesh. As hard as I tried to control my breathing, I failed.
“Just don’t scream. Jones is outside the door. I’m sure you don’t want him in here.” He chuckled softly, as if it was really amusing him.