by Anne Russo
“Adam never asked for this, any of this. You might consider cutting him some slack. You know, rather than torturing him for something that isn’t his fault.”
“Is that what you think?” Ian asked, cringing at the mere suggestion. “That I’m doing this to punish him?”
“Then help me understand.”
“I’m keeping his ass alive,” Ian spat. “He’s so goddamn naïve and earnest, honest. He’ll never last unless I…” He paused, unsure. Mei nodded, as if encouraging him to continue. “I have to hurt him. There’s no other way.”
Mei shook her head. “That’s Rhys talking.”
“Rhys has nothing to do with this,” Ian growled, going straight into defensive mode. “And what the hell do you know about him anyway?”
Mei backed off, for now. “You’re right. I was wrong to question you and to bring up, well, the past. I apologize.”
“Are we done now?” Ian grumbled, wanting to be alone with his thoughts, the terrible knot forming.
“Yes, just try not to hold being an honest person against him. It’s not his fault he’s a likable guy.”
* * * *
Adam peered into the blackness where Ian once stood—wondering how in hell he’d get himself out of this impossible nightmare. He had no illusions about their organization’s capacity for cruelty. They’d stop at nothing to further their agenda. And that agenda didn’t allow for coddling and hand holding. The time had arrived for Adam to prove to them they weren’t wasting their time or resources. Katherine’s long lost son or not—they had to make sure their risky investment hadn’t been in vain. A moment of reckoning, live or die. And he didn’t want to die. He’d come too far, suffered too much, and far from ready to give up and accept defeat.
Adam tried to pull his thoughts together, despite the vicious pounding in the center of his chest. The sound was so deafening leaving him unable to envision, let alone form any rational plan of escape.
The hours trickled by slowly, and he trapped in a nightmare. The panic and terror, combined with the sedative, made the world hazy and out of focus, unreal. Adam tried pleading for help, tugging on his restraints—a fruitless endeavor. As the seconds and minutes crept on, he grew further infuriated by his fate. Beyond livid, shouting every insult he could recall, hoping Ian heard. Defeated when his cries went unheard, he slumped against the binds and sobbed until only bitter acceptance remained. Still, he refused to give up, give in, to surrender to a terrible, painful death in a lonely cell.
“Quite the pickle you’re in,” a new voice mused from somewhere in the darkness.
Adam’s head whipped in its direction, finding only ceaseless black, his fear reflected at him, taunting.
“But now that you’re in it, how the hell are you going to get out?”
“Allison?”
Allison laughed. A light, tinkling sound echoing off the walls, ringing in Adam’s ears. Adam closed his eyes, squeezing them tight, remembering how once he’d adored Allison’s laughter. But instead of filling his heart with joy as it’d once done—the memory had twisted itself into something sinister, a monster crawling out of the black to devour him whole.
“You’re not here,” Adam moaned. “You’re just a figment—”
“Of your terrified psyche. I know, baby, I took Psych 101 too.”
Adam shook his head, desperate to dislodge her mocking. This Allison was only the cruel mirage of the woman he’d loved, one he’d never touch or hold, see again in this life.
“You’re going to die here. You know that, right?” Allison continued, rattling him to the core. “Are you going to wait this out? Until what? These lunatics take pity on you?”
“Please, Allison,” Adam begged, eyes squeezed shut, willing her away. “Please, just go away—”
“Do you think any of them care if you live or die? That revolting bitch claiming to be your mother?” Allison’s words were dripping with disdain, snorting with disgust. “Ian? Now that’s a surprise, though. I’ll be honest; I’d always had an inkling—”
“Stop! Just stop fucking talking to me!” Adam jerked against his restraints, desperate for escape.
“You can’t be as ambivalent about this as you were about our relationship,” Allison goaded, refusing to stay silent.
