Trey

by Shandi Boyes

  He guides me to the back of the jet, so our conversation isn’t overheard by my brothers returning from battle. “K’s mental stability is very concerning. She’s in what we call an acute psychosis. She has no sense of reality and is unresponsive to both touch and command.” He locks his concerning blue eyes with mine. “I don’t even think she knew I was examining her.”

  In a way, that makes me happy. The less invaded she feels, the quicker she’ll come out of the dark. “How long will her psychosis last?”

  Dok shrugs again. “I truly don’t know. I’ve never seen a condition as bad as K’s. Some patients go in and out of psychotic episodes within hours, some last months, even with intensive therapy.” He licks his lips before breathing out slowly, “Then there are a handful who never recover.” He doesn’t directly say it, but I know he’s placing K in that category. “I wish I had better news for you, Trey, but unfortunately, I don’t. The best we can do is make her as comfortable as possible and for her to know she’s safe.”

  I can’t talk. I’m too gutted to speak. The fight in K’s eyes was one of her most attractive features, and I’m devastated a prick like Achim Novak has stolen that from her. Anger surges through me as an overwhelming desire to kill echoes in my heart’s beats. I want to kill a man who’s already dead before resuscitating him so I can kill him all over again.

  Sensing my unease, Dok whacks my shoulder in an it’ll-be-all-right way before he moves for a group carrying Eight into the plane. If the way he’s clutching his stomach is anything to go by, he’s sporting a bullet wound. His second for me if the memories in my head are anything to go by.

  When I go to help my brother in arms, Nikolai steps into my path. “Go to your queen. She needs you more than Eight.”

  “You heard what Dok said—”

  “Yeah, I did,” he interrupts, “but I also know he’s full of shit.” He slants his head like we don’t stand at almost the same height before saying, “He said the same thing about you, and look at you now. Life is your fucking oyster, Trey, so show your queen what she’s got to come back to.” After another head slant, he adds, “Unless you want me to order one of my men to keep her warm?”

  Nikolai snickers like a dumb fuck not in fear for his life when I pin him to the cabinets we’re standing next to by his throat. I have my blade a millimeter from his jugular, and the adrenaline from a kill is already skating through my veins. He’s all but dead. The only reason he’s still breathing is because it was the air in his lungs that resuscitated mine long after I was freed. He also killed Achim for me without giving me the slightest bit of grief that I was choosing K over revenge because even someone as once heartless as him knows I made the right choice putting K first.

  She will always be first.

  The fury bubbling in my veins reduces to a simmer when Nikolai says, “That’s what I thought. You want your queen, and you’ll take down any fucker stupid enough to say otherwise, so why are you still standing here? Why aren’t you bringing her back from the madness like only you can. If you want to save her from the blackness, Trey, show her how hell is darker than death, and it’s one hell of a playground if you play your cards right.”

  After pushing me away from him without making a move for his beloved knife he’s never without, he returns to the middle section of the jet. “Let’s get this wrapped up. My Ahren is waiting for me.”

  He tells the two emergency whores the men always pack for long trips to piss off to the front of the jet before he lays on a three-seater couch as if it’s a bed. After tossing an arm over his eyes, he instructs for Mikhail to wake him once we land. His admission that he’s planning to sleep the entire trip lowers the bottom lips of the whores hoping to entertain him, unaware the opportunity ended the instant his eyes locked with Justine’s.

  It was the same for K and me—and it will be again.

  I’ll make sure of it.

  Twenty-Five

  Trey

  “Can I borrow that?” I ask Dok, freezing him partway out the door.

  He just finalized his third check-up on K the past fifteen hours. I stayed for the last two, too worked up by Nikolai’s comment to let anyone alone with K. Dok is one of the good ones, but I don’t care if he’s a saint. No one will ever touch K without my permission, and even then, it’ll be a rarity and never in the manner she’s been touched previously.

  Dok spins around to face me with his brows pinched. He thinks I want to borrow his thermometer or blood pressure machine. It couldn’t be further from the truth.

