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I turn to her and cup her face in my hands. “You know you’re safe with me, sugar. I’ll never let anything hurt you.”
She lets out a breath and nods, but the terror is still in her eyes as they dart over the damp bricks around us. This is the first and last time I’m ever bringing her down here.
I take her hand and lead her deeper into the tunnels. That scream was probably from Tommy’s torture room, but that’s not where we’re going today.
We’re going to one of the spare rooms the Saint James brothers use when they do their own dirty work.
I’m vibrating with barely contained energy. I have no idea how Mia is going to react to this surprise or if she’s going to want to leave the second we walk through the door, but regardless, I’m giving her the option.
Her hand tightens in mine each time she hears a scream, but she doesn’t pause again, allowing me to guide her closer to where the sound is coming from.
“Is this some kind of weird sex thing?” she asks, the nervousness in her voice making the joke fall flat, but I chuckle nonetheless.
“It can be if you want it to be.” I smirk down at her, and a smile tips up the corners of her lips. When I told her to dress like she would for a workout, I was not prepared for her to step out of the bedroom in the tightest fucking yoga pants I’ve ever seen, paired with a long black shirt and a puffer vest that I want to tear from her body almost as badly as I want to take my next breath.
I tried before we left, and she batted my hands away as she walked to the elevator, ready for whatever surprise I was taking her for.
We reach the door and I stop us, turning her to face me and planting my hands on her hips to hold her in place. “If you get in there and don’t want to do this, you can say so. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
Her mouth pops open, and her brows tug together in confusion. “I don’t understand?—”
I shake my head and reach behind me for the door, opening it slowly and carefully watching her expression as her gaze bounces off the small room, and then her eyes land on him and they darken.
There’s my girl.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
MIA
Cyrus fucking Kemp.
He spent years tormenting me. Years dragging me closer and closer to my own death. I don’t think he ever would have killed me, he had too much fun breaking me for that, but I likely would have ended it eventually. There’s only so much one person can handle before they can’t take anymore, and every day I spent with him was a step closer that I got to that limit.
Seeing him tied to a chair, his face bleeding, and his eyes downcast shouldn’t bring me this much comfort, and yet the idea that he’s not hurting anyone else the way he hurt me allows me to breathe a little easier.
I look up at Ace and find him staring down at me with concern, but I step around him into the room in the hope it will give him some peace.
I have to admit, when Ace led me into a weird stairwell in the middle of a vacant lot, I was a little concerned about where we were going and why. But this makes sense. You can’t exactly leave one of the world’s richest men tied up in the middle of the city and not expect his people to be looking for him.
My eyes move over the table set up a few feet from Cyrus, an array of tools laid out neatly. Rows of knives, screwdrivers, and even something that looks a little like a kitchen blowtorch. It’s quite the collection of implements, and I find myself looking over my shoulder at Ace.
He’s standing by the door, his eyes watching my every move like he always does, but there’s an extra sense of urgency, and I find myself wanting to give him comfort.
“How long has he been down here?” I ask evenly. I feel nothing but hatred for the man bound beside me, and I certainly don’t feel bad for him being tied up like the scum he is.
“Elijah and Tommy brought him down here last night and roughed him up just enough to shut the asshole up,” Ace tells me, and I nod, my fingers moving over the instruments in front of me.
I’m so distracted by the shiny shiver knives that I completely miss Ace moving across the room until he spins me to face him, a look of concern tugging at his brow. “I wanted to give you the option to kill him to give you the power back, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. I’d be more than happy to end this fucker’s miserable existence for everything he did to you.”
I shake my head. I don’t know that I’ve ever been an especially bloodthirsty person, and I’m certain I would never have been at the hands of killing someone before I was taken by The Factory, but now? Now I want to be the last person the assholes who hurt me see as they take their final breaths. “Thank you,” I whisper.
His shoulders fall slightly, the relief obvious on his face as he flicks his gaze to Cyrus. He’s awake, but only barely. I’m sure that will change once I start slicing him up the way he used to do to me. I want him to feel every bit of pain he inflicted on me. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No. Please stay.”
He nods and turns the chair in the corner around, ready for him to take a seat, but before he does, he picks up a bucket I hadn’t noticed and dumps it over Cyrus’s head, the asshole squealing like a pig as the ice water washes over him. I mean, that’s one way to wake him up.
“That’s better,” Ace murmurs as he moves over to the seat in the corner and swings his leg over it so his front is pressed against the backrest, his chin leaning on his arms across the top of the chair.
