Free Hitman's Revenge (a Forbidden Bad Boy Romance) by Emilia Beaumont

gingerly, rotating my jaw to ease the stiffness out of it. There was also no mirror for me to see my reflection, and for that I was grateful. I was sure I looked horrible, a bloom of bruises and cuts, my hair knotted and pasted against my head. I hadn’t had a real bath since that night that I was taken. A washcloth was all I had been given to clean myself off.
    The image of my dad flitted across my mind, and I felt the fresh well of tears pool in my eyes, knowing in my heart that he was gone. My dad was dead. Don’t think about it, you need to stay strong. There was nothing that was going to bring him back, nothing that was going to allow me to hear his voice or smell the pungent odor of his favorite cigar that he smoked in the evenings after supper. I was no longer going to hear him singing in the garage, so off-key at times that I was forced to put my headphones on to drown him out. Now I would give anything to hear his raspy voice again.
    Wiping a hand over my face, I looked about my cell, fighting the urge to beat my fists against the wall in grief. The first night had been the hardest. I had fought my captor hard, screaming at the top of my lungs, rendering my throat raw like sandpaper, hoping that someone would hear my cries.
    But no one had come.
    He had punched me hard in the stomach, and I’d blacked out from the pain, winded and unable to breathe, and when I’d woken up I was lying on the floorboard of a vehicle, my hands and feet bound, with no chance of escape. With stiff muscles, I had ridden like that for hours, unable to properly move, before it had stopped and I was transferred to a boat. The stench of the river was pungent and heady.
    My captor, ugly fucker that he was, allowed me to relieve myself in the bathroom before tying me to the base of a fixed table in the galley and then leaving me there, alone. I had tried, oh I had tried, to get loose, the weight of my dad’s death gripping me tightly and fueling my anger. I wanted to kill them for ending his life, make them hurt like I was hurting. But they never gave me the chance.
    Once off the boat, I was transferred to a cell, where I remained, awaiting my fate. Why they hadn’t just killed me, too, I didn’t know. I’d seen their faces, spat in them, but instead of putting me out of my misery, they brought me here.
    They visited me each night to leer and try and touch at me as they gave me my evening meal.
    “Keep still. If you fight, you will only make it worse for yourself,” the thug grunted, his hands feeling up my body like I belonged to him. I wanted to retch as his fingers snaked in between my clamped legs, hunting for what he wanted.
    “Get off me!” I screamed, desperately trying to get closer to him so I could bite his fucking face off. No one touched me there without my permission. That sacred area was saved for one person, and one person only.
    All of a sudden a second set of footsteps entered the basement-like cell, and my stomach plummeted. I wouldn’t be able to hold off two of them. They’d strip me bare, one holding me down while the other fucked his way into me.
    “No!” I yelled, even louder than before as the other man approached. The first thug grinned a sickening smile at me, pleased that he now had help. But all of sudden an almighty crack deafened my ears and made them ring, cutting off my scream as a red mist coated my face.
    The thug’s hands went limp and dropped to his side, and the rest of him fell with a thump to the floor.
    I fell silent and looked at the man holding the gun, not understanding, sending him a questioning look. “No one but the boss is allowed to touch you. He was warned.”
    I remained motionless as the man grabbed hold of my attacker’s foot and dragged him out the cell. At least that was one less person I had to worry about in this hell-hole.
    One less person I’d have to kill. My thoughts flashed to my dad. Why hadn’t he trained me the same way he’d trained Jack? Maybe he knew deep