Bound By The Cruel Billionaire's Deal

Aida slid down the vibrating door, her legs giving out completely. She hit the cold tile floor hard. The blood from her thigh pooled beneath her, sticky and warm against the porcelain.

Her hands were slick with her own blood. She dug into her purse, her fingers fumbling blindly until they closed around the cold metal of her phone. The bright glare of the screen stabbed at her dilated pupils.

Her vision swam violently, the bright app icons on the screen dancing and blurring together into smeared streaks of color. She swiped a trembling thumb across the glass, missing the swipe bar twice before her bloody fingerprint finally unlocked it. She desperately wanted to call Emmet, but her numb, uncoordinated fingers slipped and tapped the wrong name on her favorites list: Chloe Faulkner.

The call connected. The loud, thumping bass of a nightclub and Chloe's bright, drunken laughter blasted through the tiny speaker.

"Chloe..." Aida gasped, her voice a thin, desperate wheeze, her tongue feeling like lead in her mouth. "Vault... Meatpacking... help..."

The laughter on the other end stopped instantly. "Aida? What's wrong? You sound—"

"Room four. Call 911. Drugged," Aida choked out, her vision darkening at the edges, and immediately hit the red end-call button.

Behind her, Grayson's pounding turned into heavy, rhythmic thuds. He was kicking the door. The wooden frame groaned, and dust fell from the ceiling hinges.

Aida stared at the phone screen. Her thumb hovered over Emmet's name. But Emmet was a lawyer. He couldn't stop a monster kicking down a door. Her thumb dragged down the screen and pressed the name she hated most.

Brendan Walls.

The phone rang exactly once before the line clicked open.

"What is it?" Brendan's voice was low, flat, and annoyed.

Aida's chest heaved. The pain in her leg was excruciating, but the drug was pulling her back down into the dark. "Grayson Lott," she whispered into the microphone, her voice breaking. "Help me."

There was a fraction of a second of dead silence on the line. Then, the horrific, violent sound of a heavy chair crashing to the floor echoed through the speaker.

"Aida!" Brendan roared, the cold facade completely shattered. His voice was raw with panic. "Where are you? Tell me where you are!"

Before Aida could open her mouth, Grayson let out a furious scream from the hallway.

A massive, deafening crack split the air. The center of the solid wood door splintered inward. The toe of Grayson's expensive leather shoe smashed through the wood, leaving a jagged hole.

Aida flinched violently. Her bloody fingers slipped, and the phone dropped from her hand, clattering onto the hard tile floor.

From the phone's speaker, Brendan's voice screamed, "Aida! Talk to me! Aida!"

Grayson pulled his foot back and peered through the splintered hole. He saw Aida sitting in the pool of blood, her skirt ruined. A sick, euphoric grin stretched across his face.

He took two steps back. He ran forward and drove his heel directly into the brass lock mechanism.

The metal lock sheared off with a sharp snap. The door flew open, the heavy wood slamming violently against the tiled wall and bouncing back.

Grayson stood in the doorway, his chest heaving, staring down at the blood.

Aida dragged herself backward until her shoulders hit the base of the toilet. She gripped the bloody glass shard in her right hand and held it up, pointing the jagged tip directly at Grayson's knee.

Grayson laughed. He stepped into the bathroom, raised his foot, and kicked her wrist with brutal force.

The glass flew out of her hand, slicing a deep gash across her knuckles as it went. Aida let out a sharp cry of pain, clutching her bleeding hand to her chest.

Grayson bent down. He grabbed a fistful of her dark hair and yanked upward, dragging her off the floor.

The sudden movement, combined with the blood loss and the drugs, was too much. The room spun violently. The edges of Aida's vision turned black. Her muscles went completely slack.

Just as her consciousness finally snapped, a massive, explosive crash echoed from the front of the club. It sounded like an earthquake tearing through a reinforced concrete wall—followed by the screech of metal and the shriek of collapsing cinder blocks. The entire basement shook, and a cloud of dust and debris billowed down the hallway.

