Echo(81)

I don’t respond to him as he stares down at me. After a moment, he grabs a chair, pulling it in front of me, and takes a seat. He leans in towards me, and my head throbs in beats of aching heat from where he pistol-whipped me.

His eyes bore into me as a sly smirk creeps across his lips. His voice is low when he asks, “Or does it all have something to do with your father?”

My body pricks in chills at the mention of my dad. I tense around my hollowed chest, and wonder why he would even mention my father.

What does he know?

I don’t say a word out of utter terror that I’ve gotten myself mixed up with the wrong people when I started this f*cked up game. I’ve always been in control when it came to my charade in Bennett’s life. But now all that control is gone and in the hands of this bastard, and that has me scared beyond belief. I pretend to be strong, but the reality of this situation has all confidence lost. I’ve been kidnapped and I don’t have the first clue how to get myself out of this.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I finally say, my voice coming out weakly. “What I told you about Declan was the truth. He hates me; he won’t care if you hurt me.”

“Then you need to find a way to make him care,” he sneers before backhanding me so hard I fall out of the chair and onto the floor.

My vision fades for a moment when my head hits the concrete, and my urge to attack fumes inside, but I’m bound and useless.

“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my family,” he tells me and then steps away.

Staring up at him, my frustration multiplies, and since I can’t knock the shit out of him, I attack with my words.

“Even with Bennett’s dick inside your wife? Would you have done anything for her in that moment?”

“Your lies are humorous.”

I don’t acknowledge his denial as I continue antagonizing him, spitting my words, “Did you enjoy f*cking her when my husband’s cum was still inside her filthy *?”

He stomps back over to me, and I laugh to just piss him off even more. He grabs my hair, and immediately shuts me up when he balls his fist and punches the side of my face. Everything turns bright white, and my mouth fills with blood from where my teeth puncture the inside of my cheek.

Writhing in agony, I groan in exploding pain from my head. My skull thumps hard, and I can’t open my eyes because it hurts too much. And the next thing I know, he covers my mouth again with tape.

The pain in my head increases as time passes. I’ve got my body pressed against the wall as I continue to lie here, and I wish he would just knock me unconscious to put me out of my misery.

When Richard walks out of the room and into the corridor, I make an attempt to break the tape as I twist my wrists, but it’s not budging. I roll off my side and onto my stomach before I start grazing the side of my face along the floor. When I start to feel the corner of the tape pull away from my mouth, I press my face down harder, rolling it to try and catch more of the tape to pull it off. Once I feel the tape peel off the corner of my lips, I use my tongue to push it off, and when I can move my mouth and speak, I wait for Richard to return.

I can hear him talking to someone on the phone, but I can’t make out what’s being said. After a while, he returns, and I keep my voice as free from hostility as I can when I say, “It’s true.”

His eyes meet mine, and I add, “They did a DNA test that Bennett kept in his safety deposit box. Bennett left him everything. I couldn’t believe it when I found out, but it’s true.”

“Tit for tat?” he says, confusing me.

“What does that mean?”

He then pulls his chair around to me and sits as I lie here, staring up at him.

“You hurt me, I hurt you.”

My brows pinch together, not understanding his riddled words.

He continues, “I’ve got nothing to lose, and unless I get my money, you’re not walking out of here alive. And from what I remember of your father, he wasn’t much of a fighter, so I have a feeling your days are numbered as his were.”

“Fuck you!” I snarl at him for speaking shit about my dad. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He laughs at me, revealing, “I know more than you think, little girl. You see, I knew your father.”

My chest palpitates anxiously when he says this, and a thousand questions flood.

“Steve and I go way back.”