  “Your iPod. Can I borrow it?” Dok would be lucky to be thirty, but he’s as old-school as they come. He still has his iPod from his college days, and his medical bag looks like it belongs on a British sitcom. “You have weather noises on there, right?”

  His lips curl before he lifts his chin, shocked I’ve watched him close enough to know one of his quirks. He shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the quiet ones you need to watch the closest.

  “They help me sleep.”

  After placing down his bag at the end of the bed K and I are resting on, he pulls out a set of wired pods from his pocket, rolls them around his ancient iPod, then passes them my way.

  Just as I’m about to snatch them up, he yanks them back. “Can I take a look at your hand first?”

  “Dok…”I growl out, pissed he’s attempting to negotiate with me. I told him hours ago my hand is fine, and I’d appreciate it if he’d fucking listen to me.

  “The wound looks deep. If we don’t flush it out with some saline and clean it, it could become infected.” When I fail to budge on my glare, he huffs. “Fine. Lose your entire fucking hand instead of a finger like Eight.” His facial expression turns mocking when he spots the shock on mine. “Let me guess, you all think Eight lost two fingers in turf wars?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer him with a hell-to-the-fucking-yes grunt. He just pushes out, “He would have been called nine if he had listened to me.”

  Taking my silence as approval to be an A-grade moron, Dok fishes a stainless steel kidney dish from a cabinet in the bathroom before he pulls some medical equipment from his bag. Once he has my wound clean, he searches the open cut for tiny shards of glass. I’m surprised when he finds three micro pieces in the lower half of the slash mark. “Your palm is designed the way it is for a reason.” After dumping the glass into the kidney dish and giving my wound another thorough washing with saline, he peers at me through the ridiculous pair of glasses balancing on the end of his nose. They have lights on each side of the lenses. “Stitches or glue?”

  “I—”

  “Stitches or glue?” he repeats, knowing I was about to say it’s fine how it is.

  The tightness of my jaw is heard in my reply, “What will get you out of here faster?”

  “Glue—”

  “Then glue it is.”

  Halfway through the gluing of my hand, I’m tempted to cement Dok’s lips together. It isn’t because his question annoys me, I just have no clue how to answer it without sounding like a soft cock.

  He asked why I want his iPod.

  I wait until he has my palm glued up and he’s reaching for a bandage before I say, “Rain reminds me of K. I’m wondering if it could be the same for her.”

  “Did something significant happen to her in the rain?” When I lift my chin, he asks, “A good thing?”

  For the first time in my life, I’m unwilling to share my sexcapades with one of my brothers, so I once again nod my head. Usually, I’m all about sharing details of my hookups. There’s no eagerness this time around. That afternoon in the rain changed things for K and me. I’m just praying it was noteworthy enough to help her find her way out of the dark.

  “Do you think triggering her memory is worth a shot?”

  Dok finishes bandaging my hand before locking his eyes with mine. “It won’t hurt her. Just keep your expectations low.” He drifts his caring eyes to K lying still as a plank as she has the past fifteen hours before returning them to me. “She isn’t the
only one who needs to tread cautiously right now.”

  “I’m not a headcase, Dok.”

  “I never said you were.” He stands from his seat, tucks it back under the vanity mirror at the side of the room before shifting on his feet to face me. “You just need to ensure you’re helping her because it’s what she wants, and not what you think she wants.”

  “How can I know what she wants? She can’t communicate with me even when she’s alert.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Dok asks, smirking. “Because from what I’m seeing, she’s stronger than I realized.”

  I glare at him like he’s certifiably insane, my eyes only leaving his when I follow the direction of their gaze. To someone who hasn’t been watching over her for the past fifteen hours straight, they’d believe K is still unresponsive and shutdown. I know that isn’t the case. She moved her head. Not enough to have me believing she’s close to leaving the dark, but there’s no doubt she angled her head so she could see me in the reflection of the full-length mirror in the bathroom. I’ve been lying directly beside her for the majority of our trip, but my change in position to the end of the bed so Dok could patch up my hand put me out of her line of sight.

