Page 81 of Queen of Ruin

I charge toward him like a bull, shoving people out of the way while someone behind me yells my name. I barely hear it, focused only on the bastard who finally looks up when I kick a stool out of my way.

Our eyes meet, and then I punch him so hard in the face that he flies off his own stool with a stunned cry and crashes to the ground.

“Where the fuck did you take him?!”

31

DIEGO

I'm not built for this world.

Her world.

If our places were switched, I have no doubt Valentina would be faring a damn sight better than I am. Maybe she already did. Maybe that's why she was in such a mess the night she threw herself into my car, determined to escape whatever was chasing her.

They let me keep my boxers, a small grace when they stripped me naked and tied me to a rickety chair with no full seat. Something that felt ridiculous at the start, but now the pressure has increased, and my back aches from keeping myself supported on wooden armrests caked in my blood.

If I let myself fall, I'm stuck in this chair and even more vulnerable.

That can't happen.

So I remain tense with my body quivering and my head hanging low between my shoulders as pain I've never experienced before racks through me from head to toe.

I thought going cold turkey was hard enough. Oddly, now, I might prefer it.

They beat me, whipped me, punched me so hard in my guts that I think I coughed up a bit of my kidney. Three teeth throb in my lower jaw, knocked out of place by several solid punches. They've torn fingernails from their beds, cut into my skin, drilled into my thigh with a power drill until I passed out from the agony and the grotesque sight of my flesh being chewed up with a drill bit.

Every bit feels worse than the last.

This one, though? This might be the worst of them all.

A fist lands in my hair and drags my head back, pulling hard enough that the entire chair tips back on itself. I glimpse the shadows of two bulky men darkened by the single bulb flickering above their heads, and then the water comes again.

It always comes.

A rag is slapped over my nose and mouth, then ice-cold water pours over my face, and I can't breathe. The chill is enough to force a gasp, but all that comes through the rag is water that fills my mouth and creates a seal that I can't breathe through. The back of my throat tenses and a gag rolls through me as I try to expel the water, but there's nowhere for it to go.

I'm drowning.

Then the rag is removed and they grant me a moment's respite of gagging and coughing the water up onto the stone floor beneath me. Then it starts all over again.

I'm not built for this life.

Seeing Tech fall down dead in front of me was horrifying. I've seen dead bodies before, but I haven't seen the death of someone I know since my brother. Tech was so cold and so motionless, so utterly quiet even as I yelled his name and then came face to face with a gun.

I didn't know the man behind it, but he knew me.

He knew the bounty on my head was good enough.

Valentina would have fought back. She's skilled like that.

Not me.

I took the blow and the darkness, almost as if it were easier to absorb than facing the death of Tech at my feet. Waking up here? This has to be the hell I know.

I lose track during the waterboarding. Sometimes, it feels like all there is is water pouring and agony in my lungs. Other times, I'm just constantly coughing and gurgling while praying for it to be over.

It's never over.