but my forearms spread wide. These guys were a fucking joke.
“Where’s Everly?” I asked, staring at the ringleader. These rich bastards didn’t know a damn thing about how to properly kidnap someone. I couldn’t have imagined they thought all this through too well.
“Her name,” the guy seethed, “is EVE.”
“It’s Everly,” I said with a shrug. “Everly Conners.”
“Who the fuck is Everly Conners?” he said, wiping his brow with the same hand that was holding the peashooter. “Her name is Eve Chadwick.”
“Maybe you’re mixed up, son,” I said with a smirk. “Maybe we’re talking about two completely different women here.”
The way the man looked at me told me I was about two seconds away from being pistol whipped, but that tiny thing wasn’t going to hurt. I’d been whipped worse than that before.
The man got in my face again, his sandy blond hair falling into his eyes as he squared his menacing stare with mine. “Look, I don’t know who the fuck you are. All I know is you look like shit and you smell like leather and you’re covered in the ugliest tattooes I’ve ever seen, but you’re going to leave Eve alone. Do you understand that?”
The corner of my mouth twitched upwards. So that’s what this was about. He didn’t want to hurt me. He didn’t want to get himself in too much trouble. He just wanted to scare me.
“I’m going to say okay,” I sighed. “I’ll leave Eve Chadwick alone. Whoever the fuck she is.”
The man sensed my sarcasm and let out the whiniest groan I’d ever known an adult man to make. He stomped his loafer into the concrete like a petulant child, and I half expected his minions to laugh, but they didn’t.
“What’s your name?” he asked. The man clearly hadn’t done a lick of research if he didn’t even know my name. Guessing by how poorly he was executing everything, I figured he’d probably just had me followed.
Amateur .
“Name’s Gray,” I said.
“What the fuck kind of name is Gray?” His high-pitched laugh came straight from the lips of a crazy person.
“It’s the name my mama gave me,” I said, omitting the part where she meant to write down Gary but had transposed two letters. She always meant to have it fixed, but I guessed she never got around to it due to her other priorities. “Since we’re introducing ourselves, mind giving me yours?”
“It’s not important,” he spat back at me.
“Holden,” I said, recalling the caller ID on Everly’s phone the night she’d told me she dumped her fiancé. “Holden Banks.”
Holden’s face turned a shade of pale ash at the fact that I knew his name, and I watched as he threw his buddies a look as if they hadn’t accounted for that. Dalton shrugged, as if he didn’t know what to do and Holden threw his head back and breathed loudly.
“Things not going to plan?” I asked. While they weren’t looking, I’d been wrangling my foot out of my duct taped boot. One downward swipe of my wrists with enough outward pressure to rip the tape down the middle would be all it’d take to free myself from their pathetic handcuffs. It was all about timing though. I had to wait until the moment was right and then I’d strike like a snake. They wouldn’t know what hit ‘em by the time I was finished.
“You. Shut the fuck up and listen to what I’m going to tell you,” Holden moaned. “I don’t know who you are or what you want or why my fiancé keeps running off to your hotel room at night, but I’m telling you now, leave her the fuck alone.”
“Does Everly know you’re still engaged?” I smirked. “Last I knew she’d called it off on account of you being a giant douche bag. That or you’re not man enough to keep her pleased. Not really sure. She didn’t care much for talking about you.”
The sensation of cool metal grazed my face as the little prick pistol whipped me. He really fucking did that. The sting of the blow evaporated into thin air. My skin had been