The thought of Ella out there without me breaks me down. Elaine’s words echo in my chaotic mind. I can’t panic. I have to find a new way. Her words suddenly don’t seem so useful while I am chained in a cell.
“You’re double crossing both your friend Carter and me, your own blood. That has to be violating even your own fucked-up code. She’s innocent. You sent her to her death. Forget your enemies, not even your allies will trust a man whose word is worthless.”
“There was a term. You violated the term. Not me. The deal is off. Enough with this drivel.” He turns to the guards. “Do what you must.”
Lucius and his guards turn to go, leaving me alone with the grunt brothers. One of them fights a grin at the corner of his lips when he pulls out a leather whip. The other one is more of a tactician. He double checks my restraints with the seriousness of a diamond cutter.
“Which one of you gets a woody from this sick shit?” I say, as the second goon rips the shirt off my back. The absurdity of my uncle’s theatrics has reached its brutal finale. Sucks to be the centerpiece in it.
The first blow feels alright, like the cold slap of water in the morning that wakes me suddenly. The second blow strikes harder and reminds me that this is going to hurt more with each additional blow. I suck in my breath, starting to count backwards from one thousand under my breath.
The whip strikes again and again, relentlessly, in a steady pace as if controlled by a robotic arm that doesn’t miss a beat, almost musical like a metronome. Each new gash like a note being written on a page. These men are the vicious conductors for my uncle’s savage symphony.
My mind fights for ideas, no matter how fabulous, to keep from coming apart. I will not sob for these men. My spirit will not be defeated. I grind my teeth, keeping all kinds of agonizing screams inside. I won’t add them to the brutal sounds of this hellish enterprise. The pain slices me open everywhere at once. Every nerve frays to a state of salty rawness.
I count down to nine hundred, then to eight hundred, counting faster and faster as if reaching zero will put an end to it all, struggling to stay focused on the numbers as if my life depends on it.
The harsh tail of the whip digs into my back and ribs and finds my upper arms and thighs where the skin is partially protected by my jeans. The pain is not the hardest part. I lose count when Ella’s sweet face emerges in the tears flooding my eyes. She shimmers and swims in the blur of the fading world.
Nothing can touch her.
Finally, a single tear drops onto my cheek then slips from my face. I imagine the tear is a piece of her that’s racing ever downward toward my heart, always racing to get there but never arriving.
The chains clink together every time I’m hit. Numbers reach my lips but I can no longer hear them, not even in the quiet of my mind.
“You done?” The voice reaches my ears through multiple layers of thick glass. It’s as if they are in a distant room.
“Boss said no serious scarring.”
The two of them move behind me like shadows to examine their handiwork. “Have the medic come in. It’s borderline.”
The one with the whip moves in front of me. “All right, pretty boy, you’ll survive. You’re lucky you have the Boss’s blood in those veins.”
They leave me hanging like meat freshly stripped of its hide. The throbbing pain feels as distant as their voices had. I couldn’t sob now even if I tried. The agony is as distant from me as her lips.
Everything shuts down. My heart, my lungs, my eyes. There is a steady ringing in my ears emerging like the final note of a sick song.
I hear a voice fading away. “I love you, Jack,” her ghost whispers.
The light is gone. My girl is gone. Everything is gone.
—ten—
Ella
Tanner parks the car a block away. He leads me to the apartment building through a back alley I had forgotten existed. We take the stairs to the third floor because Tanner says so. I’m not about to argue or oppose him in any way since he knows what he’s doing and I’m clueless.
Tanner halts only a few steps away from my apartment door and brings his index finger to his mouth.
I stop cold in my tracks, wondering what it is that has given him pause. Is it a routine thing or is he sensing something’s off?
He looks around the hallway, drawing his gun out. I mouth the word what when he throws me a glance. He points at the door, pretending he’s tapping on it a few times until I get what he’s saying.
Tanner thinks someone’s inside my apartment.
My heart flutters anxiously, my lungs drain and don’t refill. Jax said we were safe. Maybe the Bronsons have set up a fake meeting. Jax and Lucius might also be walking into a trap.