“You are one tough asshole, you know that? You should see yourself. The bottoms of your feet are coated in blood. You're going to die with scars all over you.” Do they really think I give a shit if I die?
“I’m not dead yet, you pussy. Where’s your boss? Get his Goddamn ass down here. Or is he scared to take on a man? We all know he is. All of you are,” I seethe. Gritting my teeth and wishing like hell I had something to bite into. The whip whooshes again and lands right across my chest, and I hear my blood boil when it hits the air.
A fist connects with my cheek; I’m sure that was for calling them a pussy, but the knock that does me in, the one that has me seeing stars is the solid kick to my balls. At first, there is no feeling whatsoever, and within seconds, I feel them shrink up and shoot straight up my spine. I bite my tongue; the red-hot blood tastes vile. I cough, gag, and I heave, spitting it out with what little bit of saliva I have in my mouth. “Fuck.” The pain explodes, igniting my entire midsection in hellfire. Burning, incapacitating pain, somewhere between horrible cramps and having my organs scrambled and crushed.
“Now who's the pussy?” they sneer and taunt. I couldn’t tell you who is who anymore with the ringing in my ears and the need to catch my Goddamn breath.
“I’ll let you take that title,” I cough out. Throat burning as I gulp for air. There is too much going on inside of my head. I can’t abandon one over the other. Both of them are right there in front of my face, and I’m stuck here unable to save them. Motherfucker. That is the worst kind of suffering. The not knowing.
That's when the tears drop inside of me. My brain connects with my past. I'm a kid getting beat with a belt or a willow switch once again. So I try doing what I did when my father would go on a drunken rage. I try to think about my mother. Only the familiar faces whip violently in a way that is more traumatic than just about any beating I’ve endured before. All I see is Tara, Clove, and my brother, all of them standing there with a whip in their hands. Each one of them is striking out and laughing as the whip snaps in their wrists and connects with my body.
My arms scream in disapproval, and my head feels like it wants to break itself free from my neck within seconds. All of this combined with the shortness of breath from the strikes to my feet and legs means I’m in so much pain I couldn’t tell anyone what spot hurts more than the other.
My heart hurts more than anything. It’s so heavy and full of guilt that it’s bleeding.
I shake my head to try and get my hair out of my eyes. A lot of good it will do when I can’t see, anyway. I swallow down the knowledge that I’m going into shock and push my large frame up against the wall. I may be sitting on my fucking ass because that’s how they want me, but I won’t give them the satisfaction of taking this agony back to their boss. They can beat me until I’m raw, yet they will not hear me beg.
“No, motherfucker, that wasn’t all we got. We have a lot planned for you and for her. So much more. I have something for your pain if you want it. You need to answer a question first. You’ll get it depending on your answer,” one of them speaks from my left.
“Here’s a question for you. Where’s my brother, you motherfuckers? He doesn’t have a thing to do with this.” I hold on to that thought on the tip of my tongue with the love I have for both him and my mother. I refuse to believe Turner would work alongside a man like Luciano to make me pay for the sins I’ve committed. My brother is a good man. Self-righteous and loves his family more than he hates me to jeopardize the good in his life. He would never stand by and allow a man to strike a woman down. Me on the other hand, he would gladly take hold of the handle and beat me to death.
One of the men murmurs something to the other. Pulls my hood off and shines a light on my face. I can’t see a fucking thing. I smell him, though. The hunger he has to kill me.
“Do you know anyone from the FBI?” he spits out as if I should. I don’t, and I’m a loyal man even if I did.
I try to breathe slowly and deeply to keep calm even though everything inside of me is trying to suffer through the pain. I haven’t a Goddamn clue why they would ask me that.
However, these assholes have given me something to go on. Someone has betrayed their almighty leader. But who and why and what in the fuck this has to do with me is what I’d love to know.
