Even though the legitimate businessmen had cleared out.
Even though not a single soul around here would come and save me.
When my instinct toward flight was taken from me, it seemed I was willing to fight. As weak as that fight might have been.
"Baby, for fuck's sake," the first man growled when my feet were put down so they could try to shove me into a back seat of a blacked-out window SUV.
I didn't even think about it, I curled them up off the ground, slammed them into the side of the vehicle, and propelled myself—and therefore this guy—backward, sending us slamming to the ground.
Unfortunately, his grip only managed to tighten after the fall, anchoring me to him until two of the other men reached down, grabbed me, and tossed me into the backseat beside the man who'd been with Luca Grassi the night before.
"You alright, Lucky?" the guy next to me asked of the man in black as he brushed off his suit, then reached up to wipe some blood from his ear.
"Fine," he said, climbing in to flank my other side, boxing me in.
Luca Grassi climbed into the passenger seat as the driver turned the SUV over.
I huffed for air as the cold blast of the air vent above me sent a chill across my overheated skin.
My best bet would have been to simply sit there and shut up, look for any opportunity to get away.
But did I do that?
No, no of course, I didn't.
Because I always had a temper, sometimes struggling to keep a hold on it when it got triggered.
"Just an FYI," I said to the man named Lucky. "You don't call someone 'baby' when you are kidnapping them," I told him, voice as authoritative as it could be given the situation.
"You're probably right about that," he agreed, shrugging, leaning back in his seat. Like this was no big deal. Like kidnapping women was a daily occurrence for him.
Hell, maybe it was.
What did I know?
"Keep it up and we are going to have to cuff you," Lucky warned when I raised a fist, one that he caught in mid-air before it could make contact.
If there was one thing I didn't want, it was to make this situation any worse for myself.
When it was released, I clasped my hands together in my lap, staring out the windshield, trying to convince myself it wasn't a completely terrible sign that they weren't hooding me, blindfolding me, keeping me from seeing where they were taking me.
It wasn't a long drive, but it was long enough for my stomach to twist into a million tight knots.
We pulled down a long tree-lined drive in the middle of nowhere, ripping away any hopes I might have been clinging to of someone else seeing, someone else calling for help
for me.
The house when it came into view was almost painfully average. From the neatly trimmed—if a bit brown from the sun—front lawn to the quaint light blue paint to the wooden shakes, the charming front porch, to the faux well at the curve of the front walk. It was all so perfectly average. No one would guess something nefarious transpired here, that the local mafia kidnapped women and dragged them here. To do God-knew what with.
The driver hit a button on his dash, making the garage door grumble open. And in we rode, waiting for the door to close again, blanketing us in complete darkness once the engine cut.
"Come on," Lucky demanded, hand closing around my upper arm, tight, but not bruising, dragging me out of the car. With the man behind me pushing me along, there was no way to fight.
So I begrudgingly went along, being led through a door at the side, into a hallway.
"No," I snapped again when Luca Grassi's hand moved out, opening a door, showing us all a staircase leading down. "No," I cried out again when I was pushed forward toward the stairs.
Nothing good ever happened to women in basements.