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When I made it to the basement, the horror chained before me sprung instantaneous tears to my eyes.
Oh, Cindy. I’m so fucking sorry.
I approached her naked, bloodstained body, taking in the gashes inflicted in a brutal pattern along her chest and stomach. And when I glanced farther down, to her legs, my stomach soured. Her inner thighs were painted dark crimson, a palpable sign she’d been violently raped, repeatedly, no doubt.
My breath staggered when she cracked open what she could of her battered eyes and released a low, almost relieved cry.
“Griffin,” her weak, broken voice desperately shook, tears running a bloody stream down her face.
“Cindy… I’m so sorry. So, so fucking sorry.”
“I-I didn’t talk. I-I did g-g-good.” She let out another sob, shattering my heart into a billion pieces. “T-t-tell Phantom I-I’m s-s-sorry. Just please, d-d-don’t let that b-bastard h-hurt me anymore. P-pl-please, Griffin.”
Her pleas had my own salty droplets slipping out, my chest heaving from the anger and the unbearable pain attacking my psyche.
“Kill me. Please.”
She repeated the words until my teary eyes were densely level to hers. I wanted to hold her before I ended her suffering, but I couldn’t risk getting blood on my clothes. I couldn’t shoot her. The only way this would work was if I made it look like she’d died naturally.
I swiped away the tears refilling my eyes and grasped the back of her nape, my bottom lip wobbling as my other hand carefully enclosed over her nose and mouth, restricting her airway.
“You’ve fought well, little warrior,” I soothingly whispered as her head jerked to the side in panic, her muffled cries gutting me in half. “Our people will know your name. Your sacrifice. Your death will not be in vain. We’ll avenge you. I promise. Until we meet again, sweet warrior…”
I regrettably watched as the last bit of fight inside of her slowly diminished, her dwindled cries fading into a dark, sorrowful silence.
“Until we meet again.”
Thirty-Seven
Phantom
Ileanedbackinmy computer chair, chewing restlessly on my snakebites as I waited for my laptop to finish narrowing down leads on Nicholas Campbell, Samara’s father. I was exhausted, having worked the graveyard shift last night with the other guards to help give Isaac and Rhett time to rest, and I was still a bit on edge thanks to Father’s misguided intel.
Seven long days.We did all of that prepping just for those motherfuckers not to show.
Samara was still avoiding us. She hadn’t been in classes all week, and just to ease my mind, I hacked into the school database to double check that she hadn’t unenrolled and departed the premises. I’d checked over the criteria for all of her classes and noticed she had some tests coming up next week. I didn’t want her to fall behind on her schoolwork or worse, fail all of her classes for the semester, so I took a bit of a bizarre leap and ripped a page out of Rhett’s kindness book, gathered all of her assignments she’d missed, and delivered them to her dorm. It was a shitty start to this so-called truce and would barely melt a dent around her icy barrier, but it was something. Hopefully this investigation into her old man’s background could turn things around.
A ding from my phone tore my sight away from the screen. As I glanced down at the display, I found a message from my buddy, Kaden.
I need your help.
The fucker didn’t give me time to respond before my computer screen flickered blue from a Skype notification.
Great. The fuck did he want now?
“You rang?”
I sat back and listened as he began spouting a very descriptive spiel about his girlfriend, Rebel, and some Knox character who was aiming to kidnap her. Apparently, the twisted fuck put Rebel’s mom in the hospital and had been stalking them since he recently got out of prison. He’d told me a bunch of other shit too—shit like how Lucian’s father had some deadly beef with Rebel and how he wanted to use her as bait to draw this Knox guy out of hiding. Kaden and his friends refused. Now he was seeking advice and had hoped my brothers and I were available to assist with handling their problem.
“It sounds to me like you’re fucked.”
Kaden threw up his hands in exasperation and scoffed at me through the screen. “Come on, man, be serious about this. I need your help.”
“I highly recommend you think long and hard about what will happen if all you stupid fucks decide to cross a crime lord.” My darkened blues narrowed down on him as I twisted one of my lip rings around with my teeth. “Nothing good will come from it. All I can tell you is to do what the man says and pray you don’t end up going out in an actualbang.”
Kaden shook his head at me. “I don’t think you understand what—”
“I understand it just fine,” I coldly overlapped him with a slight cock of my head, my brows furrowed. “Look, your girlfriend’s situation is fucked up and all, but you five signed your names on the dotted line when you agreed to Hail’s proposal. That’s just how shit goes in this world we’ve tied ourselves to. If the boss gives you a direct order, youhaveto follow it or it’s gonna be either you or someone you love biting a bullet. One thing you’ll come to learn unfairly quick in this life is that death is all around and once it starts, it never stops. So if you—or any of you for that matter—value your lives and those you care about, then do as your told and do everything you fucking can to make sure you come out on top.”
