“Are you okay?” I asked her softly. She didn’t give me an answer or even acknowledge I had said anything at all but I waited her out, in case she did.
She lifted her head after a few minutes that felt like hours to me, my hands itching to reach out to try and ease her pain. She looked me straight in the eye and lied to me. “Yes.”
I knew she was lying because her eyes brimming with tears drooped with exhaustion.
“Are you sure,” I pressed on.
“I said, yes,” she bit out.
I nodded, knowing I shouldn’t push her anymore. “Do you need anything?”
She shook her head before slipping back under the covers, pulling the material up to her chin. I sat there and stared at her until her eyes closed. Even then, I didn’t move. I took in every inch of her face. From her tight jaw to her flushed cheeks. I wanted to kill the person who made that beautiful face twist in despair. I wanted to torture the person who made that delicate voice scream in agony.
I didn’t have conclusive evidence, but it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. The plan to kill a man almost twice her age and the nightmares. He hurt her. In what way, I wasn’t sure and I honestly didn’t give a fuck. All I knew was that he was going to wish I killed him last night.
I stood up from the bed, turned off the lamp, and started to head downstairs. I paused in the doorway, wanting to turn back but knowing I shouldn’t. Before I could take one more step, her small voice drifted across the room. A lone word I equally hated and loved in that moment. “Stay.”
I turned back into the room, not muttering a word. I walked over toward the bathroom, tapped my knuckles against the wall until a drawer slid out. I picked up the blanket and joined her on the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed over the blanket she covered her body with. I unfolded the blanket before tossing it over my frame. It was to ease her mind. I had no plans of sleeping tonight. I shifted the pillows behind my head so I was half lying down and half sitting. I folded my hands across my stomach and closed my eyes, not offering her any words.
Because she didn’t need me. We both knew that. She didn’t want my words. She didn’t even really want me. I offered her my presence and my protection, not asking anything in return.
I felt her eyes on me. The want, the need to get lost in those blue eyes had my cheek twitching, but I refrained.
“Who was on the phone earlier?” Out of all the things she could have whispered to me, that was one I hadn’t expected.
I felt the bed shift but I didn’t dare open my eyes. “My son.”
“How old is he?”
“Eighteen.”
“How old were you when he was born?”
“Sixteen.”
“Where’s his mom?”
“Gone,” I bit out. She didn’t ask another question but I still felt her eyes on me. Her breathing evened out and I started to count the minutes until I could leave this room and do what I did best.
“This proposition of yours?” Her voice thickened with sleep.
“Yes. What about it?”
“I want to hear about it. First thing tomorrow morning, I want to talk.”
I nodded, knowing her eyes would be peeled open until she got a reply out of me. I opened my eyes to see her body facing me, her hands folded underneath her cheek. She seemed even more beautiful asleep. Her eyes weren’t waging a war in their depths. Her lips parted slightly, looking so tender it almost tore a groan from me. They weren’t pressed in the thin line I’d quickly grown used to. She looked like a normal woman. Breathtakingly beautiful with no worries and no pain. But I knew that wasn’t the truth. Someone hurt her and I knew exactly where that someone was.
I drove the back roads of New Hazle until Hank’s came into view. I parked in the back, opening the door leading into the basement. My shoes thudded against the stairs, filling the otherwise quiet space. I spotted Nolan sitting on a lone metal chair in the center of the room, his nose stuck in a book. Beyond him, Cameron Wade’s body strung in the air. His hands and ankles trading in Annie’s zip ties for my metal chains.
Nolan shut his book, standing once I made my way into the room. “Boss.”
I didn’t take my eyes off of Cameron’s unconscious form. “Find everything out you can about him.” I shrugged out of my jacket, placing it over Nolan’s abandoned chair. “In one hour, I need you back here with blood bags and morphine. Call Lily, she’ll get you what you need.”
