After

Chapter 6

A small creak is heard as two men walk down the stairs and are greeted by total darkness. Light suddenly fills the room and a small girl can be seen curled up in a cage that she barely fits in. She sees the masked men walk up to her and she tries her best to stop her tears but fails.

"Alright, I will be giving you one hint as to who I am and I feel sure once you figure out who I am, you'll know who the rest are. I will simply say your name without the voice modulator and you get to guess from there." He reaches down to his waist to flips the switch on a device with a wire connecting to the mask. Lauren adjusts her head so she can hear him more clearly and one word exits his lips, "Lauren."

"You." She says, her voice growing angry, "I didn't ruin your stupid career! You still have one, idiot."

"I still have it but it's not what it used to be." He replies, matching Lauren's anger, "After you and your stupid band mates 'called us out' on twitter, half of our fans lost respect in us and we haven't had a hit song since."

Lauren's anger seemed to strengthen her as she continued to talk, "It's not my fault that James finally spoke his mind on camera. Brad, I cannot change what he said, nor can I change how other people reacted to it. Saying you 'all had a go at me' was completely inappropriate, especially when I was that young." He takes off his mask and Lauren can now see just how angry he is. His face matches the red blood on her clothes his eyes look like the gateway to hell itself. He unlocks the cage and Lauren tries to move back into it, but it's so small she barely moves.

Brad picks Lauren up and she realizes how much he must have worked out to get to this point of physical health. "You can take off the mask now, James." Brad states and James immediately takes it off. He looks mad too, but nothing compared to Brad. "Who I am doesn't affect what I can and will do to you though." Brad whispers in her ear as Lauren shivers a little, knowing his statement is true. She still needs to be afraid of him. In fact, she should probably be more afraid, knowing he changed so much from the boy she dated so many years ago. He walks up the stairs with James following behind him. At the top of the stairs, he yells to Connor and Tristan that they can take off their masks.

Brad once again sets Lauren down on the counter and tells James to make sure she stays there. James stands directly in front of her with one hand comfortably at his side, and the other resting on Lauren's upper thigh. She glares at him but knows if she tries to slap him, he will hurt her much worse. Her stomach still stings from her beating before she was thrown into the cage. After about a minutes of James rubbing his hand along Laurens thigh, he suddenly pushes her to the floor and pulls off her sweatshirt as she realizes what he's about to do. Thankfully, he doesn't attempt to take off anything else though. She feels a sudden burning sensation in the middle of her back as she screams as loudly as she possibly could. She then realizes what Brad is actually doing: He's branding her so everyone knows she is his property.

Her tears are already forming small puddles on the floor as the pain intensifies. She can feel James hands forcing her to stay on the ground, and Brad's boot also pushing her down. Each touching bruises and it all hurts. Then he stops and the pain begins to lessen. They allow her to sit up but don't allow her to put her sweatshirt back on, thank the Lord she decided to wear a bra today or else this would be even more uncomfortable for her.

All she wants is to leave. She thought that finding out the identity of her captors would help her in some way, but it doesn't. She hadn't even thought about the Vamps for years now and it frightens her that they had this much time to prepare for her. How did she not realize it was him though? It doesn't matter anymore; her focus needs to be on surviving so she can get out of here one day. The only thing getting her through is knowing all her friends are alive and she knows they are looking for her.