  Acting ignorant to the panic beaming out of me, Dok shoves his iPod into my hand. “Be gentle with her, Trey.”

  “I don’t know how,” I reply before I can stop myself.

  He acts as if I never spoke. “Track 37 is my favorite summer afternoon rain track. It only goes for around four minutes, but you can play it on repeat.”

  Not speaking another word, he leaves me alone with K. I’m not going to lie. I’m shitting my pants. Gentle isn’t in my vocabulary, but I sure as fuck want to be gentle for K.

  Can I do that, though? Can a man who’s raised his hand to women shelter one who has been beaten beyond recognition?

  If you had asked me that very question only three months ago, I would have said hell no. Now? Now I’m willing to give it a shot. The most euphoric thing in the world is watching the light switch on in someone’s eyes long after they’ve been trapped by the dark.

  I swear Nikolai’s ego still feeds off his feat now.

  After unwinding the cords around Dok’s iPod, I push back the curls fanning K’s face before popping a pod into her exposed ear. The other half goes into mine. Once I’ve pressed play on the track Dok suggested, I lay on my side so I can watch K’s face for any indication she can hear the patters of rain on a tin roof.

  Dok picked good. This track sounds exactly like a sprinkling of rain hitting a pigpen. All I need is the smell of pig shit, and the scene would be set.

  My eyes pop out of my head when a lightbulb inside switches on.

  “I’ll be back in a sec, K. I know I said I wouldn’t leave you, but this is really important.”

  Ignoring the similarities between this comment and the one that had K taken away from me for three and a half months, I remove the pod from my ear then hightail it out of the room. Nikolai is awake, alone, and eating toast like he wasn’t responsible for the death of over thirty men last night.

  “Who hid in the stables before the raid?”

  He stops munching on his toast to arch a brow. Although curiosity is his highest expression, he hates being interrogated more. “Nero and Shaun…” I race down the hall before all of Nero’s name leaves his mouth. “Why?”

  “I need shit. Lots and lots of shit.”

  Nero greets me with a grin like he isn’t in the process of getting his dick sucked by a whore. “How’s K?”

  “Good, but I need your boots.” I drop my eyes to his muddy boots parted by the naked backside of a brunette slurping away on his cock as if it’s a lollipop. “Did they have pigs in the stalls you hid in?”

  Nero fists the brunette’s ponytail to hold her down on his cock until she gags before shrugging. “I can’t recall. I don’t know the difference between a moo and an oink.” He jerks up his hips two times, producing a prolonged moan from the whore before a smug grin curls his lips. “But I sure recognize the moans of a horny woman.”

  With his shirt showing signs of an oozing wound, he’s being extra pigheaded today. He’s probably also drugged up on pain medication. If you’ve got a good doctor on call, that shit can be better than the best blow.

  “Give me your boots, Nero.” I commence untying the laces on his left boot, ensuring he’s aware I’m not taking no as an answer. “If your dick gets anywhere near my face, I swear, I’ll bite it off.”

  “What the fuck, T-man?” He thrusts his hips up in a way that makes my stomach roll. “You’re the one cutting the queue ‘cause you want my nasty-smelling shoes.”

  The men surrounding us laugh, but I barely hear their chuckles over my second light-bulb moment for the day. Although shocked revelations like this usually have me wanting to drop one campaign to take up another, this time around, I don’t need to. They’re both about the same person—K.

  With Nero’s boots thrust under my arm, I make my way back to the room at the other end of the jet, stopping by Nikolai’s little alcove on my way. He almost chokes on his last slice of toast when I say, “K tried to bite off Rory’s cock.” While he coughs up the breadcrumbs lodged in his lungs, I explain. “When I took Rory to Jim’s, K laid the boot into him… after seeing teeth imprints in his cock. You saw how drugged up he got Ana. She wouldn’t have been able to chew through his skanky cum much less his dick.” Nikolai sits up straighter, understanding where I’m going. “If Vladimir was letting members of your crew hook-up with his prized girls, what were they giving him in return?”

