Chapter 25

Rosella....

I come back to my senses when a blaring sound penetrates through the painful haze of my mind. I lift myself up and open my heavy eyes to see where the hell that noise is coming from.

“Crap!” I curse my head for throbbing so badly. I feel like I'm about to lose my conscious again.

Holding my head between my palms, I collect my scattered thoughts. But the piercing noise heightens my headache and I start looking around for the source of noise to shut it down. The first thing I notice is the black smoke rising up from underneath the hood of the car. Holy hell!

“Oh God! Adrian! The car is about to—” When I turn to look at Adrian, my mouth falls open and horror envelopes me. Adrian's unmoving body is hunched over the steering wheel. His head is pressing down on the honk.

I panic and scream. But it only adds to the white noise slicing through my head.

*Calm down, dammit, calm down!*

It's not the right time to freak out.

I take deep breaths and temp down my urge to scream again and thrash around, begging for help. I scuttle closer to Adrian's body and touch his shoulder to wake him up.

“Adrian! Wake up, please. I'm scared.” I whisper urgently but he doesn't so much as flinch. Isn't the loud noise disturbing him? I give him another shove, this time harder and his body slides to the side and the loud noise stops. My ears start ringing with the sudden silence.

“Adrian….” Fear ceases my lungs. Ignoring the coward voice inside my head, telling me to run away, I reach out a hand and take his still hand in mine. His skin is still warm.

I feel his pulse. He's alive…. Just unconscious.

Relief floods me and unbidden tears spring out in my eyes. I don't know why I'm so relieved to know that my captor is alive. Maybe I'm just grateful for everything he has done for me, despite his bad behaviour towards me. But this is not the time to drown in my thoughts.

I roughly wipe my tears with the back of my hand and touch his shoulder lightly. “I'll get you out of here.” I whisper then unbuckle the seat belt and turn to open the door of the car. I try the handle but it doesn't work.

No, no, no, no! Open up.

I slam my body into the door with all of my strength. The door cracks open and breaks off of its hinges. I land on the ground with the car door leather wrap cushioning my hard fall.

Yes!

Breathing hard, I quickly scramble around the back of the car to Adrian's side. I open his door and his upper body tumbles out of the car before I can catch him.

“Sorry!” I squeak then unfasten his seatbelt and drag him out of the car. I manage to drag his body a few feet away from the car and out of harm's way if the car decided to blow up. I fall to my knees beside his unconscious body, breathing like I've just run a marathon.

He's so damned heavy! I can't believe I got him out here.

I swipe the sweat on my face with my hand and use the last bit of my energy to turn him on his back. I glance at his face and wince. Maybe I should have turned him on his back near the car and then dragged him down here. His rugged face is covered in mud and dirt, in fact, the entire front side of his body is covered in mud and dirt along with a few specks of dewy grass here and there.

I quickly dust him off as much as I can and tear out a piece of cloth from my dress to clean his face. When I clear off the mud from his forehead, I find a small cut on his forehead. Blood seeping out of it.

Shit! He's bleeding.

I make a quick work on his face then tear off another long strip from my dress. I wrap it around his head and tie it tightly enough to put some pressure on the cut to stop the bleeding.

I don't know what else to do now. He needs help but there's no one insight. My eyes drift around but as far as I can see, there's only forest. I wish I had my phone.

Phone!?

I don't have but Adrian must have.

I frantically check his pockets and find it tucked in one of them. I slip it out and switch on the phone. Without thinking through, I pull up his contacts and call someone named "Bert" who's the last person in the call history. I wait impatiently for the person to pick up. Goddammit, pick up the freaking phone!

The person picks up the phone on the fourth ring.

“Rain! Where the fuck are you, huh?” An angry voice booms out of the phone, startling me and I drop the phone.

What the hell!? Who shouts on the phone like this?

My own temper rises up when I pick up the phone and still hear the person throwing profanities at me. My hands ball up.

