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“Welcome back,querido.” A woman’s face appeared above me. Dark hair that looked almost blue in the strange cold light was pulled into a knot on the top of her head, and her eyes were just as big and dark as Johnny’s. She wore a long-sleeved nurse’s coat above something tight and black, and a smile adorned red lips.
“Where am I?” My voice was just a rasp, and the moment I spoke, my throat began to itch. I swallowed that uncomfortable dry sensation and tried to focus. Given the odd stone structure of the room, this was not the typical hospital. But the medical equipment and machines lined up against the wall said something different. So did the bed I lay in.
My body was heavy. My senses light and floating. And there was no pain, not even a twinge. I couldn’t move my arm. As I thought of it, I couldn’t feel my body. An uneasy feeling spread within me. “What did you give me?”
She smiled a sweet smile that made my insides crawl. “Don’t worry about that.”
I scoffed. Fucking easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one waking up paralyzed. I tried again, willing my body to obey, to fucking move, even a twitch. But nothing. An angry beeping somewhere behind me only increased the growing dread. I was hooked up to something. The sudden beeps matched my speeding heart, leaving no doubt what she was monitoring.
“I need you to calm down,” she said.
My head cleared with the burst of adrenaline, and Kaylie’s face flashed through my mind. With her, the rest came back. The men approaching. The blinding headlights. The handcuffs, the twisting my fucking shoulder into nothingness. After that, everything was black.
The uneasy feeling turned to cold dread. I was back there. This time with no means to escape. I couldn’t even move to kill a fly, let alone fight my way out of this place. What were they planning to do to me? I was alive. And I dreaded it. It spoke of nothing good.
“What did you do?” I hissed. “Where’s Kaylie? Johnny?”
“Calm down,” the girl repeated. “Or I’ll have to put you under.”
Fuck. Breathe. Sucking in one ragged breath after the other, I tried to still my racing pulse. This wasn’t me. I never fucking panicked. I was trained to handle situations worse than this. It was my fucking job.
PTSD.Something in me whispered.You’re fucking screwed.
“If you hurt them, I swear I’ll kill you.”
She grinned. “Good luck with that, honey.”
I locked my eyes on her face, channeling all the anger and hate into my stare. If it could kill her, she would have dropped dead long ago. She didn’t flinch, and for some reason, it only fueled my anger.
Footsteps approached, forcing me to tear my gaze off the woman and roll my head around to see a man enter from a low arched doorway. He had to duck to fit through before rising to his full height again. He reminded me a lot of the crazy bitch who kept me trapped in this bed. The same dark hair and eyes. The same tanned skin. The same fucking cold smile on full lips.
“Did you fix him?” he asked, shooting me a look that made me grit my teeth. Oh, she fixed me all right. She fucking fixed me. I was helpless. Numb. I almost laughed at the irony. Wasn’t it what I wanted? To be free of the goddamn pain. To catch a break.
“Fixed,” she confirmed with a grin. She looked at me with those black doe-eyes, adding with a wink. “Now I don’t know what to do with him.”
The man chuckled, and all I could do was glare at her. What she wanted to do was not so fucking hard to figure out. Not with the way she eyed me. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded. She was beautiful, wickedly so. But I couldn’t look at anyone and not see Kaylie. She ruined it. Ruinedme. And I didn’t want to go back.
“He’s not a stray, Izzy.” The man said, “This one’s claimed.”
I couldn’t hold back a scoff. What was I? Some fucking dog? I did like the sound ofclaimed, though, even if it fucking terrified me, too. I washers.
“Release him. He’s free to go.”
She pouted those red lips in regret, then they broke into a grin as she returned her focus to me. “Sorry for the scare.” She patted my thigh, and I tried not to panic as I saw her hand land on me, but the pressure never followed. She moved around the bed, and I heard her nails tap on a screen. Then she appeared in my line of vision again. “Be careful with that shoulder,” she said. “My dear brother did quite some damage.” She shot the man a look, and he sighed, addressing me.
“You could have told me you were hurt.”
“Would you have listened?” I muttered.
He chuckled. “Probably not.”
“Dom never listens to anyone.” The woman,Izzy, said with a grin. “But hey, now when I know you’re not the enemy…” she paused, eyeing me up and down before settling on my face again. “I don’t need to kill you.”
I scoffed. How comforting.
“As I told your friends, I couldn’t take any chances. You, of all people, should understand the importance ofsecurity.” The man,Dominic, obviously, said.
I eyed him, finally having a face to the name. He looked… younger than what I imaged from a brother of Mr. X. But he looked just as cruel.
