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“That’s it? Come on,” he taps his gloves together, bouncing side to side. “Bring it.”
Shaking my head, I puff up my chest and exhale. Guess it’s my funeral. Holding my fists up near my face, I swing and he blocks me. So I do it again, this time putting a little more oomph behind it. Again, he blocks my swing.
“Let’s go. Get the fuck out of your head, kid,” he barks at me and I wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my glove. “Let the fucking rage out. I know it’s buried in there, so let’s go. Fucking hit me!”
He’s right, the rage is there. It’s simmering below the surface, pressing against my chest. I’ve let it out in the worst fucking ways lately, but even death doesn’t put out the fire. Instead it’s simply dousing it with accelerant making the flames more lethal.
It’s killing me.
My chest heaves, I grit my teeth and this time I swing. I swing fucking hard and I only connect with the gloves that block my punch, but I swing again, and again. This time I enter from below, connecting with his stomach and he doubles over. Adrenaline courses through my veins and when Arsenal’s fist connects with my jaw, I barely even feel it.
“Block your fucking face,” he barks at me and I lift my fists, swinging at him again.
We go back and forth like this for so long, I lose track of how much time passes. But at some point, my body grows weary, and when I look at the floor length mirrors to my right, we are both bruised and bleeding from our lips and noses.
The irony is even though I’m beaten and bloodied, I feel a sense of calm that I haven’t felt since before my men were taken. A sense of trusting myself and the people I care about. A sense that no matter what pain they have to endure, we are all going to be okay. Because we will find them, even if I have to burn down that fucking mansion and run through the flames myself.
Chapter thirty-six
Cole
I’ve been trying to count the minutes, hours, and days in my head but the sad truth is I lost track what feels like days ago. Maybe weeks? Time is a myth in a place like this. Something that you can’t even prove exists. Something that you hold onto with every shred of hope inside of your soul, so that you don’t lose yourself to the nothingness.
A pipe in the distance steadily drips and it’s fucking with my head, because I can’t see it, but I hear the constant tap, tap, tap of the water. Zeke is sleeping again, and no one has come for either of us. Once in a while we wake up to find trays of food left that look more like scraps from someone else’s meal than something that is supposed to sustain us. Any sense of privacy we had was lost the day he was deposited into this cell, because we have a toilet, but there’s nothing private about it. I’m just grateful it’s not a bucket or something equally as degrading.
I haven’t heard a peep from Q in the weeks, or days, or however long it’s been, since Zeke was thrown into my cell. It has me pulling my hair out, on the verge of tears, because what happened to her? Q got me through those first couple of days without losing my mind, and I’m beginning to wonder if she was ever real or simply a figment of my imagination. Is she someone I merely dreamt of to keep from losing hope?
Tears pool behind my eyelids, and I sigh, closing my eyes tightly so they can’t escape. I don’t want Zeke to see me cry anymore. I need to be strong, because he’s being strong enough for the both of us, and it’s wearing him down. Stretching him thin. He’s walking the tightrope line between being in control and spiraling into chaos, and I refuse to be the thing that pushes him over the edge.
My eyes roam his face, etching the slope of his nose, the curve of his cheekbones, and the bow of his lips into my memory. Despite the horrendous situation we are both in, he looks almost peaceful right now as he sleeps and I want to hold onto that image in my head.
Hesitantly I lift one hand, and lightly brush the stray strands of hair away from his forehead with my fingertips. His eyelids flutter, opening slowly and I drop my hand back down to the small space between us. Not that there’s really much space at all on this tiny mattress. When his eyes focus, he looks at me and I swear he smiles just before closing his eyes again.
It makes me wonder if things could be different when we get out of here. When we leave. I don’t know how I’d survive this place alone and Q was helpful but she’s not Zeke. Zeke has held me every time I’ve broken down, and in a short window of time he’s becoming a necessity. Someone I need.
Just as my own eyelids begin to droop, his skin grazes mine and he laces his fingers between my own, holding my hand. It’s such a simple gesture under terrifying conditions, but it’s enough to make me keep hoping. To keep thinking about life after this place.
There will be life after here. There has to be.
“Aww, isn’t this cute, boys?”
A voice booms through the cell just as the clanging of the door being opened pierces my ears. Zeke’s eyes fly open and we look at each other, terror filling the space between us and he grips my hand harder. Suddenly I’m being pulled away, but Zeke scrambles toward me, reaching back out for my hands.
“Leave him alone!” he screams, lunging toward us.
Another man steps between us, shoving Zeke back toward the wall, just as I’m being dragged to the middle of the room again.
The chains.
“No, no, no, please don’t do this,” I whimper, trying to keep calm, when inside I’m the exact opposite.
“Don’t fucking touch him!” Zeke screams. His limbs flail as he tries to push past the man that stands between us, but he’s wasting his energy.
“You’ll sit the fuck down, hacker!” the man barks, just as he whips a metal baton out of a holster on his thigh. The baton extends with a flick of his wrist, then he raises his arm and begins to hit Zeke over and over again. Zeke’s wails echo off the walls, sending me into a tailspin.
“No! Don’t! Don’t touch him!” The screams leave my lips just as the tears fall, and the men that are holding me back just laugh in response as they chain my limbs to the walls once more. Dangling in the center of the cell by both arms, I sob in defeat.
“You wanted to name your own terms for cooperation, hacker,” the man spits as he stops beating Zeke, “but the boss works on his own terms. Now you get to see what happens to the people we own. What’s gonna happen when we send him upstairs.”