“Shut the fuck up!” The line goes silent and before he can start cursing me again, I speak. “We have been in an accident. Adrian is unconscious and our car is smashed. We need immediate help. I didn't know who to call and you were the last person he had talked to. I don't know what he has done to you but he needs help. I don't know where I am. But we're off the road and there are trees everywhere and —”

“Woah! Woah! Calm down. Don't worry. Just keep the phone with you and stay with Rain. I'll be there in a moment, okay?”

I nod.

“You hear me?” He says again and I realise that he can't see me.

“Yes. Yes, I'm waiting here, where this here is.”

“Good. I'm coming with help. Don't go anywhere. Stay with my brother.” He says then hangs up.

I take a few deep breaths then realise the guy, who'd called Adrian "Rain", claimed that he's his brother.

Adrian has a brother!?

I can't digest it right now.

This all is getting too much.

I try to wake up Adrian again but he doesn't budge. I just hope the wound isn't severe. Though it didn't look deep, I'm not sure.

I carefully remove his soft hair from his hair and keep whispering nonsense as I lift up his head and rest it on my lap. My mind is haphazard. I've never been in any accident before and I feel like I'm dreaming, like I'll wake any moment and find myself safely tucked inside the car with Adrian on the driving seat.

Please wake up….!

I beg him for the last time, as after 15 or 20 minutes, a train of sleek black cars pulls over near the accident point.

Several men, dressed in combat suits scramble out of the cars and lift up Adrian's unconscious body. They carry him to a black van and load him in. I go along with them, wiping my tears and running nose with the back of my hand. But a blonde guy comes up in front of me, blocking my path.

I frown at him and try to skirt around him.

But he stops me again, with his fingers wrapped around my upper arm.

“You're coming with me.” He grits out then drags me away to the car parked in front of the trail.

“Let go of me! I want to drive with him.” I scratch at his arms but his long bony arm holds me fast. I thrash and dig in my heels but I'm unable to stop him, though he slows down a little. He might be taller than me but he's not as strong as Adrian. His thin body lacks muscles and he appears to be seriously sick…. so pale.

“I won't let you go anywhere near him again, till you tell me why and how you made him crash the car. He's not one of those guys whom you can seduce with your fucking fake beauty and lead him astray. You ought to have done something.”

His direct accusations make me drop my fight. My mouth hangs open. “What the hell are you talking about? And how can you even say that? Blame me for everything? He drove off the road because he wasn't paying attention. I did not make him do it. I swear.”

“Yeah, right.” He shoves inside the back seat of his car with an angry push and slips in beside me, to hold me down, hold me captive. “I guess I'll just ask him when he'll wake up. No matter what you have done to him, I promise you that I will bring him back to me. I won't let any random whore steal my brother from me.”

His words slap me right across my face. Pain and embarrassment from the blow floods my body as I give up on trying to wiggle out of his hold.

This boy, who just met me, has seen me truly for what I am.

All these time, I had been running away from this one truth. I didn't want to accept it when Balthazar had forced me down on my knees back in his office the first time, to take my virgin mouth. I didn't want to accept it when Adrian had spanked me and was just a second away from fucking me up against those glass walls before I slapped him.

I am nothing more than a property for these men. A possession to break and own. I don't have any idea why I called "Bert", instead of calling the police. I don't know why I was overcome by relief when I felt Adrian's pulse, instead of being terrified. It absolutely makes no fucking sense why I didn't try to bolt when I had such a wonderful chance at escape.

But though none of my actions make sense, I think I have this much figured out. If I'm being completely honest, then all of my decisions were influenced by Adrian, every time. There was not even a single point in my life, after being kidnapped by Balthazar, where Adrian wasn't involved. My every move led me back to him and when I was with him finally, he did things to push me away but they only pulled me back in further.

And now I don't know how to get away from him…. How to *want to *get away from him!

Somewhere in between those fights and talks, he made me feel things…. He gave me a taste of lust when he became all dominating and much to my shame, I was wet for him. I fucking came on his finger when he was just inserting that damned tampon. He gave me hope by giving me his words that he'll set me free, that he would just let his billion pounds go down in vain to buy a whore her freedom.

Despite my best efforts, he has managed to sneak a piece of me without my knowledge. And turns out, it isn't just a flimsy or unimportant entity of me…. It's my heart that he's stolen, with nobody the wiser….