Billionaire's Perfect Revenge [18+]

TWO

Jade and I left the building shortly and drove away in our separate cars. A familiar bungalow rolled in. I parked in the driveway. Handing the keys to the guard stationed beside the door, I shuffled inside. Jade had already walked in. Her handbag was dumped into the living room couch.

The entire place was thoroughly illuminated, but no man or woman was in sight. I knew exactly where to find Jade, so I went upstairs, taking off the leather jacket and laying it over a chair before taking a turn in a hallway, eyeing one of several locked doors.

I could hear the enigmatic sound of someone from the other side and even though I hadn't opened the door yet, my ears perked up. But when I finally entered, I saw the sight of my life that knocked the air out of my lungs. In a good way. Of course.

A woman was shackled to a chair. Messy hair. Bruised skin. Wrinkled clothes. A terrible cut on her brow was leaking thick red liquid. Her eyes shone with terror. As I walked closer and closer, her beaten body trembled vigorously.

God, they scored her badly.

"Please—I really....don't know where he is," she wailed breathlessly, the words spilling out of her mouth in a jumbled mess. "Please..."

"Darling, we've been playing this game for far too long," I informed her as calmly as I could. Perhaps calm was the language she would comprehend better. "The longer you take to give us what we need, the more you're going to get hurt. Not something you'd want, would you?"

There were other men in the room, but they remained silent, instructed to maintain quiet and vigilance while I did my job. Then there was Jade, nonchalantly leaning against the opposite wall, fiddling with her hair.

I grabbed a seat in front of the handcuffed girl, arms crossed, cheerless eyes waiting patiently.

She said nothing.

"All right, Mary-Masy, Mel-Melinda, is it? Yes, Melinda," I leaned forward, as if revealing a secret to her. "Have you ever considered that the individual you're trying to save here might not deserve it? Who knows, I mean who knows how many people he killed? How many women did he molest? How many kids are on the streets as a result of him? Do you really know? Do you?"

She gasped, peering down at the surface, apparently thrown off. She never responded, not even in his defence. I'll call this improvement.

"You look like a nice girl, Melinda," I said as I pushed a strand of hair out of her face. She flinched. "You're young, a law-abiding citizen, full of enthusiasm and dreams. You don't need to go through this. I'm not sure why you're torturing yourself like that really. What's at stake for you?"

Melinda said nothing this time, either. She shifted slightly, clearly uneasy in her seat. Her stare fell into the floor, as if she was attempting to awaken the earth so it could swallow her up. That's when it hit me.

"Dammit!" she trembled as I threw my chair to the wall and stood up, pacing the room before returning to her. "Who is it?"

"My sister," she finally confessed, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. "He threatened he'd kill her if I-" she sobbed, wobbling as loud sobs erupted from her thin body. It all made sense.