MASTER DON'S LITTLE PREY

CHAPTER 5: NO LOVE

RACHEL'S POV

Cold water hit my face and I gasped awake, my whole body aching, wrists raw from rope.

A phone screen hovered in front of me, recording. I caught my own reflection in the dark glass, my swollen eyes, cheeks streaked, hair matted to my forehead. I didn't recognize the girl staring back.

I almost regretted going to the restroom to pee at the banquet.

I had no idea I was being followed and why.

"We're just waiting for your husband," one of them said, almost bored, like this was routine.

"Five gold bars. The antidote batch is worth a trillion. And the cocaine shipment the FBI seized….the one everyone knows went straight into Draven's hands. That guy is a crook… cruel and ruthless."

I didn't know what any of that meant. I just knew I wanted to go home.

“Can….I can..know where I am…I want to go home.”

“Yes you will, little lad." The man said…his voice was laced with something cruel…

I feared even more the moment he came closer to me…his eyes sharp and fierce.

"Ok…thank you but when…."

Without waiting for me to finish the man yanked my hair to the back.

A full load of my hair being gripped hard and I could feel my scalp hurting so bad.

I tried to hold on to my hair but realised my hands had been tried to the back, and then laughing as the recording continued.

“Please…please it hurts…" I cried out as I felt veins and blood rushing out.

They didn't seem to be satisfied with that and suddenly held a handful of my dress and ripped it in two in front of the camera, someone laughing behind the phone.

"Good. Send it. Not to Draven, send the location too. That's the part that costs him. Let him come find us himself, and bring what he has taken.

I begged. I don't remember the words anymore, just the sound of my own voice breaking apart.

The door was suddenly slammed open.

I thought…. for one stupid, desperate second, that it was Draven.

That he'd come for me, come to rescue me.

It wasn't.

The man who walked in was built like a wall, tattoos climbing both arms to his throat, a presence that filled the room before he even spoke. He crouched in front of me, gripped my jaw.

"So you're Draven's wife." His voice was low, almost curious. "What was he thinking, making this marriage public?"

I was still crying too hard to answer, and it was only then, really only then, that it hit me what Draven actually was.

Not a businessman. Not shipping routes and boardrooms. The walls behind this man were stained with things I couldn't let myself look at directly, and somewhere in the back of my mind a voice kept whispering ‘mafia, mafia, this is what mafia actually means.’

The closer his breath stinked with tobacco and cedar…he came so close that I feared he was going to kiss my skin and that irritated my skin because he even did.

He ran his hands through my face to my chest…

"Draven has a good taste indeed. Such beauty…flawless… p***y peach." He then kissed my neck…he didn't stop there, I felt his cold lips kick it too.

It made my stomach churn.

“Let's make draven mad for a moment. Now you have just one s**t to do, I would kill you….and f**k you too ..record everything and put it on the internet….if you don't beg your husband to give us back what he took." The man said, then pulled out his phone.

He dialed a number and held the phone to my ear.

"Tell him," he said. "Tell him what happens if he doesn't send it back."

The line connected. I heard Draven's breathing on the other end and my chest caved in.

"Draven…. Draven, please, they're going to kill me, please, they are going to sleep with me too, just give them what they want, I'll pay you back, I'll do anything, please ...."

I said, stammering, covered in sweat and blood and tears….my hair still damped on my forehead as my heart kept racing.

Silence on the other end. Just his breath, steady, unreadable.

Then he cleared his throat. "George. I'll visit you myself."

The big man….. George, pulled out a tablet, read something off it, monotone. And gestured for me to read it out loudly to Draven. "Tell him not to come. Tell him to send everything back, and we release her exactly where he wants."

Draven's voice came through the flat, almost bored. "I'm not returning anything that was already mine. Not if the sky falls."

Then, worse than anything….the click of a lighter. The small, unbothered sound of him lighting a cigarette like this was any other Tuesday.

“Draven please…. Please help me. I don't want their hands on me please….." I screamed his name into the phone.

George nodded once. The gun at my temple lowered and the blade came instead, dragging fast across my forearm. I screamed again, blood running warm down my wrist, begging into a phone I wasn't sure was even still listening.

"So you're going to abandon your wife, Draven? I know you have always wanted to find me, to find my location, did you use your wife to do that…. Jokes on you my men and I have searched her and no tracking device was detected ... .you didn't play your card well Draven.”

"You like surprises George."

“I sure do and I'm surprised you made your marriage public. You know she would get hurt, but you did anyway." George's voice was almost gentle now, almost curious.

“Tell him how this marriage happened? Ask her yourself." Draven's voice spread through unbothered from the phone.

He turned the phone toward me, waiting.

My head dropped. Betrayal, twice now, in the space of one week… Caleb first, and now this, Draven sacrificing me for gold bars and cocaine like I was a number on a ledger.

"Tell me" George pressed, closer now, blade still wet. "Tell me about the marriage…tell me how much I have washed my fuckin time. " He yelled even louder now that it scares me.

"It's forced," I whispered. "There's no love. There was never love."

George's jaw tightened, something ugly crossing his face and Draven's voice cut through the line, almost lazy.

"George. Turn around for a second."

"What…."

He never finished the word.

Blood sprayed across the room, across my face, across the rope still binding my wrists, and George dropped like something had cut the strings holding him up.

Draven stepped over the body like it was furniture, already reaching for the ropes at my wrists, his men clearing the rest of the room behind him in bursts of gunfire I barely registered anymore.

"Hi, wife."

"When….when did you even get here, how did you…."

He didn't answer that. I lowered my head as Bullet kept flying around.

Draven men continued as he came up to me untying me, hauling me up by the arm, already moving toward the door.

"We need to get you into surgery. Your appendix."

"What? Why?"

"The tracker." His voice was clinical, distant, like we were discussing the weather. "It's dissolving faster than it should. My system's showing it's failing inside your organ."

I stared at him, the calm, the cigarette smoke still curling from his fingers, the blood on both of us that wasn't mine to explain and something in me finally snapped.

I slapped him across the face, hard enough that my palm stung.