Through the ringing in her ears, Aida heard the unmistakable roar of a heavy engine and the crunch of tires on broken masonry. Then came the thunder of boots—dozens of them—pounding through the wreckage toward the VIP corridor.

Grayson froze, his grip on her hair loosening for a split second. That hesitation was all it took. The last thing Aida saw before the darkness swallowed her was the splintered doorframe of the VIP room exploding inward under the weight of a black-armored shoulder.

Aida woke up to the smell of bleach. A sharp, tearing pain ripped through her inner thigh the moment she shifted her weight on the mattress.

She gasped, her eyes flying open. She stared wildly at the white acoustic tiles on the ceiling, her chest heaving as she tried to suck air into her panicked lungs.

Chloe, who had been asleep with her head resting on the edge of the bed, jerked awake. She immediately reached out and grabbed Aida's hand, squeezing it tight.

"You're okay, you're safe," Chloe said quickly, her eyes red and swollen from crying. "The police took Grayson. He's locked up."

Aida stared blankly at the ceiling for a long moment, letting her racing heart slow down. She swallowed dryly. "Who... who got me out?"

"Brendan Walls's security team," Chloe said, her voice full of awe. "Aida, they drove a literal armored SUV straight through the brick and glass wall of the club. They didn't even use the door."

Aida frowned. The memory of that massive, explosive crash right before she passed out flashed in her mind.

She turned her head to look at Chloe. "How long did it take? From the moment I hung up with you, to the moment the police arrived?"

Chloe thought for a second. "NYPD was fast. Maybe ten minutes."

"And when did Brendan's people get there?" Aida asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Chloe looked confused. "When the cops walked in, Brendan's guys had already beaten Grayson half to death. The bartender told the police that the SUV crashed through the wall barely five minutes after you locked yourself in the bathroom."

Aida's heart stopped. The monitor next to her bed gave a sharp, erratic beep.

Her brain, trained to analyze data and find flaws in logic, began to spin. The underground club was in the Meatpacking District, deep in Lower Manhattan. Brendan's penthouse was on Central Park South.

It was a physical impossibility. Even with no traffic, a massive armored vehicle could not cover that distance in five minutes.

There was only one logical explanation. Brendan's security team hadn't driven from Midtown. They had been sitting in an SUV, parked directly outside the club, waiting.

Aida's breathing turned shallow. She thought back to the gala. Brendan demanding she use herself as bait. The Maybach being perfectly boxed in on an empty street. The five-million-dollar contract handed over so easily.

The puzzle pieces snapped together with horrifying clarity.

She hadn't been rescued. She had been the bait in a trap Brendan had set for Grayson. He had watched her walk into the club with a known predator, and he had sat outside, waiting for Grayson to commit a felony so he could destroy him.

A wave of absolute, freezing cold washed over her body. The betrayal felt like a physical knife twisting in her gut.

Aida looked down at her left hand. A clear plastic IV tube was taped to the back of her hand, feeding fluids into her vein.

She reached over with her right hand, grabbed the plastic hub of the needle, and violently ripped it out of her flesh.

A thick drop of dark red blood instantly welled up on her skin and dripped onto the white bedsheets.

"Aida! What are you doing? Are you crazy?" Chloe shrieked, lunging forward to press a tissue over the bleeding hole.

Aida's face was as pale as a corpse, but her eyes were burning with a terrifying, icy rage. "I'm not crazy," she whispered. "I'm just a fucking idiot."

Heavy, measured footsteps sounded in the hallway outside.

The door handle turned. Brendan Walls walked into the room. He was wearing a black dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, the fabric slightly wrinkled.

His dark eyes immediately locked onto the blood dripping from Aida's hand. His thick eyebrows slammed together in a furious scowl.

He took three long strides across the room, glaring down at Chloe. "Why the hell haven't you pressed the call button for a nurse?" he snapped.

Aida yanked her hand away from Chloe. She hid her bleeding hand under the blanket.

She slowly lifted her chin and stared up at Brendan. She didn't look at him like he was her savior. She looked at him like he was a monster.