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JACE
Darkness.
I clutched my stomach and rolled onto my hands and knees, struggling to hold myself up. My left eye was swollen shut, and I could only see a sliver of darkness out of my right one. Every part of my body ached worse than it had after Dad beat me.
For the first time last night, I’d actually tried fighting back. For years, I’d wanted him to kill me to stop the fucking agony I had felt since Mom had died, but now that Allie was back in my life, I didn’t want to die. I needed to protect her with everything I had. I had to get back to her before he could touch her.
The chalky gray concrete underneath my hands was covered in my blood. I grunted, sucked in a breath, and willed myself to my feet. Clutching the wall, I followed it blindly until I reached a door. Some light flickered out from underneath it.
After opening it up, I heaved myself up the long, cold staircase and squinted when I made it into a brightly lit room.
God, where the fuck am I?In the eighteen years that I’d been alive, I had never once been here.
“You’re up?” someone said from my left.
Turning my head toward the voice, I nearly stumbled over my two feet toward a table with a man I didn’t recognize. I grasped a wooden chair for support and collapsed into it, staring at the Russian with a thick black mustache.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked, eyeing his gun on the table.
I didn’t have any doubts that he would pull it out if I tried to run.
The man shone his pearly-white teeth at me. “Call me Rick. Rick Santos.”
“No.” I shook my head in disbelief. “No, you can’t fucking be.”
“I’ve heard much about you.”
I pushed myself to a standing position and stumbled back until I hit the wall. I scanned the room as my heart raced faster. There was one exit, one fucking exit behind the man who had taken part in burning my mother’s body. We’d had to have a fucking closed casket because of that fucker.
But if he was here with me, had Dad told him to get rid of me too?
When Rick smirked, I wanted to charge at him. I wanted to hurt him as much as I wanted to hurt Dad, but I had no energy. My muscles felt extremely weak, and he had a fucking gun. I couldn’t make any rash decisions until I at least figured out a plan to get out of here without dying.
“What kind of fucking name is Rick Santos for a fucking Russian?” I spat at him.
He knocked his knuckles against the wooden table. “Sit down, Jace. Let’s talk.”
“Where is Allie?”
“Allie?” Rick polished the barrel of his gun with a cloth. “As in your pretty stepsister?”
I clenched my right fist and held myself up with my left hand on the wall. “Where the fuck is she?” I asked through clenched teeth.
If she was alone with my father, I swore to fucking God, I would lose it.
She had probably gone back home, seen my Maserati in the driveway, and thought it was safe to go back into the house alone. That fucking asshole was probably all over her, trying to make things right, buying her gifts upon gifts to keep her mouth shut. But Allie could never be bought out. She had hated when I bought her clothes just because, and she had a better head on her shoulders than I ever had.
“She’s with your father,” Rick said.
As soon as the words left his mouth, I slammed my fist into the wall and relished in the pain that shot through my body. It wasn’t enjoyable, but it reminded me that I was alive still and that I had someone to protect. I hated that it had to be this way. I hated being this far from Allie, where I couldn’t protect her and where she had to protect herself.
I had never left her alone with my father. Never.
I didn’t fucking trust him. By the way Allie’s mother had acted terrified of my father yesterday, I could tell that he had either been threatening or hitting her too. She had herself and her daughter to protect. She’d walked out of the house, and I fucking couldn’t have been more thankful. I didn’t want her to see what my father was truly capable of and didn’t want Allie to lose another parent.
“Your old man really fucked you up, didn’t he?” Rick taunted. “You think he’d do the same to her too?”
Without thinking, I spat at Rick because it was the only thing I could physically do at the moment. Rick stood up and swung at my face for the disrespect. Before it could collide, I ducked and hit him in the ribs, making contact and hearing something crack, expending the last of my energy. But it was all I could do before he kneed me in the bruised gut and made me double over in pain.
He slammed his fist into the side of my face, banging my head off the concrete and making everything go dark.
