by Gemma James
She knew it. I knew it.
Perrone switched open the blade, and Jax knew it too because he charged his father, mouth open in a silent scream, hands reaching for Nikki.
But it was too late.
Perrone was already slashing a red horizontal line across her throat.
Blood.
Gurgling sounds.
So much blood.
Soaking through her clothing.
Silencing her sobs.
Her body crumbled to the ground, and Perrone tossed the knife to the side. He stepped back, out of reach of the blood pooling on the concrete, and that’s when Alex started screaming.
14. CRIMSON
Alex
The room erupted in chaos. I blinked and it seemed as if a lifetime had passed in that mere second. The gurgling noise had stopped. So had my screams. But Jax bawled as he held the blonde’s limp body, his devastation pouring from his eyes in streams of grief. Blood stained his clothing, but that didn’t stop him from sheltering her in his embrace, rocking her as if she were merely sleeping.
Rafe’s gaze swerved between her and me, his glassy eyes round with horror, shock, disbelief. The ball gag kept him quiet, though his rage burst free in his fisted hands, in the veins cording his bunched muscles. In the violent way he pulled at the chains.
He was a caged lion, bound by metal and madness, and this place was a zoo.
I glanced at Jax and the blonde again, and something inside me cracked, allowing memories to creep inside. As Brock freed my hands, I saw sunlight and white lace curtains. Murky water, dark with the kind of death that bled out my mother. I collapsed toward the floor, and Brock caught me in his arms as if I weighed nothing.
“Take her to the cell,” Lucas said, voice booming off the walls. “I’ll deal with her in a bit.”
Brock and Vinnie herded me out of the room amidst Rafe’s smothered protests. Hysteria rose in my chest, refused to release. I squeezed my eyes shut as they hauled me down the hall, toes dragging the ground.
“C’mon, use your feet,” one of them said, hoisting me up. “Almost there.”
I lifted my lids, and the tunnel spanned before me in a line of hazy crimson. Blood dripped from the pipes like a leaky faucet, forming puddles where the walls met the floor. That liquid death expanded, stalked in a furtive slither. I was going mad. That was the only explanation because logically, I knew the blood wasn’t really there, but the deep red tore through my mind in a cacophony of whispers. I glanced at my forearms and gasped. Sticky red poured from the slashes as if the wounds had never healed.
“Make it stop!” My breath caught in my lungs, and I fought the grip of their fingers. “Get the blood off of me! It’s not real! Not real…not real…not real…”
Lucas’ minions shook me, propelling me forward. A door creaked open, and the haze of red morphed to black as I hurtled to the dirt. I scratched at my wrists, as if I could remove the blood with my fingernails.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Fuck if I know. The bitch is going batshit crazy.”
The light from the hall cast their figures in an otherworldly blur. My eyes burned with too many emotions that boiled, writhed, cut through me. I wanted to cry and sob and scream, but I couldn’t.
I needed to hurt.
As Vinnie attached my leash to the hook in the floor, I dragged my nails down my arms hard, sucked in shallow breaths, and dug deeper.
“I think she was broken long before we got to her.”
“Rafe…” Even saying his name incinerated me.
“Your boyfriend isn’t comin’.”
So much blood.
Pumping from Rafe’s neck in thick spurts.
No! They hadn’t killed him. My mind was only playing tricks on me, editing the continuous loop of knife to flesh slashing through my sense of reality.
Blond hair.
I grasped that piece of truth, because Rafe’s hair was beautifully dark, just like his soul. My mother’s face flickered in my mind, and I jerked my head back and forth, my thoughts overflowing with chaos, with bloody water and a bathtub full of dead mothers and lost hope.
Five in—
Can’t breathe.
I screamed, though the wail didn’t come from me. A wild animal thrashed inside my being, screeching its pain.
Someone hefted me up and sent a hard smack to my cheek. “Snap out of it!”
Gulping air, I returned Brock’s wide-eyed stare.
