Page 42 of Tristian (The Doherty Mafia)
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 at their faces. I wanted to refuse to do their bidding, but I knew it’d be foolish.
The best thing I could do was keep quiet and do as I was told. Or at least create the impression I was obedient.
They left me in the room and locked the door behind them. I heard their voices outside so I knew they hadn’t gone far.
It was probably Aldo’s orders to never leave me alone. Not for a second. Until he didn’t have any use for me anymore.
I didn’t know how long I’d been left alone in that room before Aldo finally showed up.
The stuff I worked on was complicated. They wanted me to create a financial plan for laundering money, without leaving any paper trail. Nothing that’d pin back to Aldo and his family.
Without the proper nutrition I needed, or the rest my body craved—I felt exhausted and completely spent. I wasn’t even able to think straight or come up with creative ideas, or even to keep my eyes open. It proved to be a much harder task than I’d initially thought.
So when Aldo showed up at the door with a sandwich on a plate and a juice box, I was actually relieved to see him. I stared at him hungrily. I couldn’t keep the desperation off my face.
He smiled, and for a moment I almost believed he was happy to see me.
But then he put the food down on the desk in front of me and picked up the sandwich and took a big bite out of it.
I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep myself from screaming. I wanted to lash out at him, rip his eyeballs out with my nails. I hated him so much. I’d never wished death on anybody before, but I wished it on him. For everything he’d done.
“How much longer do you need?” he asked as a conversation starter.
“I don’t know. This stuff is complicated. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up,” I replied truthfully.
Aldo took another bite and then drank some of the juice. We both knew how hungry I was, and watching him eat and drink torturous. And that was exactly what he wanted. He wanted me to see just how much power he exerted on me.
