TORTURE ME_ The Bandits MC(36)

But she held herself back, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet to distract herself from the urge cause harm to this punk. She wanted to tear into something, pound something soft and fragile into the hard ground. She wanted to punish somebody for how weak she felt, how helpless she still was to save Tori. She wanted to see blood. But instead, she just bit down on her bottom lip until she tasted copper and glared at the terrified teenage boy that cowered before her.



“We should search this place,” Gage said, still petting the dogs as if they were his own pets.



“Right,” Fiona said, walking deeper into the large apartment and turning the corner to search several bedrooms for any sign of Tori or spatters of blood or any other telltale evidence that she might find. But nothing came up. “Goddammit,” Fiona muttered as she came up empty on the right side of the apartment. She turned the other way, heading into the kitchen and den area, but again, it was just an immaculately cleaned, normal apartment. There was nothing to find.



“Nothing,” Fiona murmured as she returned to the foyer where Gage was still holding one of the big dogs in his lap while petting the other one with his free hand. Meanwhile, Tommy was in a pile on the floor, tear tracks visible on his face. Fiona’s stomach turned over as she looked at him, seeing how scared he was.



“Why’d you set the dogs on us?” she asked, but she didn’t feel as fiercely angry as she had before. It was clear this kid wasn’t involved in Tori’s disappearance.



“I don’t know. I thought…I thought maybe you were her family coming to beat me up or something. I didn’t mean to hurt her….I didn’t mean to do anything bad,” the kid said, rubbing the side of his face with one hand while he slowly pushed himself to his feet with the other. “Please, just leave me alone.”



Gage also got to his feet, gently pushing the dogs away, even though they whined at the loss of contact. “We’ll get out of your hair.”



“If…if we find out that you hurt her, really hurt her…” Fiona said, her hands curling up into fists automatically. She didn’t finish the sentence, letting the unspoken threat hang in the air instead.



Tommy nodded quickly, but his eyes were unfocused, staring off behind Gage and Fiona like he was too scared to look them directly in the eyes. Good, Fiona thought. He should be scared of me.



Gage and Fiona walked out of the apartment and went back down the elevator, heading towards the subway stop back to Gage’s apartment. Fiona had to restrain herself from banging her head against the back of her seat, a thousand different emotions colliding inside her skull.



Two suspects down and still no solid leads. Goddammit.



And besides, the further they rode away from Tommy’s apartment, the shakier Fiona felt about her own actions, intimidating the young boy the way she had as well as scaring the shit out of the sunglasses employee earlier.



What is wrong with me? Fiona wondered. She’d wanted to hurt these two young men so badly. She wanted to cause real damage. There was something broken inside of her, something bad and dirty and wrong. That’s why he took me, she thought. The kidnapper, years ago. That’s why I survived. Because there’s something evil about me, too.



Some tiny voice inside her brain tried to argue back, saying that it wasn’t true, that she was just a little messed-up because of her trauma. But it wasn’t convincing. Deep inside, she knew the truth about herself. She was every bit as rotten and corrupted as any killer. Her soul was full of holes, eaten-through like an old wedding dress. Soiled. Ruined. That’s what I am, Fiona thought as the subway rolled to a stop. I wasn’t broken. I was remade into something dark, something sick, something evil. I just have to accept it.





Chapter Eleven




“Are you okay?” Gage asked Fiona, taking her hand to lift her out of her seat and off the subway car before it started moving again.



“Yeah, I’m fine,” Fiona said, but Gage could tell that she was lying. She wasn’t very good at deception, even after years of dealing with criminals. The next moment, she yanked her hand out of Gage’s, which hurt him like he’d been stung, but he should have expected her to pull away. We’re not together anymore, he reminded himself. He had to keep repeating that inside his mind until it really sunk in. Despite the fact that it had been over a year, somehow he had never really accepted it as reality.



He unlocked his apartment and opened the door for Fiona, who stomped inside, her feet falling heavy on the ground like she weighed a thousand more pounds than she really did. She was frustrated, that much was obvious. Gage felt it, too—the disappointment that they still hadn’t found anything, but Fiona was really worrying him. She seemed disconnected, like she wasn’t really there with him; her brain seemed to be a million miles away.