I expect them to keep on with their interrogation, but they don’t. One of them pulls my legs forward, while the other tips my head back, and before I can suck in a breath, I hear the sloshing of water. Fear like I’ve never felt before grabs hold of me when the freezing cold hits my face. The excruciating sting is indescribable. My brain freezes, and my eyes bulge and shut. Lids sticking to my eyeballs. Fucking hell, now this is suffering. The numbing burns, and the stinging is enough to make me pass the hell out.
And I think I do black out for a few seconds. I’m woken with a kick to my face. My nose crunching. Damn it.
Someone hollers out an order. I can’t hear it over the water filling my ears. There’s a bustle of activity, and then someone grabs me by the hair, sits me upright, and bitch slaps me across my face.
Yeah, that one might have just pissed me off worse than the kick to my balls. Fuckers.
I tell myself it wouldn’t be this bad if I knew where Turner was. If I weren’t traveling through hell already wondering if they were doing this to him, or if the little bit of doubt I have that he could be partially behind this isn’t driving me insane. “Turner, are you here?” I cough his name out, jerk my head out of the man’s grasp, and shake the water from my hair.
I swear on all things holy my beard has icicles stuck to it. Jesus fucking Christ, is it cold.
“Where is my brother, you crazy sons of bitches?” Goddamn it. I can’t hold it in anymore. I need to know, need to hear his voice. I glance into the light and gasp for air. My nose is burning. My lungs are constricting as death stares me in the face. These men are high on the adrenaline of doing this. The difference between them and me is I would have killed me by now and moved the fuck on.
“You dumb fucks don’t know a thing about torturing someone. It takes a strong man to sustain it, while a weak one, like the two of you, would make up anything to get them to stop. Squeal like a motherfucking pig. You fuck this up, and he’ll kill you, won’t he? You come back with nothing from me, and you are both dead men. The FBI has something on you, don’t they? You are all going down, and it’s scaring the piss out of you.” Luciano doesn’t want me dead. Not yet, anyway. He wants me to suffer before he takes my life.
“No one is going down but you. You're going straight down to hell. I bet it’s killing you wondering if Tara is okay. The knot in your stomach is tightening by the second. It’s driving you insane not knowing if she’s dead. Maybe we should tell him what Luciano has planned for him,” the one shining the light on my face says. Both of them ignore my pleas about Turner, which leads me to believe they know nothing, or else his presence was a figment of my imagionation.
“Advice, boys. You better run, because if it’s the FBI after you, they won’t give up, and prison isn’t any fun for pretty boys.”
I’ll suffer through whatever they do to me to see that I make it out of here alive and save the people I love. War will be declared on any person who dared to touch Tara, and if I find out Turner is here and they laid a hand on him, Clove, or their kids, I will make them wish they weren’t born by the time I’m through with them.
Shit, Clove. If they have him, then Clove has to be going out of her mind. They have both suffered enough by my hands. I won’t be able to come back from this if something happens to any of them. I’ll die from that and not this. Turner might hate me, but I don’t hate him. I love him as much as a brother should. I wish daily things could have been different, and before I met Tara, I would have given up my freedom for him to hear him say he forgives me just one time. One time is all I need to pull the last bit of me from hell.
It won’t ever happen, and up until I heard his voice a little bit ago, I told myself I
could live with it. It’s a choice I don’t have. A choice I made when I thought I could be him. There is so much of my past life that will forever be a hell for my soul, and yet there is much more waiting in my future; and that is what I have to fight and hang on for.
Chapter 9
TRENT
Nausea spins in my empty stomach. My head swims with forming regrets that trigger flashbacks that nearly blind me. My chest feels tight and heavy, while my blood feels thick and sludgy from whatever drug they must have given me. “Goddamn.” It sure as shit isn’t something to ease my pain. It’s burning my flesh as it courses through my veins.
I’m acutely conscious of my body, and I recall every slash, punch, and kick that landed on me. My blood feels like its bursting, and blood vessels are popping behind my eyes. Each nerve ending is sending out electrical tremors to try and balance my mind.
Christ, I’m all kinds of torn up on the inside and out. I can hear and feel my heart beating in my ears, and it’s no surprise my vision becomes tunneled when I pry my lids open by blinking.
