I pull her into me and pick her up as she wraps her legs around my waist, her body still coming down in uneven waves. She presses her forehead to mine, her hands sliding into my hair.
She is here. She is alive.
That is all that matters.
I kiss her hard. She kisses me back like she understands exactly why it happened this way.
I pull back just enough to look at her.
“Let’s go torture this piece of shit.”
Chapter 49
Brooke
We drag them back to the abandoned warehouse in silence.
Elliot’s cage waits in the center of the concrete floor, welded from thick steel bars and bolted directly into the slab.
Beau shoves him through the open door.
Elliot hits the ground on his back. His ruined leg strikes the floor with a wet smack. He tries to catch himself with his hands, but his palms slip in the blood already spreading beneath him.
The limb doesn't look like it belongs to a living person anymore. Skin hangs in torn strips. Bone pushes through the muscle in a jagged white arc.
Beau crouches in front of the cage and studies the damage like a mechanic inspecting a bent axle. He reaches out and flicks the exposed bone with two fingers.
Elliot screams.
The sound rips out of him raw and violent. It bounces off the warehouse walls and echoes back across the concrete. His entire body jerks. He claws at the floor, trying to drag himself away from the pain, but the rest of him refuses to cooperate.
Blood sprays from his mouth as he coughs. Elliot spits a thick mouthful of it near Seth’s boots.
“Fuck you,” Elliot rasps. “Just shoot me.”
Seth smirks and glances at Beau.
“So many men have told us that around this point.”
Beau gives a small nod. “Yeah. They always want the shortcut.”
Seth looks back down at Elliot.
“I can shoot you,” he says calmly. “But it won’t be somewhere clean. It'll be somewhere that hurts like a bitch. And you won’t die fast.”
Elliot glares up at him with his jaw clenched.
Seth crouches to his level.
“You want to know why I don’t do quick endings?”
Elliot stays silent.
“Back when we were overseas, we had a guy begging the same way you are. He wiped out half a village and still thought mercy was on the table.”
Seth glances over his shoulder.
“Where did you shoot that one, Beau?”
