CHAPTER 54: CAN’T DIE

"Hey, wake up!!" A painful slap kissed Alisha’s cheeks, pulling her out of her slumber. She winced in pain, spitting her bloody saliva on the floor. Her gaze was blurry for a second before they adjusted to the little light in the room.

She saw a man, a familiar man she’d seen before but she couldn’t remember where she’d seen him.

He was glaring at her with a sinister smile as if he was going to do unpleasant things to her—horrible and unspeakable things.

The events of what happened a few hours ago came crashing in like a flood.

The commercial, Bethany asking for a chat at a restaurant, and a man grabbing her from behind and seizing her breath with some napkin laced with chemical.

She’d been kidnapped.

She tried to move her arms but they were tied right behind her on the chair she was sitting on.

"It’s nice you’re finally awake. I was thinking you were already dead when we hadn’t even started yet," he said, his grin stretching as he squatted to her level, scanning her face.

His hand reached for her hair, holding it in between his fingers before bringing it to his nose and taking a sniff out of it.

"I must say, you smell delicious," he added.

Alisha’s heart sank.

"Mason, is she awake?" Both of them suddenly heard someone ask.

It was none other than Katherine. She wasn’t surprised that Katherine would be here. She was her only enemy after all.

But that name—Mason. He was Katherine’s lover.

Alisha couldn’t help but scoff.

"What’s this? You’re asking your lover to do your dirty work now? What about your underpaid hoodlums? Running out of them already? Or you’re just worried I will send their corpse to your doorstep one of these days?" She questioned, and the moment she saw Katherine stiffen, her heart danced in satisfaction.

After regaining her composure, Katherine smirked. "That will only happen if you manage to escape from here. Because you see, this is the same place I managed to get rid of a woman who caused me the same problems as you," said Katherine, and Alisha cocked her eyebrow in confusion.

She glanced around the warehouse, flashes of buried memories crawling out of her mind, reminding her of the torture she went through that night. How she was stripped of her dignity, lost her unborn child and almost lost her life.

Her heart thundered against her rib as both fear and rage surged through her body.

"I don’t know how close you are with Evangeline Montclair, but I can’t have someone like you alive. Whether you’re bluffing about knowing what happened to her, I really don’t care. But I killed her." Katherine laughed like she’d achieved something of high greatness. "It was so easy. That woman just wouldn’t back down. I could have had you experience how those men stripped her of everything that she had that night, but I think I’ll be nice tonight."

"Are you sure you want to keep telling her about what you’ve done?" Mason asked cautiously.

"And why not? She’s going to die today anyway. Make sure you do the job clean, Mason," she said before staring back at Alisha.

She leaned down towards her and cupped her chin so tightly Alisha bit her tongue just so she wouldn’t whimper.

"It’s just sad that it had to end up this way. But everything I have now, I fought hard for it. I had to kill someone to maintain my position in Nathan’s life, in the entertainment industry, and yo...you’re just a maggot that has refused to be squashed after getting stepped on."

Then she smiled ever so sweetly as if she was giving a compliment, her lips stretching further and further towards her cheeks.

"Don’t worry, I told Mason to make it less painful."

Then she leaned back.

Alisha gulped down her saliva, glancing around for anything that could help her.

According to Katherine, Mason was the only one who was there to take care of her, so she had an upper hand. But if she got herself involved in a physical fight, she would certainly end up with a bruise here and there because he was almost as big as Dante. He was a gym instructor after all, and his body was packed with muscles.

"Mason, do your thing," Katherine said, then she gave him a passionate kiss on the lips. Then with a smirk on her lips, she left. "I have to go practice my lines now," she sing-sang.

Mason reached for a bat.

Talk about making it less painful.

"You’re a very beautiful woman, I must say and I could have my fun with you before doing what I have to do to get rid of you, but I won’t do it," he said, as if it was the greatest decision he’s ever made in his life. "I love Katherine enough not to sleep with her arch nemesis."

He flinged the bat, holding it at the base.

Right when he was about to hit it against her face, Alisha shifted at the last second, narrowly missing the hit.

Mason hissed under his breath. He tried hitting her again but she repeated the same thing. And the third time, she grabbed it with both her hands and threw it away, her teeth gnashing together.

She kicked the chair away, the ropes coming loose and Mason stared at it with a stunned look.

"How did you free yourself?" He demanded.

It took a lot of patience but Alisha had freed herself the entire time Katherine was talking. She had to endure the remarks so she wouldn’t bounce on Katherine and make her chances of escaping even thinner than they already were.

"What can I say? With that big body of yours, you sure make a loose knot that even a kid can pull out from," she remarked.

Mason’s fists were clenched with his face red with rage which she could barely see with the help of the small light in the warehouse.

This was it—one hit and she could pass out but she wasn’t going to die again, at least not yet. But inside, she was terrified.

’Dante, where are you?’