The sight I witnessed earlier has me screaming on the inside as I relive the same beating these men performed on me on a man they claim was the guy I thought was my brother.
Even though the chains felt like they were pulling my arms out of the sockets, I fought and kicked to try and help the man. After they beat the hell out of him, they dragged him while he kicked and screamed. Then stabbed him repeatedly right in front of me. And I swear with all the sanity left in me he was trying to tell me something before they took his life right before my very eyes.
I’ve lost my mind. The guilt mixed with whatever they must have shot in my now stiff and sore neck has me seeing and smelling things that aren’t there.
Maybe they killed him; maybe they didn’t. Might be they want me to believe it. Who the fuck knows for sure anymore? I’m so Goddamn high I could fly and never land on solid ground.
I shake my head, bang it on the brick wall over and over until I’m on the verge of vomiting. I need this shit out of my system.
I open my eyes the best I can. One feels all kinds of swollen; the blurred lines are still there in front of me, yet becoming clearer with every staggered breath I take.
It was real. I can smell his death in here. See it all so fucking clearly now. Every detail from beginning to this very moment. I gag. The view of his body a little too clear now. A deadly reminder of what Luciano can do. How in the fuck does he have this much control over these fuckers?
Leaning my head back to reel in my thoughts, I concentrate on what I remember.
At first, I thought I smelled flesh burning, which I did. It was my own frying from being whipped. Then the next thing, I was seeing my brother.
I honest to God thought it was Turner until they forced the man to step further into the light and the idiots who beat me down laughed and asked me if this was the man I saw.
The man who I’m assuming I thought was Turner looked scared to death, while the other two stood beside him with grins on their faces. The poor man knew he was going to die, so he babbled off that Turner wasn’t here, and before my next breath expelled from my lungs, one grabbed the man by his arms, while the other put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Blood flew in all directions, and the man’s dead body slumped to the floor at my feet. But not before he told me a few more things while struggling to get away. He said Luciano was upstairs with Tara, and he had plans to make her pay. There was something else, too, something about her daughter. Damn it. What was it?
“Where the hell is here, and why can I remember the beating but not them getting me here? Think, Trent. Fucking think.” If they were screwing with my head, then Luciano knows about my family, and if he doesn’t get his way, he may hurt them.
I’ve lost all concept of time as I sit here waiting for my brain to wake in order to dig through my thoughts. I laugh, deciding my phone is doing the thinking for me when it vibrates in my pocket. Over and over it repeats the process. I suck in air when it stops, hoping it’s Adrian. He’s all I’ve got at this point because unfortunately for me, there’s no way I can break free from these chains.
“Hang on, Tara. Help is coming. I swear it is,” I say, wanting her to hear my voice if she sees me, yet hoping she isn’t. Not sure if she could handle watching what they did to me. I sure as hell could barely stomach watching him beating her.
I shake my head again to try and clear the rest of the cobwebs out. Not sure what kind of drugs they gave me. All I know is I have to fight through the hazy visions that keep shifting in front of my eyes. I’ve done some pretty messed-up drugs in my earlier days, but none of them have made me feel as if my mind isn’t attached to my skull. Or maybe it’s the pain I feel everywhere that has me losing my shit. Who the fuck knows at this point? All I can be sure of is, I have to find out if Turner was a figment of my imagination and if Tara is alright.
My eyes water, eager to see the shadowy sliver of light flitting across the floor. When I glance up, a beam of brightness shines through the small window in this room.
My body tightens up, the chains around me rattling from the movement when the door flies open. The handle ricocheting off the wall and echoing in my ears.
I raise my head. Eyes feral and challenging at the man who finally graces me with his presence. One crazy motherfucker right there. The one thing he doesn’t know about me is, I’m as crazy as they come when I set my sights on something I want. And I want him six feet under in a way I’ve never wanted to kill anyone before.
Squinting my eyes to adjust to the light that’s fucking with my head about as much as the drugs, I narrow them more when Luciano and another man step through the door.
