Chapter One

To Be Loved

They had her.

Randy Orton sank down to the couch and stared down at the crumpled note that lay in a heap on his coffee table. This was all his fault.

He had met Maria Kanellis a year ago at a publicity signing for his new self-help book. She was an avid reader, a big fan of his books, even going so far as to telling him at the signing that she needed all the help that she could get. He fell in love instantly. She was a beautiful girl with long caramel colored hair and green eyes, and he thought she was just so hot. She was just too good to be true.

Their relationship was plagued from the start, however. It wasn't that he was abusive, and it wasn't that he was a liar, or a cheater. In fact, for the most part he treated her really well. Even after arguments he would stalk his way into the bedroom, rest his head on her chest and profess his love for her. It wasn't that he didn't give her enough attention or that he treated her badly. He just had a slight little problem.

He liked to gamble.

And he gambled on everything that he could possibly gamble on. Boxing, football, baseball, hockey, soccer, you name it, twenty to one says he had bet on it at one point or another. But it was through his excessive gambling that he had fallen into the graces of the local...mafia, for lack of a better term. And that frightened Maria. And he had dismissed her fears, thinking that she was being unreasonable about his new friends.

The fighting had increased after that. Maria was terrified that something was going to happen to him, an argument that he would usually brush off and laugh off, leaving Maria irritated for such a reckless regard for his health and safety. The argument would end with Maria in tears and leaving for a few hours to drive around Vegas, wondering what it was that really drew her to Randy. Then she would realize how much she loved him and come home and they would patch things up. This happened at least twice a week, and Maria was getting better at handling it.

Maria had threatened to leave repeatedly as he fell deeper and deeper into the depths of debt with the mafia, and had gone as far enough as to leave for two weeks to stay with her brother in Chicago. But Randy had begged and pleaded and even cried, and she had come back, open arms, proclaiming her love for him. Hell, he had even flown out to Chicago to do a romantic serenade under the moonlight. It wasn't that the relationship was bad; it wasn't by all accounts. It was just that Maria hated to see him sinking in a sea of debt that he couldn't swim out of.

And now they had her.

He owed them thousands of dollars in gambling debts. And until he paid them in full, God only knows what they were going to do to Maria.

He had to find her.

Maria Kanellis woke up in a panic. She was in the dark, encased in blackness, bound and gagged. It took her a second to realize that she was moving, which in all likelihood meant that she was stuck in the trunk of a moving vehicle.

Things couldn't get any worse.

The last thing that she remembered was that she was in the parking lot of the grocery store about to get into the car when she had been hit with something. She knew she had been hit with something because of the fact that she could still feel the burning sensation on the back of her neck. That's when she knew that she had been tasered. Now, she was being taken.

God only knows where these men were taking her and what they were going to do to her, but she was almost certain that this had something to do with Randy and his new “associates”. Damn him, she cursed silently. Of course, in her moment of fear, she was completely incapable of feeling any anger towards her boyfriend, and she just wanted to come out of this alive and go home to Randy.

The car pulled to a stop and she pretended to go limp and act as though she was still knocked out. The trunk opened and she felt herself be grabbed.

“Get her in there,” she heard a male voice command and she was being dragged over the shoulder towards a hole in the ground.