It took Adam thirty-seven hours to reconsider. Thirty-seven hours of Allison’s voice berating him for every mistake he’d made and could never unmake. For each tiny detail in his short, miserable life that had led him to this point. Her words were an unrelenting stream of every wound he’d carried. By the end, he’d wanted her silence more than he feared the horror to come, the absolute agony that awaited him, the fear of it; he had to either embrace or surrender to one or the other.
Weak and filthy, the realization clear, nothing was worse than imprisonment. Adam would rather die than endure another second in this hell. Ian had been right. The pain was brutal. More than he dreamed possible to live through, let alone withstand.
Adam shouted and cursed his way through each tearing, bone crunching moment. He pulled and yanked and dug until everything was slick with blood and sweat. The torn flesh of his forearms left little more than open ragged wounds that burned as he screamed and screamed. He worried his heart might burst from the strain. If Adam could have seen himself, he would’ve been unable to recognize the man before him. His features were distorted, twisted into a mask of suffering.
The room was at least ninety degrees. Perspiration saturated his skin and made his eyes burn. Adam’s mouth tasted like hot ash; still, he struggled, until after a lifetime in hell, he broke free.
He slipped forward onto his knees, hysterical sobs bursting forth. The river of blood running down and over his clothes was horrifying. Adam tried to support his weight, but his mangled arms wouldn’t allow him the luxury. They no longer resembled arms, more like raw meat, a stark shock of visible bone only made Adam sob harder. He half crawled, half shuffled to the door and banged, kicking it with all the strength he had left in him.
“Hey! Hey, you bastard—”
The door opened, and Adam fell forward. Sturdy hands caught and steadied him.
“You’re okay. You’re okay.” Ian’s words were a frantic gasp pressed into his neck. Adam felt a hand in his hair dragging him closer.
Adam tilted his face upward, blinking into the bright light, as blind as a newborn. And every bit as furious.
“Fuck you,” Adam managed to hiss before he gave into the dark once more, collapsing into Ian’s arms, dead to the world.
* * * *
Adam wasn’t sure if it had been hours or days. He opened his eyes with significant effort to find himself in his bed. A lamp switched on by the nightstand. He squinted against the brightness and struggled to sit up but was unable to move his arms. Horrified, Adam discovered them wrapped in heavy bandages, fresh blood continuing to seep through the fabric. He groaned and sought to get up again, but Ian stopped him, urging him to lay back. Realization dawned, and recollection returned, wincing from the terrible throbbing ache of his wounds as they awoke with the rest of him.
“You asshole,” Adam muttered, wanting to say more, but his throat was too dry, raw.
Ian rose, putting a cup of water to his lips. Adam considered pushing it aside, but temptation won out. He took a sip, two, disappointed when Ian held the cup away.
“Easy,” he warned.
“Why, is it drugged?” Adam snapped as his head cleared, the fog lifting little by little.
Ian sidestepped the question and asked how he was doing instead. The casual way he asked only further spurred Adam into fury.
“Guess?”
His entire body hurt, and the skin under those wrappings burned and stung. Still, Adam knew it wasn’t as horrible as it could be. It was clear that they’d provided painkillers to help him through the worst of it, at least that explained the grey fogginess in his brain as he worked to piece together what happened from their arrival at the party to his winding up shackled to a chair, ripping
his arms apart to free himself.
“Why?”
Ian started to answer him but seemed to think better of it, clamming up at the question. Instead he pulled up a seat. “You’re not ready to hear that now,” he answered.
Adam searched his face for an answer.
“All right?” Ian offered, inching closer to his bedside.
Adam moved as far from him as possible, the thought of having him close unbearable.
“Try to rest.” Ian shifted away as if noticing Adam’s discomfort, lowering his gaze from Adam’s accusatory stare, but Adam wasn’t ready to let him off the hook.
“I don’t want to rest,” Adam lashed out. “I want the truth. Was everything you said that night a lie? Did you mean any of it?”
Ian refused to answer, still refusing to meet his eye. The silent treatment only served to enrage Adam further.
