Trapped (Bullied Book 4) (Bullied Series) Vera Hollins (best large ereader txt) 📖

The video was shaky as the guy moved to the other side of the room, where a disheveled girl lay curled on the floor in the corner, her hands and legs tied up with a rope. She was the girl from the photo. Emma.

“Let’s play with your girl.”

“Don’t touch her!” Blake’s sudden shout hit me hard, and the first tear slid down my cheek. The other guy, who was dressed in all black and wearing a ski mask that showed only his eyes, grabbed the girl and dragged her closer to Blake. “Don’t touch her! Leave her alone! LEAVE HER ALONE!”

The guy ignored him completely. He removed the ropes from her and straddled her as she lay on the ground without putting up a fight or even moving. It was as if she’d accepted her fate, and it shattered my heart.

The guy with the camera moved back so that the frame showed both Blake and Emma. Blake was thrashing against the chair and shouting curses, straining to set himself free, which seemed to only amuse the guys.

“She likes this,” the guy said as he ran his hand over her face, pinning her arms above her head with his other hand.

He groped Emma’s breasts over her shirt and then moved his hand over her stomach, going even lower. He pushed his hand into her sweatpants, and I felt a rush of nausea. My hand hovered over the mouse to stop the video, but I couldn’t stop it, compelled to watch the horror unfold in front of me.

Blake pushed against the ropes, screaming as the guy recording chuckled in the background, and the force of his moves tipped his chair over. He fell down on the floor with a loud crash, his head hitting the floor with a thud.

“Blake,” Emma screamed, looking at him with teary eyes.

This seemed to amuse the guy in black, who now touched Emma in the most inappropriate way while she just lay down there and stared at Blake.

“Don’t touch her! Get away from her!” Blake raised his head from the floor as he watched them, crying. “I’ll kill you! I swear, I’ll kill you!”

The guy didn’t stop touching Emma, not sparing Blake a single glance. “But she liked it the last few times, isn’t that right, kitten?”

No. My breathing turned more and more shallow.

He grabbed her chin to make her look at him. “Answer me!” He pulled his hand out of her sweatpants and slapped her with such force it made her nose bleed.

“Leave her alone!” Blake’s shrill voice rang in my head, filling me with the most profound pain.

“This is to teach you to be more obedient next time,” the guy said to him, and then the monstrosity I feared happened…

He ripped the sweatpants and underwear off Emma and pulled his jeans and briefs down, starting something that was brutally etched into my mind forever. Blake’s and Emma’s screams reverberated in my mind, mixed with the cruel laughter of their captors that never stopped.

And then the gruesome act was over. Everything in me was cold as I watched the girl who looked lifeless. She didn’t move from the spot on the floor where the guy had left her, staring at the ceiling with eyes that petrified me. The sick bastard zoomed in on her and then showed Blake, who had somehow managed to free his hands in the seconds when the focus wasn’t on him.

Blake pushed the ropes wrapped around his waist off him and propped himself up with his ankles still tied together.

“I’ll kill you!” He pounced at the guy and wound his hands around his neck, sending them both down as he strangled him.

“Shit,” the guy with the camera said and lowered it on some piece of furniture before he joined in to help his friend. I couldn’t see much, but it was enough, my heart pounding furiously as he separated Blake from the guy, which allowed the guy in black to punch Blake in the stomach.

Blake cried out when the guy landed another punch to his abdomen, which was followed by more and more merciless hits.

“No!” Emma picked herself up and launched herself at the guy punching Blake, wrapping her arm around his neck to yank him away.

“Get off me,” the guy shouted and threw her off, sending her flying down to the floor. “I’m sick and tired of this bitch. We don’t need her anyway.”

“NO!” Blake fought against the guy who held him, but he couldn’t set himself free. “What are you going to do to her?!”

“Do it,” the other guy said. “It’s long overdue.”

The guy took his gun out of his jeans and aimed it at Emma. “Time to say goodbye.”

“NO,” Blake screamed as the gun went off, and the bullet landed in Emma’s head.

She was gone. In a heartbeat.

The camera showed everything. Her upper body hitting the floor. Her lifeless eyes as she stared at nothing. The abundant amount of blood that gruesomely pooled beneath her. Blake screaming until the guy knocked him unconscious with the handle of his gun.

And then a heavy silence.

The guy picked up the camera and directed it at his face covered in a gray ski mask. “You want your son to end up like this too? If not, you better have that goddamn money ready by the end of this week.”

I made sure the display went back to sleep and returned downstairs. I barely managed to keep my face neutral as I sat through the rest of dinner, extremely disturbed by the gore I’d witnessed in the video. Only after we returned home and I closed myself in my room did I let it all out, crying for hours in my bed.

I cried for Emma. I cried for young Blake. I cried for their tragic love. I cried for the injustice in this world that had sent those evil people their way and confined them to that basement.

I never could have