Free Making Choices (Black Shamrocks MC Book 2) by Kylie Hillman

my face. The sickly, sweet smell that overcomes me tells me that it’s ether. My stomach rolls. A million thoughts fight for acknowledgement in my addled mind.
    The last thought I’m aware of before darkness obliterates everything is that my father is going to kill me if I’m not at the meeting he demanded in the morning.
    ***
    T he constant dripping sound is annoying me. I’m trying my hardest to ignore it, but I can’t. After waking up on a ratty, smelly, single bed in a dark, damp room, I’ve been sitting curled into a ball on the bed. My head faces the entrance, my back jammed into the corner furthest from the locked, steel door—the door that offers my only escape from this room.
    I’ve been too scared to move, so apart from a quick inspection of the room where I discovered the entry into the dirtiest bathroom I’ve ever seen, I’ve maintained my position on the disgusting bed. Nausea still threatens me from the ether they used to render me unconscious. My joints ache from the men’s rough treatment of me.
    Apart from that, I’m okay.
    I’m still clad in the black yoga tights and racer-back singlet that I was wearing when they took me from my house, and they’re not offering much in the way of warmth in this cold room. There’s a tattered blanket folded on the end of the bed, but I’m loath to give into the warmth I might receive from it. Who knows when it was washed last?
    There’s one window in the room, but it’s too high for me to look through. The small rays of sunlight filtering in make me aware that it’s morning. I’ve been here all night, so hopefully my absence from work has been noted. I never take sick days, let alone not appear at work without phoning, so someone should have raised the alarm about my no-show.
    That thought is the only thing keeping me from completely losing it.
    “Let go of me, you dumb fuckers.”
    An angry, familiar, feminine voice breaks through the repressive silence. The door to my room rattles before it’s thrown open, slamming into the wall next to it.
    Two big men dressed in black jeans and dark hoodies wrestle an agitated, blonde woman through the doorway. She’s putting up much more of a fight than I did, and shame threatens to drown me. I wish I’d tried to fight them when they were in my house last night.
    I don’t see exactly how she does it, but she manages to kick one of the men in the face with a roundhouse kick before she punches the other in the face and knees him in the balls. The first guy is barely rising to his feet as the second hits the floor. The woman’s about to run from the room when she catches a glimpse of me from out of the corner of her eye.
    She stops dead, spinning around to face me.
    “Oh, JJ. How long have you been here?” Maddi brushes the strands of her long hair that have escaped from the knot on top of her head out of her face. Then she calmly walks over to me, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to me.
    What is she doing here? And why did she stop when she saw me instead of running?
    She could have escaped.
    The two men she injured are still picking themselves up from the floor when an emaciated-looking woman with straw-like, bleach-blonde hair walks in with a handsome man I’m sure I know, but can’t place.
    Maddi groans rudely at the two new people, rolling her eyes and shaking her head at me. She’s very calm for a woman who’s sitting on a disgusting bed, in the grossest room I’ve ever seen, against her will.
    Holding her hand in front of her face, she makes a show of checking out her long, painted nails before she brings it to her face to shield an obviously fake yawn.
    “Sherri. Connor. Long time, no see,” she drawls. “I take it you’re not hiding anymore?”
    The skinny woman narrows hate-filled eyes at Maddi before she holds her phone in front of her face.
    “Say cheese, Princess.” Her voice is one of those put-on, saccharine-sweet, baby voices that some women think men love. Personally I find