“You’re gonna sit on that bed and calm the fuck down. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, mouth trembling, and stumbled toward the bed. My legs gave out, and I plopped onto the cot’s thin mattress, ass flaming from the welts. Rather than fight the burn, I embraced it, wrapped myself in its blessed relief.
Brock pivoted, running a hand over his shaved head, and he and Vinnie left. The door shut with a quiet click, as if it didn’t want to ignite the screaming again.
I rocked back and forth on the bed, nails clawing my skin. I couldn’t wash away the blood. I was bathing in it, reliving it. Those fucking tears needed to burst from my eyes and drench my face. I needed to cry, but I was a brimming cactus in the middle of a desert, and nothing could extract my despair.
Someone inserted a key into the lock, and I jumped. I could have lost minutes or hours—I had no way of knowing. Lucas stood in the doorway holding the handle of a lantern. He set it on the floor before picking up a bucket he’d left outside the entrance. The door slammed behind him, and a soft glow filled the space. So did the malevolent shadow of his form. He came toward me with purposeful steps.
“Now you know what I’m capable of,” he said, bending to set the bucket on the floor. “I have no problem killing Mason. You have the power to keep him alive.”
“You want to fuck me,” I said, voice as dead as I felt on the inside.
“I can do that anytime I want. You’re helpless here, Alex, and you can’t stop me.”
“What do you want then?” I lowered my gaze and imagined blood all over the shiny black surfaces of his shoes.
“I want you to want me to fuck you.”
“That will never happen.”
“Are you sure about that?” He placed a hand on my chest, between my breasts, and gently pushed until I flopped to my back. Grabbing my legs, he slid them onto the bed before bending and spreading my knees. I closed my eyes and found that place I hadn’t ventured to in a while—the place where I’d sought refuge when Zach had pushed me beyond my breaking point in that cabin.
The scrape of the plastic bucket on rough ground pulled me from that mental sanctuary. I sensed him shifting, and the mattress squeaked under his weight. Water sloshed, eliciting a shudder, and warm drops dribbled over my breasts. Goose bumps broke out on my skin. My nipples tightened, begging to be touched, pinched…bitten.
I wanted Rafe. God, how I wanted him—to get me out of here, to make my body bend, to fucking love me.
Lucas’ sleeve brushed my stomach, and I silently cursed my body for displaying any sort of reaction. He ran the sponge over my mouth and chin, wiping away the musk of Rafe, and continued to my breasts.
“My men fucked up. They should have separated you from Mason upon your arrival.”
I scoffed at his tone. He made it sound like we were his guests. “Let us go.” I swallowed hard. “If not me, at least let him go.”
He let out a heavy sigh. The sponge dipped between my thighs, and his fingers followed. Unlike the brutal force of his touch the first time he’d thrust his fingers into me, now he dipped into my center with such teasing skill, something inside me twitched to life.
I hated myself for that twitch.
He caressed my clit, soft and light as a feather. I gritted my teeth. “Just fuck me and get it over with.”
His low laugh rumbled through the room. “I’m not fucking you today. But you’ll beg me to, believe me.”
Over my dead, bloodied body.
“My personal slaves learn to serve me with pleasure,
Alex. Some men like to forcefully take. I like to forcefully take what is given.”
“I’m not giving you anything.”
“You already have. You gave me a piece of yourself months ago. I saw your potential, your passion. And now,” he said, pressing on my clit with firm pressure, “you’re giving me your reluctant arousal.” He burrowed his fingers deep.
“Do you think this will work?” I asked, disdain bleeding from my lips. “You’re a sick, disgusting bastard who rapes women. You destroy them.” I thought about the young girl one of his men had brought to screams for hours on the other side of the wall.
And I thought of the blonde whose throat Lucas had so carelessly slashed. He’d pulled that blade across her neck as if she were an animal, as if she meant nothing. She’d been someone’s daughter, someone’s sister…someone’s mother.
She’d had history with Jax and Rafe. They’d both cared for her.
“Why are you doing this to us?”
