Disarm - Michelle Frost Page 0,2

He would have. I knew he would. But he worked security at Spritz too and that meant it couldn’t be a one and done. I’d be faced with the temptation of him nearly everyday, and if I had him once, there was no way I’d be able to walk away.

So, the apps.

Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath.

I’m okay. I’m home, in my own apartment, and I don’t need to have someone to look after me. I can look after myself. I said it over and over in my mind, breathing slowly and deliberately.

A single tear welled up and spilled down my cheek as the same voices that so often drowned out my own shouted and sneered inside my skull.

You’ll never amount to anything, Leith. You can’t even take care of yourself.

You know you’re not going anywhere. I own you. You’d never make it without me.

My phone buzzed in my hand, shattering the endless, overwhelming noise in my head. The notification on the screen said I had a new message.

I clicked into the app and found a message from Dustin. An apology and a request to see me tonight. It was late, but since it was Sunday that meant I didn’t have to work until Wednesday night. Knowing I’d have plenty of time to sleep off a scene tomorrow, I messaged him back saying I’d meet him out in front of my building, but that I expected that apology in person. I was still pissed that he’d blown me off all fucking day without a word, and pissed that he wasn’t who I actually wanted him to be, but he was what I had just then. So I’d make him grovel a little, and then let him take me back to his shitty apartment and give me what I desperately needed.

Ten minutes later, I pushed through Spritz Villa’s front doors and out into the warm night air. Dustin was standing on the top step. He was a lot taller than me—which wasn’t an uncommon thing—and dressed in dark clothes. His head was actually free of the ball cap he was so fond of wearing, and his blond hair shone in the golden glow of the streetlight.

“Hey,” I said, coming to a stop in front of him. When he didn’t immediately respond, I frowned.

For a moment, he stood completely still, staring at me with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

“Um, hello? If you think I’m going anywhere with you before you apologize, you’re dead wrong—”

Faster than I could blink, his face split into a wide smile and he lifted one of his hands, jabbing a needle into my neck. I gasped at the pinch, and my eyes went wide as my heart stuttered out one completely terrified heartbeat before everything went dark.

Chapter One

Axel

Three Days Later

Someone had taken Leith. Not just someone. The brother of the man Mace had killed for torturing Pax for information a year ago. Somehow, the slimy blond asshole had gotten Leith to come down to meet him on the front steps of his apartment building, drugged him, and carted him off after pausing to smile for the fucking camera. Like he’d wanted us to know exactly who’d taken the red-haired boy that hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I’d dropped him off Sunday night.

Only a few hours before his kidnapping, I’d wanted to ask him to come home with me, but decided instead to call the next day and ask for a first official date. I could admit when that call had gone unanswered, it had stung.

None of that mattered now.

Mace, Lex, and I were standing in the hallway of a putrid little apartment. After hours of searching, we’d found Leith. He was kneeling, naked and silent, on the hard linoleum of the bathroom floor. Lex stepped back, leaving Mace and I in the opening of the small room. My eyes kept traveling over Leith’s body, unable—unwilling—to compute what I was seeing. Tearing my gaze away from the bruises covering his torso and the cuts on his thighs, my eyes landed on the dark collar around his neck...and the chain running from the back of it to a bracket in the wall.

Something broke inside me.

With a growl, I went straight to the wall and gripped the chain, feeling the metal bite into my skin as I wrapped it around my fist and gave a hard yank. Plaster cracked and gave as the bracket tore out of the wall. I let it