Now I understand why we’re here, and how my father was taken down minus the bloodshed I’m accustomed to.
This isn’t a takeover bid.
It’s a mercy kill, a beg for forgiveness. Even if he ends up dead, he’ll be freed from the torment that’s been eating him alive the past four years. He will finally be free.
Refusing to let my family’s legacy die without so much as a fight, I disarm the man holding a gun to my temple before turning his weapon onto Achim. It was foolish of me to do. I forgot blood is no longer thicker than water to Cole. He fires at our father a mere second after I gun down the man stupid enough to put himself between Achim and me. Cole doesn’t just discharge one bullet, though. He pops three into our father’s chest, ensuring there’s no way I can mistake how he’s hoping today’s battle will end.
It’s a pity he underestimated his little brother. After knocking over the blonde my hazy mind still believes is India to drop her lower than the line of fire, I take cover behind one of the massive concrete pillars holding up the top story of this compound.
From my vantage point, I take down another three men without injury. India isn’t as lucky. A howl roars from her throat when her shoulder catches a wayward bullet. It isn’t a kill shot, but the sob of pain tearing from her throat does have me leaving my hidey-hole.
Like a real-life motherfucking mafia kingpin, I walk straight toward my death, firing my gun as if bullets aren’t being shredded through my stomach, my chest, and my shoulder. Even when my knees buckle beneath me, and blood pools in my mouth, I don’t give up. I continue firing until my gun runs out of bullets, and the blood streaming from my body joins India’s on the floor.
I can’t see anything through the wooziness of my head. Her screams, though, they will never leave me, they’ll haunt me through the botched surgery to remove six bullets from my body, through the shudders of an infection when forced to recover in the equivalent of a dungeon, and for the endless amount of torture Cole puts me through, having no clue the years he was missing were just as torturous for me as they were for him…
They are even with me now. They’re just too quiet to break through the thud of my pulse in my ears. It’s thumping nonstop, only ripped away when the pulse fading under my fingertips is torn from my grasp just as brutally.
Nero tackles me so fiercely, I splinter the drywall behind my bed when I crash into it with a bang. The ripple of pain my collision with the wall causes my body has nothing on the convulsions K’s body makes when it fights to fill her lungs with air. She shudders all over, fighting to live with a will I thought she would have lost months ago.
“What the fuck, man!” Nero glares at me with icy, ready-to-kill eyes, looking prepared to wallop me as I want to pound into myself. “You were choking that girl. What the fuck were you thinking? Nikolai will kill you if he finds out.”
After a final shove to my chest and a glare that reveals I royally fucked up, he stands to his feet and paces back toward the bed.
“Don’t touch her,” I growl out when he moves his hand near K’s neck.
His words are spat out of his mouth as quickly as vomit races up my throat from his reply. “I’m checking she has a pulse, dipshit.”
I’m pissed at myself, but I don’t back down when I’m worked up. “I said don’t fucking touch her! For all we know, she’d rather be dead than be touched again without permission.”
Hearing the threat in my tone that I’m five seconds from killing him, Nero steps back from my bed with his hands held in the air like he’s being arrested. Since his eyes aren’t anywhere near K’s frozen and naked form, the torment tearing me in two fails to augment my worded threat to an all-out violent one.
Sensing my lowering temperament, Nero mutters, “Mercy killing isn’t what we do here, Trey.” He slants his head to lock his brown eyes with my blue ones. “If that girl wants to end her life, that shit is on her shoulders, not yours. I thought you knew that better than anyone. Silly me.”
After a final shake of his head, revealing his disappointment in me, Nero exits the room as quickly as he entered it, leaving me defenseless to a woman I thought I could save from the darkness by taking her place, having no clue I’m already there.
I should have known better.
I don’t live in the darkness.
Darkness lives inside me.
Nine
Sales Docket Number 12574
Iwake up gasping like I can’t breathe. It feels like I’m suffocating, like more than fear is stopping my lungs from filling with air.
As my hands shoot up to loosen the tightness squeezing my windpipe, my blurry eyes dart around the masculine, yet homey space. It is empty, which isn’t surprising. It’s rare to wake up to an audience. Once the men get what they want, they leave. It’s the fact I fell asleep that has me gasping.
I emerge into the blackness in my head because it’s the lesser of two evils. I feel their beatings for days after they leave, and my muscles ache for almost a week, but not knowing exactly what they do to me offers some weird sense of comfort. I feel safe even when I should feel anything but.
However, I’m not supposed to fall asleep.
That’s dangerous.
It should have gotten me killed.
Mercifully, my heart is still pumping.
