Bought By The Billionaire novel Chapter 35

Chilled by the implicit threat in my captor’s words, nonetheless, I keep talking. “What are you going to do with me? Ransom me? Is that it? You want back the money you stole in the first place?”

Mack swings around again to look at me. This time the car almost comes off the road. “I told you. Shut it.”

He drives to a less appealing part of town; old abandoned warehousing and industrial units. The area is depressing, with very few people apart from a couple of what look like homeless types, curled up in sleeping bags atop, or under, old cardboard boxes. Broken bottles and hypodermic needles are scattered over the ground. No reputable person is going to wander here accidentally. Do they intend to hold me prisoner here? In this awful place?

Mack pulls up at the back of an old warehouse, brick built, run down and empty, several stories tall, but long unused and falling into disrepair. Broken windows access black spaces and pigeon nests. The remains of an old hoist and winch groans in the wind from the top storey.

As I am escorted out of the car, a thug firmly holding me by each arm, Mack says “Don’t get any ideas. Konner here….” He indicates the ape to my left. “… has a nasty side and he would love to start celebrations with you early.” Again, the tacit threat.

I look at Konner to see the ‘gun’ still showing through his pocket, aimed right at me. Glancing around, hoping for help from a couple of the lost and the lonely curled up in their cardboard shelters, no-one even looks at us. We could be invisible for all the notice they take.

I am escorted into the building and up several flights of stinking and graffitied stairs, the pungence of human urine hanging over everything, making my eyes sting. Now that we are finally isolated from the rest of the human race, Konner pulls the gun out of his pocket to where I can see it clearly, loosely trained on me. The other of Mack’s toughs is almost twisting my arm out of its socket as he forces me up the steps.

At the top of the stairs, paint-peeled door swings open, to reveal the room’s solitary occupant. Adele stares out at me at me from a chair.

“How lovely to have you here Elizabeth. And poor Mack there, is so pleased to have you visit us too. You are going to compensate him after all for the trouble you cost him, put things to rights for him.”

“You’re ransoming me?”

“Yes, Dear. We’re going to ransom you. Mack here just wants his fair payment for all that he was robbed of. I’m sure Richard will be happy to pay for you.”

I nod, quite certain of my ground now. “Of course he will pay to get me back.”

Mack sneers. “He won’t be getting you back though.”

Blanking out for a moment. “I thought you said you were going to ransom me?”

“Oh yes, Sweetie. We are. But you won’t be returning to your precious Richard. Adele here wants you off the scene for her own reasons, and I have other plans for you.”

Fighting the fear freezing my guts, I say to Adele “Richard’s not interested in you. You had your chance with him, and you blew it.”

She rocks her hand back and forth. “Well…. yes. Perhaps I did make some mistakes with him. But I know better now. I’ll get him back alright, once you’re no longer distracting him….”

Again, that unpleasant hint of their plans for me. I do not want to give them the satisfaction of asking, so I remain silent. That way too, I can keep them from hearing the tremble in my voice, the fear gnawing at me.

Mack caves in first. “You’re quite the beauty, Beth. All that lovely red hair. Nice pale skin. Quite exotic in some parts of the world you know. I have a couple of buyers lined up for you. I’m not quite sure where they intend to take you. Somewhere in the depths of Asia, I believe. Or was it Africa? I forget, but believe me, once you go with them, you’ll not be bothering Adele or me again, and I’m sure you’re going to have such fun in your new future.”

He grins nastily. “Adele, with the price they’re offering for Beth here, how many cocks do you think she’s going to have to suck off to pay off the debt to her new owner?”

Adele smirks. “Oh, I wouldn’t like to say. Quite a lot obviously. Several dozen a day I should think. And that’s if all they want is cock-sucking, which doesn’t seem likely of course.”