He watches me with as much vile in his eyes as I have in mine. He won’t get a drugged reaction out of me. I’m good, really fucking good at pretending, and this fucker wears his emotions on his sleeve. I can see them burning brightly behind his eyes, like a diamond shining in the rough.
While he’s aiming for the one thing that he thinks I’ll surrender to, I’ve already figured out his. In his own sick way, he cares about Tara. The difference between him and me is, I won’t show him how scared I am that he’ll kill her right before my eyes for her betrayal. Learned how not to show my fear a long time ago. Especially to people who have you chained to a Goddamn chair.
Even though I would give anything to take back what I did to my brother and his wife, I’m glad the years I spent in prison taught me to speak when I needed to, to observe and to always remember to stay silent unless you were put in a position to fight for your life or asked a question from the guards. I observed everyone around me and stayed the fuck away from those who caused trouble. I also learned how to intimidate and to never show a man how terrorized you truly are.
I’d love nothing more than to kill him with my bare hands, but the pussy-ass motherfucker can’t take on a man. If he could, he wouldn’t have others perform his dirty work. Wouldn’t hit a woman and wouldn’t take a baby away from her mother.
You took things from Clove that weren’t yours to take. She belonged to your brother. You’re no better than he is.
Wrong. I am better than him. So much better. I’ve done my time. Asked for forgiveness. And I won’t allow my troubled past to jeopardize my future. Not even if the voices talking to me are mine.
“My men tell me you thought you saw your brother. If I had known you were that hard up, I would have gladly brought him to you. Mistake on my part. I could go get him now, if you’d like.” He smiles.
I can’t trust the man, so I’m going to go with my instincts that are telling me Turner is safe and sound.
“I never believed in the saying ‘A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’ How can that be true when men like me don’t have a heart? The real way to his heart is a woman’s taste,” he quotes with mockery. “If she’s worth it. And Tara is worth it, isn’t she, convict?” he adds, stepping closer. “She’s good, isn’t she? Or at least she was. The bit
ch can make you do things you normally wouldn’t do. She is that fucking beautiful. Untainted from the lives men like me and you live that even a man like me becomes addicted to her. I’m not a man who takes kindly to someone trying to steal from me. Surely, you can understand that. When a person steals or betrays me, they don’t live. The man you saw die betrayed me. He should have been keeping an eye on my wife so she wouldn’t escape. As you witnessed earlier, he’s no longer with us. I’m not a man to forgive as easily as your brother. He should have killed you for what you did. I’ll be the man he wasn’t and make sure this is the last morning light you’ll ever see. You’ll die, and no one will give a fuck. Not even Tara, who is upstairs in bed waiting for me to erase the memory of you from her.” Fucking hell, if he takes her by force and makes me watch, I’ll die right along with her.
I’ll bet anything the dirty fucker has taken me to a different state, too. He’s going to try and set me up. He can keep telling himself whatever he wants to believe. My friends will find me. I know they will. And Tara might be in bed, but he’ll never erase me from her. I’m embedded deep in her soul, as she is in mine. That’s all I have to go on.
I keep my thoughts to myself. There’s going to come a day soon when I’ll tell him how good she really is. How untainted her soul is in spite of how he tried to corrupt and disintegrate her lively spirit.
He’s right about one thing, though; Tara is worth it. She’s worth everything, and we’ve fought through her demons. She will survive. I have to hold on to those words, or I won’t make it through this.
We set goals. Started planning them since she changed my life. And finally, after all this time, I was living in freedom, well on my way from moving away from my past, and I’ll become the man I used to be before I allow a man who destroyed her soul and left it hanging by a thread until I helped stitch her back together break her until she can’t be repaired. I’ll get out of here. I believe with all the love I have for Tara, all the talks and the true friendship I’ve made with Adrian, that he’ll figure out something is wrong and be here before too long. I’m about to become his worst fucking nightmare, and he has no idea the things I’m capable of bringing with me when I invade his dreams.
Parole Page 7
