The yellow cab pulled up to the curb outside the towering Deleon penthouse building.
Allie pushed the door open. Her legs wobbled so violently she had to grip the door frame to keep from collapsing onto the sidewalk. The Deleon bodyguard, who had followed her cab all the way from the clinic, stood a few feet away, watching her with cold, dead eyes.
She dragged her bare, bleeding feet across the marble floor of the lobby and stepped into the private elevator.
When the doors slid open on the top floor, the air pressure in the penthouse felt heavy enough to crush her lungs.
She stumbled into the massive living room.
Curtis was sitting in his wheelchair in the center of the room, his back to her. In front of him, the massive home theater screen was lowered.
Projected onto the screen, ten feet tall, was the photo of Jerald grabbing her shoulders in the clinic hallway.
Hearing her ragged breathing, Curtis slowly turned his wheelchair around. His handsome face was completely devoid of emotion, but his dark eyes were swirling with a catastrophic, world-ending storm.
Allie's knees gave out. She crashed onto the expensive Persian rug. She didn't even feel the impact.
"Curtis..." she croaked, shaking her head frantically. She kept her right hand clamped over her left arm, hiding the massive needle mark under the fabric of her sleeve. "It's not what you think. I went to the clinic because Brittanie was sick. Jerald just showed up. It's a misunderstanding."
Curtis let out a low, terrifying chuckle that made the hairs on Allie's arms stand up.
He pushed the joystick, rolling the wheelchair forward until he was towering over her kneeling form.
"A misunderstanding," Curtis repeated softly, the venom dripping from every syllable. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the crumpled confession paper she had signed just hours ago. He hurled it violently at her face, letting the paper flutter down to land next to a tablet he tossed onto the floor in front of her. "You signed this admission of guilt, and then immediately crawled out a window to see him again! I had Vance pull the medical records for the Copeland family. Brittanie has no registration at that clinic today. She hasn't been to a doctor in six months."
Allie froze. Glendora had wiped the records to hide the illegal blood draw.
Every word of defense she had just spoken now sounded like a pathetic, desperate lie to cover up an affair.
Curtis leaned down. His massive hand shot out and twisted into the collar of her dress. With a brutal yank, he hauled her halfway off the floor, forcing her to look at the giant screen.
"Is it because I'm paralyzed?" Curtis roared, his voice cracking with pure, unadulterated agony and rage. "Is that why you crawled out of a fire escape like a rat to go find a real man?!"
Tears spilled over Allie's eyelashes, tracking down her chalky cheeks. She opened her mouth to scream the truth—that they were draining her blood, that they would kill her mother—but the terror paralyzed her vocal cords.
If she told him about the blood contract, he would view her as a damaged, compromised asset and discard her. And if he cut ties with the Copelands in disgust, Richard would unplug her mother's ventilator within the hour. Her silence was the only thread keeping her mother alive.
She just sobbed, her body going limp in his grip.
To Curtis, her silence and her tears were an absolute admission of guilt. She was crying because she got caught.
His rationality shattered completely.
Curtis opened his hand, letting her drop back onto the rug like a piece of garbage.
"Put her in the wine cellar," Curtis ordered, his voice dropping to a dead, mechanical monotone.
Vance stepped out from the shadows, accompanied by two stone-faced guards. They grabbed Allie by the arms, hauling her up.
Allie's eyes widened in absolute terror. The underground wine cellar was kept at a constant 55 degrees Fahrenheit. With 800cc of blood missing from her body, the cold would kill her.
"No! Curtis, please!" Allie screamed, thrashing wildly. She threw herself forward, her hands desperately gripping the rubber tire of his wheelchair. "I didn't betray you! Please, don't put me down there! I'll die!"
Curtis looked down at her pale fingers clutching his wheel. His face twisted with cold revulsion. He could not feel her touch on his legs, but he could see it—the desperate, lying hands of a woman who had made a fool of him.
His own hands, powerful and unyielding, shot out and seized her wrists. With a brutal, punishing grip, he pried her fingers off the tire, one by one, and shoved her hands away.
"Do not touch me," he spat, his voice dripping with contempt. "You lost that right the moment you crawled out that window."
He released her wrists and turned his chair sharply away.
"Take her down," he commanded.
The guards dragged Allie backward toward the freight elevator. Her bare heels scraped against the rug, leaving faint streaks of blood. Her desperate, broken screams echoed through the cavernous penthouse, bouncing off the walls until the elevator doors finally sealed shut.
The elevator descended to the second sub-basement.
The guards pushed open the heavy, solid oak door. A blast of freezing air, smelling of cork and damp earth, hit Allie's face.
They shoved her roughly inside. She tripped and fell hard onto the stone floor.
The massive oak door slammed shut behind her.
Click. Click. Click.
Three heavy metal deadbolts slid into place. The lights were instantly cut from the outside.
Allie was plunged into total darkness. The temperature was 55 degrees. She was wearing a thin, torn dress.
Almost immediately, violent shivers wracked her body. Because she had been forcibly drained of nearly a liter of blood, her body had absolutely no way to generate heat. The cold sliced through her skin, sinking directly into her bones like icy daggers.
She crawled blindly across the freezing stone floor until her back hit a wooden wine rack. She curled into the tightest ball possible, wrapping her arms around her knees, trying desperately to preserve whatever core temperature she had left.
Time lost all meaning.
The hunger, the massive blood loss, and the extreme cold began to shut down her organs one by one. Her consciousness started to detach from her physical body.
Her heart rate slowed to a sluggish, terrifying crawl. She started hallucinating, hearing the rhythmic whoosh of her mother's ventilator in the dark.
Four hours after the heavy oak door had locked, Allie's head slumped sideways, cracking hard against the wooden pillar of the wine rack.
She slipped into a deep, silent coma.