“You have nothing to say to me!?”
Sighing, Ian faced him and his wrath. But Adam was too concerned by the shape he found Ian in, his apparent fatigue, noting his rumpled clothes. The dark and heavy circles around his eyes, the tightness of his mouth.
It struck Adam, the stray thought of Ian by his bedside while he was unconscious. Distracted, Adam forgot what he wanted to say when Ian surprised him by placing his hand over his own.
“I don’t expect you to understand…” He began, as if struggling to find the right words.
A sharp knock on the door interrupted them. Katherine entered. In an instant, Ian’s hand slid out of his own, and he was jumping hurriedly to his feet. But not quick enough to escape Katherine’s shrewd eye. Ian coughed, groping for his jacket while making excuses to leave.
“Am I interrupting something important?”
Adam didn’t miss the pure ice in her voice, the focus of her attention on Ian.
“No,” Ian answered, his eyes flickering over to Adam before heading for the exit. “I was just leaving.”
Katherine stopped him with a hand on his arm. Ian stiffened, head angled, gaze lowered as she leaned into his ear. “Please see me in the morning. Nine A.M.”
Ian nodded and left, quick enough to miss the slow, gentle smile she flashed. But her smile failed to match the absolute viciousness in her eyes.
Adam noticed. The sight froze him from head to toe. His sense of unease intensified as Katherine rushed over. Offering soothing words for wounds, he was sure she’d ordered Ian to execute.
* * * *
“You wanted to see me?”
Ian arrived at Katherine’s door the next morning at the appointed hour, having stopped by Adam’s room first to check on him. He was still unconscious, sedated, so he’d sleep off the worst of the discomfort.
Katherine left him waiting, as usual. Ian studied her for clues, noting the calculating expression on her face. As if she were striving to pull him apart piece by piece so she could peer inside his head. The sensation brought forth the image of himself as a child standing before her. And, he had the urge to toe this same ancient Oriental rug in nervous anticipation. Even as an adult, one who’d survived every conceivable hell, who feared nothing and no one, Ian still dreaded her disappointment, more than any real or imagined torment.
“Yes, thank you for being on time for once,” she replied, rising, smoothing her skirt of imaginary wrinkles.
She leaned against her desk, legs crossed at the ankle, a touch casual for the chill in those words. A wave of her cloying, expensive perfume wafting, making Ian wince. The aroma triggered scattered memories of her. Of her presence as far as recollection allowed. To the day his father died.
He burrowed into Katherine’s chest, inhaling her heady, rose scent. Desperate to bring back the mother lost to his fragmented memories. He remembered how taken aback she’d been by the gesture, her body stiffening as his arms gripped her waist. His snotty, tear-stained face pressed with naïve unawareness into her cleavage.
“No, no,” he wailed until, at last, her hands began rubbing tentative circles.
A small indulgence. One Katherine let him have for a minute, no more.
She jerked him backward, sharp fingernails digging into tender flesh until he cried out. Her eyes narrowed, and she dug in tighter, shaking him, his tears cutting off in mid-sob. He peered up at her, bewildered by the switch in her expression.
“Enough,” Katherine insisted, lips curled into a sneer. “Your father expected better from you. I expect better from you.”
Only once he uttered the magic phrase. “I’m sorry,” did Katherine’s demeanor shift. The harsh lines of her face softening.
She smiled. “There’s a good boy. You will be my good boy, won’t you, Ian?”
From that day on, everything Ian had done was to make her proud, his father proud, to help them carry on their legacy. He had a duty to honor her wishes the way his father and Rhys wanted it. Rhys may have had his unresolved issues with her, but he’d always urged Ian to respect her judgment. And most of all, to follow her orders without question.
“Are you listening to me?”
He came back from the past, lost in his memories. “Yes, you were saying—”
“Adam,” she repeated, jaw tight, eyes glinting with the hint of trouble.