Nolan grunted his agreement. Tearing my eyes away from Cameron, I looked to my best friend, the only one who could rein me in. “I don’t know what you’ll be walking into when you come back.” I sighed, looking away. “He can’t die. Not by my hands. Understood?”
I briefly saw Nolan nod his head before leaving me alone with Cameron. He hurt her. Physically or mentally, I couldn’t be sure. Either way, he would be regretting it tonight.
Sauntering up to him, I arched my arm back before extending it, delivering a hard blow to his jaw. His head snapped up, a scream of agony tearing from his throat. He closed his eyes, groaning once the disorientation left him and I took its place.
“All of this because of some whore.” He spit blood on the floor between us.
I knew he wasn’t talking about Annie. He thought all of this was because Katya kicked him out of the club, a fact I hadn’t even been privy to. The girls at the club were the farthest thing from my mind.
The image of how I left Annie sleeping snuck into my head. If you took one look at her, you’d make a million assumptions. And all of them would be wrong. Thinking of the way she used her mouth, her body to overpower the gun from me. If I was being honest, she almost succeeded. The cut on my eyebrow was proof enough that she was the kind of woman who didn’t give up easily.
She wasn’t a killer, but she wanted to kill this man. And that, along with the eerie screams and panicked look after her nightmare, gave me more reasons than I needed to torture this son of a bitch.
Working with one of the best doctors on the east coast worked in my favor. I joked with Lily that I was halfway to earning my medical degree, though she never found it funny. Over the past couple of years of knowing her, I’ve watched Lily do her thing. Lily was about three things: her family, her fiancé, and being a doctor. Her goal was to save lives, it’s the reason we crossed paths at all, whereas mine edged into the gray category of that. I knew how to take someone to the edge of death before reaching for their hand at the last second.
I stared at Cameron. “It’s so much more than that.”
I closed the distance between us and wrapped my fingers around his throat. His eyes widened in fear, his jerky movements causing his body to swing on the chains.
Unleashing his throat once his eyes rolled into the back of his head, I stepped back, bending down to grab two identical hunting knives out of my shoes. I gripped the handles before driving them into each of his thighs.
His head snapped up, the scream ripping from him. I took a step back, tugging at my ringing ears. Blood slipped down his bony legs, dripping onto the concrete floor. Sauntering back up to him, I drove my fist into his face over and over again. I didn’t stop when I felt his skin crack open or when I felt my own skin break at the knuckles. I didn’t stop until the incessant flinching stopped, darkness taking over him once more. Grabbing the last two knives tucked on me, I slammed them into each of his forearms, backing away before he could assault my eardrums again.
His scream mellowed out into a plea. His eyes fluttered shut, but he remained conscious. “Please. Stop. Please, just stop.” His pleas fell upon deaf ears. His screams did nothing to me while the woman who slept in my bed, her screams transformed into a song in my head, stuck on repeat, making the rage inside of me turn hot.
I turned my focus back onto the knives sticking out from his thighs. Latching onto the handles, I dragged the knives down, cutting his skin open. His screams filled the room once more but I didn’t hear any of it. I repeated the motion in his arm, careful of his veins. I got los
t in the pain I inflicted on him, lost in the feeling that I was doing right by her.
“Boss.” Nolan’s voice snapped me out of my dangerous haze. His voice, unusually loud, held a warning. I stepped back, nodding once. Cameron, once more, passed out. I took each of the knives from underneath his skin and threw them to the cement floor. Nolan pushed a chair toward me as well as a medical tray equipped with everything I would need to put Cameron’s limbs back together again.
Well accustomed to this routine, Nolan easily moved around me, setting up fluids, a blood transplant, and a liquid antibiotic to limit the chance of infection.
“I’ve never seen you like that.” Nolan’s hesitant whisper broke through the sound of my heartbeat thudding against my ears.
I looked over to see him stitching Cameron’s skin back together. “He hurt her.”
Nolan bit his lip, concentrating on his sutures. “They all hurt someone, don’t they?”
