Chapter 1 Kidnapped
“We finally got our hands on Colonel Pierce’s wife. Gotta say, she’s pretty damn good-looking. Guess letting the boys have a little fun counts as revenge.”
Outside the rundown construction site, the kidnappers’ lewd laughter echoed through the dust-heavy air.
Ginny gripped her phone so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Her teeth sank deep into her lip, and her trembling voice quivered with a fear she could no longer contain.
“Pick up… pick up, Chandler…”
Finally, the call connected.
She clutched the phone in both hands, heart racing, voice cracking with urgency. “Chandler, I’ve been kidnapped. I’m near the South Beltway, off Elmwood Avenue…”
“I told you, I’m busy today. Can’t you stop bothering me?” His voice came cold and detached, then the line went dead.
When she tried to call back, his phone was already off.
The chill seeped from her scalp all the way down to her toes.
She had met Chandler five years ago.
Back then, there’d been that orphanage explosion—an event that shook the entire city. It was Chandler who had pulled her from the wreckage.
He was tall, sharp-eyed, upright in a way that made her heart stop the moment she saw him.
She thought she’d never see him again.
But two years ago, fate brought him into her operating room. He had been critically injured. She was the lead surgeon.
Later, someone drugged him. When she visited and saw how out of it he was, she didn’t hesitate. She became his “antidote” willingly.
Then his grandfather-the old general, General Josh Pierce-fell gravely ill. To fulfill the old man’s dying wish, Chandler went to her and proposed a marriage of convenience.
By then, he was already a colonel in a special ops unit.
They’d been married for two years now. Because of the nature of his work, he was rarely home.
But Ginny knew better. That wasn’t the reason.
Chandler never loved her. If his first love, Melody, hadn’t gone abroad five years ago, he never would’ve married her.
And the stupid thing was, Ginny still believed she could melt his frozen heart.
For two years, she tiptoed around his world, taking care of his parents, keeping their home intact, waiting night after night for him to come home.
And yet, when she truly needed him, not even a cry for help could get through.
Despair and fear wrapped around her like a noose. Just as she was about to try calling him again, the door burst open with a loud bang.
Startled, Ginny flinched, the phone slipping from her hand. Before she could turn around, a fist grabbed her hair and yanked hard.
“Well damn, look at that. I confiscated one phone, and you’ve still got another stashed away? Pretty damn sharp for a pretty little thing.”
The kidnapper chewed on a toothpick, his greasy hair covering most of his face. Two long scars snaked down his cheeks-angry, grotesque reminders of past violence.
“No-”
Ginny thrashed in panic.
Just this morning, she had found out she was pregnant.
Then she’d been drugged and dragged here.
She couldn’t let anything happen to the baby. She couldn’t.
“Let go of me! Let go!”
She swung her hand and scratched hard at the man’s face.
He cursed and flung her to the floor. Enraged, he grabbed a beer bottle from the table and smashed it down at her.
CRASH-
Glass exploded.
A white-hot pain ripped through her head. Blood gushed from the wound, sticky and warm, dripping into her eyes.
She writhed on the ground in agony, one hand still protectively clutching her abdomen.
The baby… her baby…
“You’ve got no one to blame but Chandler,” the kidnapper spat, wiping blood from his cheek. “He shouldn’t have stuck his nose in my business at that damn airport seven years ago. Because of him, I rotted in jail all this time.”
Still not satisfied, he raised his boot and kicked her in the
stomach.
“AHH-!”
Ginny screamed, her whole body seizing from the pain.
“You wanna know why your perfect husband hasn’t come to save
you?”
The man crouched beside her, sneering, and pulled out his phone. With a few taps, he opened a news article and shoved it in her face. Then he slapped her hard with the screen.
“Thought he’d be tearing down the walls to get to you. Turns out, you don’t mean shit. Waste of my time.”
[Rising Star Melody Wheeler Returns to America, Shares Warm Embrace with Boyfriend at Airport]
Ginny stared at the screen-at the man and woman in the photo. Her heart felt like it had been ripped open.
She felt something warm trickle between her legs.
She turned her gaze slowly to the door, lips parting as if trying to say something.
Chandler. So this is why you hung up.
Why didn’t you come? Why didn’t you save our child? Why…?
Her vision blurred, drowning in red. She fought to focus-but the darkness swallowed her whole.
