🔍 Silver Tongue (Slow Updates) 🔎

I Can't Wait to be Saved...My Momma Ain't Raise No Damsel

Despair filled my chest, but I didn't let myself cry. I wanted to cry for Darren and Ivan, but I couldn't until I escaped. I wouldn't until Max was six feet under.

The room Max housed me in spoke to his real tastes, the stuff he hid from the public. There was velvet in every corner of the room. Velvet sheets, velvet curtains... if there was a surface that lent itself to velvet, it was covered with it.

I nearly vomited when I thought of what had been done in this room.

They hadn't thought of me as a threat, clearly, for there was things in the drawers that could be used as weapons. Mostly sex toys and velvet restraints. I hadn't thought of myself of a woman with feminine wiles, but unless I was going to beat someone to death with a pair of dildos, I had to think outside the box.

I also needed to move quick, before things settled into a rhythm. I couldn't wait and plan or I'd be here forever.

I rifled through the closet, tossing anything with a hard surface on the bed. Nothing was long enough to swing. A random thought of a nickel-filled sock used as a weapon entered my mind and looked for anything that could hold some of these things. There was a stack of purses in the corner of the closet. Prada, Gucci, you know, shit I couldn't afford. I took the biggest one and stuffed it with the hardest sex toys. In another, I stuffed velvet lined handcuffs inside, leaving one pair on the counter.

Then I leaned next to the door and waited.

I couldn't know who or how many people would walk through the door, but this was my only chance. I'd swing this purse as hard as I could at the first face that walked through, then sprint away. If there was only one, I'd cuff them and get the hell out.

I was batting one thousand on bad plans, no need to stop now.

When the door opened I waited until the head crested the doorjam. The goon walked inside, staring ahead at the bed. I swung my dildo-filled purse at his scrunched brows like it was one the kettlebells I used at home.

It caught him on temple and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, before he collapsed in a heap.

I prepared for a second swing but no one came. Outside, there were no other guards, so I dragged him inside and closed the door, cuffing him with the velvet handcuffs. It was like a video game as I searched his pockets. I found a pistol, two magazines and a cell phone. I almost expected to find a health potion.

I didn't have Ivan's phone number memorized – hell, he'd always called me – and in the age of cell phones, there weren't very many numbers I had memorized.

But there was one I remembered all too well. My ex-fiance and current Kindness of Virtue.

Brad.

The phone was locked, so I borrowed the goon's thumb to open it. My fingers knew Brad's number of their own accord, and I could only hope that he was too lazy to change it.

As I hit send, the goon started to come around. I searched for I something to create a makeshift gag, but I had better. An actual ball gag.

I dropped the phone and retrieved one of the many spread across the bed. When I shoved it into his mouth and over his head, Brad's pre-recorded voicemail pulsed through the speakers.

"Brad, it's Em," I said after the tone. "Max kidnapped me and is using me to make Ivan do bad stuff. Call him, be his friend and help him get me out of here!"

I hung up the phone, irrationally angry he didn't pick up. How dare he not pick up an unknown number on the first ring?

When the goon rolled to his back, I put the gun on his temple.

"Scream and I shoot," I snapped. I meant every word. If I was going to star in my one-woman Rapunzel retelling, someone other than me would suffer.

I pulled the ball from his mouth, his blue eyes glaring at me. "Do you know how to get out of here?" I asked.

"Yes," he responded, his eyes widening.

"Do you believe that I'll shoot you, if you say something stupid?"

"No," he said, his brow furrowing as if he couldn't believe he was being so honest with his captor.

I didn't blame him. I wouldn't have believed I'd shoot him either, but after Darren... I was pretty sure, I was capable.

I slammed the ball gag back into his mouth, then stood, raising my heel and slammed it down as hard as I could on his crotch. Then again, on over again, his muffled screams filling me with a warmth that should have scared me. In the back of my mind, I knew it should, but it felt amazing. Like this was what I was meant to do.

Maybe Ivan and I weren't so different.

I jumped from the buzzing in my pocket, until I realized it was the cell. And the number on the phone proved their might be a God after all.

"Em," Brad said, huffing. "Are you okay?"

"Perfect," I said. "I've gotten accustomed to my regular kidnappings."

"Not funny," Brad said, his tone flat. "We're tracking the phone's location. We'll come and get you."

"I hope you called Ivan," I said.

"Diligence is calling him now," he said. "You said Ivan is being used?"

"Blackmailed by Max," I said.

"That have anything to do with why he left us?"

I sighed into the phone. "Talk to Ivan, Brad. After you get me out of here."

"We're in the air now," he said. "We have a general area of your location. Try to lay low until we get there."

It was probably the smart move. The right move, but I was tired of being everyone's damsel.

"I'm getting out of here, Brad. I'm not waiting for you," I said. Then I slid the phone into my pocket, Brad's voice tickling my thigh. "New plan," I said, leaning over the still squirming goon. "You help me get out of this house, or Virtue gives you an unnamed Stormtrooper credit in their latest film. We clear?"

The goon nodded his head.

"Great. Now stop being such a baby and get up. We need to get out of here."