I looked away from him, unable to explain myself. Unable to explain what was different about Annie. I couldn’t explain it to him. Hell, I couldn’t even explain it to myself.
Hours passed as we worked side by side to clean up my mess. We transferred Cameron from his chains to a bed in the corner of the basement. I left Nolan in charge once I was sure Cameron’s life wasn’t in jeopardy, demanding he call me if anything changed.
I walked up the stairs leading to the bar, swerving right, into my office where a shower and fresh pair of clothes awaited me. Turning the hot water to scalding, I stepped under the pressure, washing away all of the blood and grime from my skin. I scrubbed underneath my fingernails until it hurt.
By the time I showered and dressed, it was well past the afternoon. I exited the bar from the back and hopped into my car. Pulling out on the road, I let a finger trail over the cut on my eyebrow. I didn’t have plans of going home anytime soon, but when I did, I knew there was going to be hell to pay delivered by a five-foot fireball of a woman.
I ran around town before venturing into the city, checking in on all of my businesses.
The sun set deeper and deeper until it disappeared completely and I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. I whipped my car back in the direction of New Hazle. Any trust Annie gave me yesterday was as good as gone. Not when I disappeared after promising her my time.
I parked my car in front of the house, my feet dragging up to the door. With any luck, she would be asleep.
* * *
The first thing I did the next morning was thank the universe that the nightmares, the memories, did not make a reappearance after I fell asleep again. I sat up in bed and looked over to where Hector laid next to me the night before. His presence felt like a dream in contrast to the weight of what haunted me when I closed my eyes at night.
He was long gone, leaving no trace that last night had happened at all. But it did. He saved me from my own personal ring of hell with a promise of hearing this proposition of his today.
Tossing the covers from my body, steel determination set in my bones. My kidnapper and I were going to talk today, and as much as it killed me, agreeing to his terms, I knew it’s what I had to do to see my ten-year revenge plan get back on track.
I noticed, unlike the day before, that the door to the bedroom was left open. I rushed into the bathroom to take a shower. I only had one outfit with me, but it was in my backpack and I had no idea what Hector would have done with that. Once I was done in the shower, I stood in the bedroom in nothing but a towel and felt up the wall. The bedroom, which I hadn’t cared to notice before, was the definition of minimalistic. There were no dressers, no closets, just empty space. But seeing Hector retrieve the blanket from a secret wall opening last night convinced me that the room was filled with secret compartments. The best I could find was a plain white t-shirt two times my size and I had no choice but to throw my jeans back on, which wasn’t ideal but whatever.
Even though last night was the best I ate in years, my stomach growled at me before I even made it out of the bedroom. I strained my ears for any sign of life but it was a ghost town. Finding eggs in the fridge, I scrambled a couple over the stove, doused them with ketchup, and scarfed them down in record time before searching for the man who invaded my life a mere forty-eight hours ago.
The house was massive. He could’ve been in any of the rooms downstairs and I wouldn’t know it. Down one of the hallways, toward the back of the house, sat three rooms on each wall, diagonally from each other. The hallway at the front of the house only fit one room, so deciding to start there seemed like the best idea.
I cracked open the door into what had to be a bedroom. I assumed it belonged to Hector’s son. The space was clean and dark. Dark ebony wood filled the room, everything from the desk to the entertainment center to the bed frame. I didn’t step into his room, not wanting to invade some kid’s room that I didn’t even know. Before I shut the door, a lone photo frame sitting on the desk caught my eye.
I found Hector. A younger version of him. I knew it wasn’t any of my business and I shouldn’t have been even a little curious, but I pushed the door open and walked toward the desk and picked up the frame.
It was a family photo. Hector, I could tell by those intense eyes and the matching dimples in his cheeks, his son, and who I assumed to be the mother of his son. True to his words, he looked no more than a teenager. His smile took up his entire face as he stared at the woman next to him holding their son. Her smile mirrored Hector’s. Her fair skin glowed underneath the sun, highlighting just how beautiful she was. She had brown eyes and sleek, shiny dark brown hair. They seemed so happy, in that moment.