Ian colored, defending himself immediately. “He’s stubborn, combative—”
“A challenge,” she cut him off, right as usual, “and you’ve always enjoyed a challenge, haven’t you?”
Ian tried to hold her gaze, face hot with shame. He turned his attention to an indescribable spot on the faded gold and rose wallpaper, fixating until it blurred.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You do.”
Katherine stepped away from her desk, resting her hand on his forearm. Ian had to fight the urge to shake off the icy touch of her fingers. One little word, she spoke, but it was enough to flip his entire world on its head.
“Don’t.”
Ian struggled not to rip his arm away, but Katherine tightened her hold. Her eyes glinted from light to dark, daring him to say no. It struck Ian then how simple it must have been for them to fall for her charms. For it had only taken one glance into eyes every bit as captivating, and he understood—their helplessness. The power that rested under the surface of so much dazzling beauty. In them, he saw his innate animalistic drive for conquest, to own and possess such beauty, the pursuit of which was a disaster he was unable to divert from careening with headfirst. Ian wanted to nod, to agree. Instead, he found himself for once questioning a direct order.
“Like you ‘didn’t’ with my father?”
Or with Rhys? Or who knows who else?
He savored her brief look of outrage. It made her appear older, less infallible. He could see the lines, the tiny fractures forming on her smooth, ageless face. The realization made her myth more human, like someone able to bleed like the rest.
“Your father and I were in love,” Katherine returned as if his words’ sharpness hadn’t affected her in the slightest.
Ian shifted on his feet, gaze locked on the carpet, unable to bear the smug condescension on her face as she continued.
“An emotion you’ll never understand after a lifetime of debauchery, a cast of thousands. Do you have any sense of boundaries? He’s my son!”
Ian winced, striving to lift his gaze to hers, desperate to defend himself, but she stopped him.
“I don’t want to hear it, Ian. Honestly, do you think you’ll satisfy anything but his curiosity?”
“I—we haven’t done anything, I swear,” he tried explaining, scolded back to being a whimpering child.
“Yet.” The pause was loaded with meaning. “And you never will. Do you hear me?”
He swallowed around the acid taste rising, nodded. “Yes, Katherine.”
“Excellent. And may I remind you, this is for Adam’s sake. For the sake of what we do. I’m sure you’d agree the safety of your team is far more important than some hormonal fling.”
“Yes.” Ian winced at her bluntness.
Dismissed, with no regard for the wound she had reopened. The flame that she had renewed and brought roaring back to life.
* * * *
“Do you guys just come out here to brood?”
Adam started, so lost in thought, he hadn’t even heard Mei approaching. She held her hands up in a gesture of peace as she stepped off the path toward where he sat tucked away in the back garden.
“You know Ian uses that same bench when he needs a good sulk. Move over, will you?”
Adam slid over, not missing the way her eyes skipped over the stark white bandages covering his arms.
“How are you feeling?”
He scoffed at the question and angled away, sliding his sleeves over the gauze. “Like I died and someone brought me back to life.”
“I see—”
“Do you?” he spat. “I’m being held here against my will, been beaten, starved, tortured!”
“I understand your frustration. I don’t always get what happens around here either. But what we do, we do for a greater purpose.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “The greater good?”
“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “The greater good.”
“There’s no greater good. Only a gilded cage. How do you not see that?”
“I’m not pretending our circumstances aren’t vastly different,” Mei agreed. “But for me, I never belonged anywhere. Even my own family rejected me. But then I met Ian, and everything made sense. I was home.”
“You’re right. Our circumstances are different. I had a life. A career. A mother and a fiancée who believe I’m dead. So, no, this place will never be home.”
Mei shrugged. “And yet, I’m going to venture to guess there were parts of yourself you kept hidden even from them.”
Adam’s cheeks burned at her sharp insight. “I’m sorry, Mei. I can’t talk about this. I’m going back in.”