  I hear his back molars grind together before he spits out, “Do you think it was just Rory?”

  I want to say yes, but my suspicions are too high to allow that. “I don’t know, but I suggest you don’t quit looking until you find out.” When he lifts his chin, agreeing with me, I add, “I also suggest you look deeper into your purchase of K…” Before he can remind me he doesn’t pay for whores, I push out, “Not because you pay for whores, but because her sale wasn’t placed in your name for no reason. Dok said K was looked after the past three months. None of the women housed with her were. I don’t even know if the blonde in her cell was breathing when I raced out of there.”

  I should feel guilty about the number of women we left behind, but I don’t. We would have never extracted K safely since the number of rescuers was less than the number of captives.

  Nikolai lifts his chin for the second time before locking his eyes with Nero’s boots. “What’s with the boots?”

  After hitting him with a cocky wink, I say, “Not even the darkest night can hide the brightest star.”

  Leaving Nikolai to unravel my riddle alone, I enter the only door next to the couch he’s spent the past fifteen plus hours on.

  K is still as stiff as a board, but her eyes appear more sheened than they were when I left.

  The gloss of her tears has me switching tactics for the third time this evening.

  While struggling not to hurl, I tap out the dirt from the bottom of Nero’s shoes into the washroom sink before scooping it up in my hands and depositing it into the soap holder in the shower. Once I have the water switched on and at a similar temperature to a Vegas summer shower, I snag a t-shirt out of the bag Nero dumped on the floor hours ago before moving to K’s bedside.

  My hands jitter like a virgin undoing his first bra when I peel back K’s hair enough to locate the zipper of her dress. As it slides down to the two dimples in her lower back, my jaw works through a bad bout of stiffness. Her whip marks have healed, but they’ve left a nasty set of scars on her back.

  Endeavoring to keep my head out of the darkness of my past, I shimmy K’s dress down her slender frame before rolling her over so I can see her face. Her wide and un-terrorized eyes are the only things capable of keeping me out of the dark. They can even surpass my wish to kill.

  I’m a cruel, faceless monster… until I’m standing across from K.

  Then I’m anyone she needs me t
o be.

  Once I’ve slipped my shirt over K’s head and pulled her hair out of the collar, I tug off my jeans, yank off my shirt, remove Dok’s iPod pod from K’s ear, then gather her in my arms. I don’t carry her like a groom does a bride over the threshold. I plaster her body to the front of me, gluing her to me as I plan to be glued to her until she fully emerges from the dark.

  With the bathroom steamy, the muddy slop I dug out of Nero’s boots is highly noticeable when we step into the compact space. It doubles the faintness of the pulse in K’s neck in an instant, and has me hopeful she might leave the dark sooner than I’m hoping.

  “Come on, Duchess,” I mutter as I step us into the shower stall. “You’re stronger than this. You fought Satan and won, so don’t let this beat you.” My arms tighten around K’s torso so fiercely I’m afraid I may have broken one of her ribs when her eyelids dip for the quickest second. It wasn’t a full blink, but it was noticeable. “Didn’t you want a war, Duchess? I brought you the war. We played the fucker at his own game and won, so you can come out of the dark now.”

  Another blink.

  It’s even longer than the first one.

  “We could dye your dress in his blood. Parade his beheaded carcass through the streets of Prague.” I step her back until the lukewarm water pumping out of the showerhead flattens her curls. “We started a war without firing a single bullet, and we ended it the same way. His life wasn’t worth the price of a bullet, so we beheaded him instead. He’s dead now, Duchess. He’ll never hurt you again. I promise you that.”

  This time I get two blinks and a single tear. It hasn’t fallen from her eye just yet. It’s clinging to mascara-coated lashes on the lower lid of her right eye.

  She’s too brave to cry, too fucking strong. She is the most courageous woman I’ve ever met.

  When I tell K that, her tear plops onto her cheek. I wipe it away in an instant, its worth inconsequential. She isn’t broken, she’s fighting to come back, to claw her way out of the darkness.