“Some people believe in that old adage, ‘an eye for an eye.’ I’m underwhelmed with that saying. When someone wrongs me or mine, I don’t stop at the eye.”
He might as well have been speaking in Pig Latin. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you need to grasp the reality of your predicament. You’re not getting out of here.” He leaned over me, and his breath hit my face. “You feel my fingers inside you? I will have my cock there.” He ran his tongue along my earlobe. I cringed, but a rough hand kept me from retreating. “Maybe I’ll keep Mason alive long enough to hear you beg for it.”
I spread my legs as wide as I could. “I have nothing left to give, so you’re gonna have to take it.” I was playing with fire by inserting that challenge into my tone, but I didn’t care. Maybe I was still in shock. Numb. Seeing red.
It didn’t matter. He was going to kill Rafe. If anything had the power to break my pieces, it was the certainty of his death busting through me like a wrecking ball. I’d rather die on our terms. Our time. I’d rather call Lucas’ bluff and die now than continue to bend.
He removed his fingers and stood. The sponge splashed into the bucket, and he reached for the button of his pants. “I’m visiting him next.” He paused, and my heart pounded out of control during those tense seconds. “You sent him to prison, Alex. Do you know what he did while he was in there?”
“No,” I whispered, barely able to get that single word out.
“Mason killed my blood, so I’m going to kill him.”
Now that he’d said the words, I wanted to bend.
Oh God.
“He’s not a killer.”
“Maybe you don’t know Rafe Mason as well as you thought.”
No, I knew Rafe. Lucas, on the other hand, I hadn’t known at all.
“If you won’t beg me to fuck you, maybe you’ll beg for his life.”
Fear seized me, choked me. I wanted to feel numb at the thought of Rafe’s death and my servitude living as Lucas’ adoring pet, leash and all, but I wasn’t strong enough. Pushing off the bed, I slid to my knees and begged in Lucas Perrone’s language—I yanked down his zipper and wrapped my lips around his shaft.
15. BANG
Rafe
He’d killed her.
I kept running those three words through my mind, thinking they’d penetrate, but I still couldn’t believe it. That whole scene had been a nightmare because them dragging Nikki in didn’t make any sense.
Perrone slaughtering her didn’t make any fucking sense.
I must be delirious, drugged beyond what my body could handle. I’d hallucinated the whole thing. Tilting my head up, I pulled at the chains holding my wrists hostage. Assholes had strung me on my toes again, back in the pitch-dark room I’d shared with Alex. The echo of her name invaded my head to the bursting point.
The door opened, and I went on full alert even though I couldn’t do shit to protect myself. Perrone filled the entrance, lantern hanging at his side. He set the flickering light on the floor and quietly shut the door before wandering to me, his stride casual, unhurried.
“Alex has an exquisite mouth,” he said. “I’ll give you that. She just demonstrated her exceptional skill on my cock.”
I blinked him into focus, and he struck fast, pummeling my mid-section. I groaned and would have doubled over if my hands weren’t chained to the ceiling.
He grabbed my jaw. “So I understand why you had trouble keeping your cum inside your prick.”
I shook my head free, sucking air between my teeth. “I’ll fucking kill—”
He sent a fist to my jaw, and the pain jolted through my teeth, burned behind my eyes.
“She’s quite malleable. She got to her knees of her own free will and gave me the best damn head I’ve ever had.”
She wouldn’t have done that without being coerced. Unless…
Unless he’d threatened my life.
I wanted to scream at him, gouge his eyes out with a lethal jab of my fingers, rip his fucking cock off and mouth-fuck his goons with it, so I was shocked by the laughter that poured from me. Void of sanity or rationality, I laughed until my stomach cramped where he’d socked me.
I was manic, insane. Probably both. Maybe this was all a screwed up fantasy, and I was a mental patient living inside my own head.
“Why the fuck are you laughing?” Taking a step back, he folded his arms.
“She did it for me. She sucked your tiny dick because she loves me. She’ll always love me.” His eyes widened, and I laughed some more. “You can’t break that. No matter what you do, you can’t break what she feels for me.”
