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What the hell am I looking at?
My eyes sting before they finally focus on a laughing picture of a little girl. It’s a family photo from Facebook or some shit. Sexton stands over her shoulder, dressed like an ordinary grandfather and not the human rock I know he is in the field.
The rock they’re breaking apart.
“You recognize her?” Eladio growls.
I shake my head, even if it feels futile.
Not the answer he wants.
His sneering lips peel back as he punches my throat.
I’m a coughing, spluttering mess for the next minute. I can’t think, can’t scream, can’t even twist and roll with one leg on fire every time I move, and my hands cuffed behind me.
“Do notbullshit me again,” he says. “Understood?”
I stare at him, waiting, the only thing I can do and fucking hate it with every fiber of my being. It takes too much effort to nod.
“Good. So you know this girl and the man. Your commander,” he whispers with a cryptic smile. I don’t move a muscle. “When I told you twenty-one roses, you understood?”
A few more breathless seconds.
I nod, one bruised eye fluttering shut.
“I don’t think you did,” he says with a frown, standing up straighter, turning back into a thing of pure shadow by the time I look up at him again with wide, confused eyes.
What the hell are you getting at?I think with a searing breath.I understand how you’ll mutilate me and my entire team if I don’t fucking squeal, you sick assh—
“When I said we play twenty-one roses, I meant with the little girl,” he says, smiling as the fear comes into my eyes. “We will find her. We will take her. And then, my scared little gringo, we will take a new piece of her for every day you don’t talk. So start tonight. Start now. Save the girl and the old man some tears.”
He turns while I’m still paralyzed. My eyes flick to the silver toes of his boots, the gleaming ouroboros snakes eating themselves and still seeming hungry for more.
More lives.
The entire world fades into the scuffing click of his leather boots moving across the floor.
Then that square of light disappears with a groan, leaving me in hell.
If I still had the life to scream, I’d do it until my throat blows out.
21
Blinding Truths (Delia)
“Iwish it wasn’t coming down like this, Cordelia. Whatever our family complexities, I’m sorry. We’ll do everything we can to bring him home safe.” Dad’s eyes flick nervously to mine in the rearview mirror.
I barely shrug.
I haven’t sat in the back seat with him driving since I was a kid.
Today, I feel like one, broken and helpless.
Shattered from the inside out by weeks of wondering, worrying, hurting.
Chris disappearing gutted me.
I’ve barely crawled out of bed to eat, much less accomplished anything useful.