He told me just yesterday that she was gone. The clip of his tone told me that the subject of her was off limits but I found myself wondering what happened to her.
After I placed the photo frame back onto the desk, I shook my head, trying my best to stop thinking about Hector, this beautiful woman by his side, and their son.
None of them were important. No matter how nice he was to me, how protective, no matter how deep he seemed to look at me, I had to take what I wanted and get out of here.
The original plan was still in effect. This, me being in this oversized house with this man, was just a detour.
I left the room and continued exploring the massive first floor. On the opposite side, where most of the rooms were, there was an office and a home gym. There was an empty room, the only thing inside was a bed, a couch, and a TV hanging on the wall. The last room was locked, a security code pad to the right of the door. When I tapped it, it asked for a handprint instead of a passcode. I doubted it would work but I placed my hand against the screen anyway. It beeped twice and then very loudly, almost admonishing, it announced, “Access denied.”
I didn’t know what could be in that room. It had to be something good to be secured. I retraced my steps back into the kitchen, still no sign of Hector.
Because I was in the habit of disappointing, I walked to the front door and I tried to open it. Another fail. I was stuck here. Again. I paced every inch of the downstairs so long that I cursed Hector in his preferred language and mine. I even threw in some of the French ones that I knew. Giving up on him showing up anytime soon, I trudged back upstairs and crawled underneath the covers again. I turned on the TV, finding a marathon of Criminal Minds playing on one of the channels. I watched a few episodes before sleep pulled me under.
When I awoke for the second time, there was still no sign of Hector. Which just pissed me off more. He said today we would talk. He would propose what he was going to propose. And I would determine how long it would take me to win my victim back, take care of him, and get the hell out of this country.
I ate lunch and then dinner.
He still didn’t show up.
I went through an entire season of Criminal Minds and the featured serial killers taught me some tricks I would never have thought of on my own. They might come in handy when the owner of this house finally decided to return home.
Once
the darkness started filtering in through the bedroom through the windows, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I was afraid of what memories my mind would be burned with this time. That and I was pissed off. Too pissed off to sleep. I wanted to punch something. Or rather, someone. Giving up on sleep, I settled for the punching bag in Hector’s home gym downstairs that I spotted earlier in the day.
Still dressed in my lone pair of faded blue jeans and another one of Hector’s oversized t-shirts, I headed downstairs. I lived my life in jeans, even in the gym, especially at the shooting range. If I were to switch my jeans out for a pair of leggings, sweatpants, or hell, a dress, it would make me too comfortable. The tightness around my waist and the slightly rough interior that wrapped around my legs reminded me that I couldn’t get lazy. I couldn’t let my guard down. I had to be aware of every moment, every second. I wasn’t safe and the clothes I wore every day never let me forget it.
The home gym was as big as a house. A normal-sized house, not the mansion I found myself stuck in. The space was big enough for someone to have a decent-sized concert in. The room itself rivaled the best gyms in the city. He had all types of machines. There were treadmills and stair masters. But mostly he had machines for arms and leg strength. No less than twenty different ones. I skipped all of that for the black punching bag that hung from the ceiling in the center of the room, a black wrestling mat on the floor beneath it.
I ran my fingers along the smooth leather to get accustomed to the texture of it. I swung it in my hands, before delivering a soft punch and kick to it. The last thing I needed right now was to go full force and have a bag of sand put me on my ass. Once we got acquainted, I beat the living hell out of it. Punches, kicks, arm tackles, shoulder tackles. I went at it. I went at it for so long I wasn’t even sure how long I had been in there. All I knew was that my heart thrashed against my chest and I was in jeopardy of becoming dehydrated. After steadying the swinging bag, and wiping it down with a wet cloth, I made my way into the kitchen.
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