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“Cat,” I call softly.
Her eyes stay closed and her face pinches in more pain.
“Cat, baby, wake up,” I plead in a guttural tone. I press my lips against hers when I don’t get a response. “Caterina, please, baby.”
I fucking hate these nightmares. I feel so goddamn helpless when she has them. There’s nothing I can do to stop them. My only consolation is that when she wakes up, she only remembers the screams. If she remembered more, I’m not sure her mind would be able to handle it.
I become desperate when Cat stays lost in her nightmare. Just as I’m about to shake her, her eyes snap open. They instantly lock on mine, tears filling them to the brim and spilling over.
It’s times like these when I feel like I’ve failed as a husband. A husband should be able to protect his wife from the horrors of life. He should be able to take away the pain and absorb it himself.
“Do you remember anything?” I ask.
I always ask this question, then hold my breath as I wait for her answer. A part of me wants her answer to be different from what it usually is. That she remembers the nightmares. Maybe if she did, she could work on moving past them. Yet another part of me fears losing Cat forever if she ever remembers the night we lost everything.
More tears fall from her eyes, and I swipe them away with my thumb.
“Only the screams. Oh God, Hunter, they were horrible.” She hiccups.
Gathering her in my arms, she turns her head to the side when I pull her closer. Her cheek, wet from her tears, presses against my sternum, and her arms lock around me.
“I’m so sorry,” I croak through a tight throat. “So fucking sorry.”
It takes a long time for Cat’s breathing to even out and her body to relax. There’s no way in hell I’ll be able to sleep again, so I don’t even try.
I simply lay there, holding the love of my life, and damning myself for not being strong enough to take away her pain.
ChapterSeven
Hunter
The slick sound of the knife sliding out of flesh and howls of pain mix with the tone of an incoming text. Dropping the knife on the table beside me, I whip out my phone and turn away from a crying, pale-faced Lenny.
The pulse in my temple throbs when I see the message.
After sending a reply, I shove the slim device into my pocket and turn back to Lenny. “Looks like it’s your lucky day, my friend,” I comment, observing the sniveling piece of shit.
Lenny’s one of River Heights’s newest drug dealers who’s trying to make a name for himself. So far, he’s kept his business out of Slate, but I doubt that’ll last long. It’s rumored he’s dabbling in prostitution. Except the women he’s been recruiting haven't been willing participants. Lenny also has connections, or rather the people he knows do. And those connections could include names.
As I stare at the man, I curl my lip in disgust. Streams of snot run from his nose and into his mouth, only to flow back out in a slobbering mess. His face is drained of color, probably from the copious amount of blood on the floor below him, and there’s more skin covered in slash marks than there’s not.
Naked except for a pair of tighty whities that aren’t so white anymore and hanging from the ceiling from a rope wrapped around his wrists, Lenny looks pretty fucking pathetic, which is just the way I like him.
Correction, I’ll like him even more when the pigs at the farm outside of town start chomping on his remains. Anything they don’t eat, gets soaked in lye until it dissolves.
Lenny lifts his head, or rather he tries to, and looks at me with dull, bloodshot eyes. “Please, man,” he whines. “I got nothin’ else to give you.”
I pick up a rusty flathead screwdriver and scrape it along one of the many open wounds on his stomach. “That’s where you’re wrong, Lenny boy. You still have plenty to give. You’re still breathing, right? And I don’t have the name I seek.”
Before he can protest further, I stop at one of the cuts and slowly push the flathead between two ribs. Lenny thrashes and screams, trying to get away from the bite of pain, but with only the tips of his toes barely grazing the floor, he has no traction. He only manages to wiggle the tool around, making it worse.
“Regardless,” I look into his shit-brown sunken eyes, “you just got a temporary reprieve. Not to worry though, I’ll be back to pick up where we left off.” I twist the flathead and dig it in deeper, angling it just right so I don’t puncture a vital organ. I can’t have Lenny dying before I get what I want. “And when I do return, I expect you to sing the fucking name I want.”
I leave Lenny hanging limply by his arms, whimpers filling the room and the tool still lodged between two ribs. Kurt’s standing just outside the steel door when I walk through it.
“Make sure he doesn’t die,” I tell him.
“You got it,” the big man replies.