He brought a knee up and rammed me in the stomach. “How about I just break you then, starting with every fucking bone in your body?”
The blow strangled me, but I was still laughing through the pain, and it was a sick mixture of agony and madness.
Perrone’s mouth flattened into a line. He released my hands, grabbed my head, and slammed his knee into me, again and again until I couldn’t laugh anymore.
Until I couldn’t breathe. I slumped to the floor, wheezing air between tight lips.
“I was going to kill you, despite Alex’s oral bribery tactics. But now I think I’ll keep you around for a while, just long enough for you to hear the slut beg for my cock.”
The air stirred as he retreated. I heard the door slam shut, and he must have taken the lantern with him because the never-ending darkness came back. I pushed to my hands and knees, limbs quaking under my weight, and struggled to the cot.
I sprawled on that bed for hours, maybe even days, months…a whole fucking lifetime, and as I drifted in and out of consciousness, images of Nikki’s murder infiltrated my nightmares. So did Alex’s broken pleas for me to save her. I also dreamed of Cleft’s cock in my ass, the strong grip of fingers holding me down.
And the laughter. Always the fucking laughter.
Time passed in a jumbled mess of nightmares that never failed to spring me up from bed, drenched in sweat and shaking to my bones. I was pathetic. I couldn’t even protect the woman I loved.
I loved Alex.
Fuck.
I’d never told her.
I’d also loved Nikki, maybe not in the same intense, out-of-my-fucking-mind way I did Alex, but I’d loved her.
Had I ever told her? Even once?
I’m pretty sure I hadn’t. I was a fucking pussy incapable of telling anyone how much they meant to me. I didn’t need a shrink to tell me I had abandonment issues. I could blame it all on my mom for leaving the way she had, but I was an adult, even if I’d grown into adulthood on the inside of four prison walls. Even if I didn’t remember that transformation, I was twenty-nine fucking years old.
So where did that leave me?
Alone, fucked, and about to die without having ever said those important three little words to anyone.
To my own son.
I held my breath, heart thudding so hard, I thought I might save Perrone the trouble of killing me.
I had
a kid.
Nikki.
Holy fuck.
I gripped my head and squeezed my eyes shut. I remembered nothing else, but I knew it was true. She’d had a son, and he was mine.
And now he was motherless, about to be fatherless. But he’d been fatherless all along. I wasn’t fit to be a parent anyway. I wasn’t fit to be loved by Alex either.
Fucking dying down here was for the best.
Eventually, that door opened again, but I didn’t move or acknowledge whoever had ventured into this shithole. Part of me wished they’d just end this hell already.
“You here to kill me?” I asked, a challenge in my tone.
The door shut with a quiet click and a flashlight came on, the beam gliding over my prone figure on the bed. Footsteps sounded, and my pulse sped up in preparation for a fight, because even though I wanted them to get it over with already, I couldn’t go down without one last battle. And I wanted a fair fucking fight. It’d been a while since they dosed me with drugs, and I wouldn’t get a fair go at whichever asshole was in here if he pumped me full of them again.
A bundle of denim landed beside my head, followed by soft cotton. I sprang up and launched myself at whoever was here to drag me into another scene of torture.
“Rafe!” Jax said in a low whisper.
I let go of him and stumbled back.
He aimed the beam of light into my face. “I’m getting you outta here. Get dressed.”
I didn’t move at first, too stunned in trying to wrap my head around what was happening. Jax blinked several times, and the stress on his face, the defeat in his grievous eyes, sent a spear of dread through me.
“Is Alex…?” I swallowed hard, but I still couldn’t get the words out. If she was gone, she was in a better place now, but I about hit the ground at the thought.
“Alex is fine.” He hung his head. “Nikki’s gone. What happened to her is on me.” Taking a deep breath, Jax appeared to shake it off and gestured to the clothing he’d tossed on the mattress. “I have to end this. I’m getting you guys out of here, but we don’t have much time. The old man will be back in a few hours.”
