As soon as I was all the way inside he slammed the door shut.
There were no windows in the van, and the back door was chained with a heavy padlock. I heard a key turn in the lock of the side door and then the handle being tested. I felt like an animal being shipped for transport. A sharp, gruff laugh emerged from my throat—I was an animal. Actually less than that. A carcass, a piece of dead meat being hung up, cut, tasted, and thrown about.
I bounced around in the back of the van for what I guessed was an hour until I heard the tires slow, and crunch along a gravel road. The van stopped, and the door slid open.
“Out.”
I was huddled in the back corner of the van. Too scared to get out and yet wanting to, but knowing whatever awaited me couldn’t be good either.
“If have to come get you, bitch, you won’t like it.”
I knew he meant it. It was like he enjoyed seeing me in pain. I slowly crawled to the door, and Alfonzo grabbed my arm and yanked. I didn’t have time to gain my feet, and I landed hard on my knees on loose gravel.
I looked up, flinging my hair out of my eyes and came face to face with ... Oh God, Logan. It took me a second to register his face as he stood looking down at me. Steady. Composed. Almost as if five days ago he hadn’t made love to me. As if he didn’t even know me.
All the contained anger shot from my feet up to my skull and exploded.
“You f**king bastard,” I screamed and went flying for him. My fist managed to connect with his face before I was caught from behind and dragged back by the hair. I thrashed against Alfonzo’s hold, losing my footing and falling on my ass all the while Logan merely stood and watched.
“You done?” he asked when I stopped fighting and lay on the ground heaving in air while Alfonzo kept hold of my hair.
“She’s one feisty bitch. I’m going to f**k her raw when you’re done with her.”
Logan moved fast, knocking his hand off my hair and grabbing him by the shirt and slamming him against the van. “She’s mine. You get that. You don’t get to touch her—ever.”
The guy’s face went beet red, and his lips pursed together as he spit out, “She’s not yours. Raul owns her, and I train all his girls before he sells them.”
The aluminum crinkled as Logan slammed him into the van again. “She’ll be sold when I’m ready to sell her. You touch her again like you did at the farmhouse ... I’ll cut off your c**k and shove it down your throat.”
Alfonzo’s eyes glared at me lying on the ground, but finally he put his hands up, and Logan let him go.
“Get up.” Logan stood in front of me, his feet inches from my hands that pressed into the gravel. He stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. “Now.”
“Fuck you,” I said and threw a handful of gravel at his face.
He was on me before my next breath, taking my arm and without hesitation dragging me toward another car. I pushed backward with my feet, trying to gain my balance, but he was walking too fast, and I couldn’t do anything except feel the stones digging into my h*ps as he pulled me across the driveway.
“Transport her with the rest of them,” Alfonzo yelled. “Bitch needs a f**king lesson. She arrives after that, she won’t be putting up much of a fight.”
As soon as Logan let me go, I leapt to my feet and was about to run when his hand trapped me by the throat. “Don’t do it, Emily. You run and I have to chase you, it won’t be pretty.”
I was wheezing past the pressure he had on my neck, my hands on top of his trying to peel back his fingers.
A wave of memory—Logan’s hand on the back of my neck—came plowing into me, and my breath hitched. No, don’t let me remember. Don’t. Please. I swear I heard him whisper my name, but it had to be my imagination. My mind was trying to find some sort of hope to grasp onto when there was nothing, and I wondered if maybe I was going crazy.
“Tell Raul I’ll contact him once we cross the border.” Logan opened the passenger door to the Lexus and put his hand on my head like the police do when they’re putting criminals in the back of a cruiser.
I got in and noticed two guys sitting in the back seat. I recognized them, but I didn’t know from where until it suddenly hit me as Logan walked around the front of the car. The fight—the bodyguards. The night Kat and I went to Sculpt’s fight and I asked him to teach me self-defense. These men had been in the back of the warehouse watching Logan.
But that was months ago.
Oh God. Had they been watching me for weeks? Had every day with Logan been a lie? Was he, what, testing me for this? I started hyperventilating as I thought of all the times I’d been with Logan. How he cradled me in his arms as we sat watching the horses. How he was so protective of me. Why would he have protected me if he was going to let me be beaten?
Confusion weaved so much anxiety over me that I was having trouble breathing. Logan knew these guys. He’d known them months ago. The truth was ... Logan did this to me.
The door slammed as Logan got in. He started the car and sped off. I noticed him glance briefly in the rearview mirror at the two men and frown like he was pissed off. At them? I thought he frowned at least, but I was thirsty and delirious and couldn’t be sure if what I was seeing was real or what I wanted to see.
“They were at your fight.”
Logan stiffened, looked in the rearview mirror again, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Why? Why did you even bother being nice to me?”