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“Come to me,” he bites out. “If you bring Fletcher, he’s dead on sight. But bring Malone. I wanna talk, that’s all. I want to discuss a future collaboration. An introduction. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“Gord—”
“You have ten minutes to walk through those doors,” he snarls. “The girl is dead either way it goes down. But her suffering lessens the more you cooperate.”
He kills our call and shuts me out, my heart thudding to a painful stop. My stomach, rolling with rage. Nausea. Fear. “Fuck!”
“He wants me there?” Archer tears the car out of the parking garage and flies onto the street outside, skidding on the asphalt and rocketing us toward the bay. “He wants Felix?”
“He wants a fucking collaboration.” I crush the phone between my hands and work to slow my breathing. To calm my thoughts. To come up with a plan that gets Rory out, alive and well. “He gave us ten minutes. Not long enough to organize ourselves with anyone else.”
“Intentional,” Fletcher snarls. “What’s the game plan?”
“You’re dead if he sees you,” I exhale a breath and empty my lungs. “He doesn’t want you.”
“The witness?” Archer demands. “Alive?”
“He said she’s gonna die no matter what.” Sweat beads on my brow and leaves me reeling. He doesn’t need her now. He has no reason to keep her alive. Sick, I drop my head to my hands and try to think. Think. Think. “Fuckkkk.”
Rory
JUUUUUUUUDYYYYYYY…
“He won’t join your army.” My body aches. The steel rod in my leg almost feels like it’ll bust through my skin. My brain, like it’ll explode through my skull. My arms and hands hurt. My face, tender and bruised. The side of my head aches where a steel gun collided into it and dropped me unconscious.
Only to wake, I don’t know how much later, in a dirty warehouse.
“He’s good,” I press, my hands tied together, and my neck, trapped in a noose that almost has my bowels liquifying. The rope is snug, but not yet restricting. The floor beneath my feet, unstable at best, and the drop, not nearly far enough to make my death instant.
This man, Gordon Fuller, would rather have me choke.
He can’t even extend the kindness of a broken neck.
“Drake isn’t going to trade that goodness for a payday,” I argue. Because I refuse to die without saying my piece. “He’s not weak like you.”
“And you’re incapable of shutting your mouth.” The man looks to the sky and rolls his eyes. “How’d I know that eventually, the woman who tames Drake fuckin’ Banks, is someone whose mouth wouldn’t stop moving?”
I swallow the lump in my throat and try to ignore the rope wrapped around it. The polyester itching my neck and sending me quietly insane, because I can’t reach up and scratch the annoyance away.
“He won’t join you.” I stand tall. Proud, but with the added benefit of taking pressure off my bound neck. “I know him better than you do, it would seem.”
Fuller only chuckles and turns to watch the doors as footsteps echo outside and grunts of struggle filter inside. My stomach dips with nerves. With fear. Because there are two nooses available. And only one is used by me.
“Nice show you put on the news,” he murmurs, sparing me a short, almost kind smile. “I knew it was a fake, though, because Banks knows better how to protect a witness. We went through training together,” he taunts, grinning when two of his stooges wrestle a man past the doors and into the massive warehouse.
The captive’s face is bruised and bleeding, much like how mine looks, I think. Though I don’t have a mirror to compare. He wears a suit, like Fuller’s, but he’s older. A little rounder. Though I’ll be damned if his eyes don’t come to mine and dig in so deep, I feel them in my stomach.
“Put him up there,” Fuller gestures to the second rope, pleased with his work and pacing, almost at ease as he casts a glance across to me. “Was it love, Aurora?” He tilts his head and runs a hand through his hair, the same way Drake does when he’s curious… or frustrated. Or thinking. Or plotting. “You and Banks?”
“Whatever it was,” I spit out, “it’s none of your business.”
“I’ve watched you together. I’ve watched for weeks. He protected you every single time you were near. He would happily take your bullets and go to hell laughing about it. But not in the elevator,” he sighs. “It was his giveaway that day, and it was played out live on national television in high definition. Henry Banks.” He looks at our newcomer, almost like he is welcoming a guest to dinner. “Have you met Rory yet? She would have been your daughter-in-law in a different world. A different lifetime.”
“Henry?” Bile rises in my throat and leaves me breathless. But I look the man up and down and know now why his eyes beat against mine. Why his stare penetrated and almost stung. “I don’t understand…” Looking at Fuller, I try to figure it out. “Why would you bring him here?”
“Because Drake is good,” he chuckles, too casual at the thought of murder. Betrayal. Crime. “He won’t turn easily, Ms. Swanson. So I’ve got his girl, and now I have his dad.” He flashes a bright smile as his soldier slips the noose around Henry’s neck and leaves him to carry his own weight. “He’s gonna have some choices to make. And in the end,” he clicks his fingers as though to summon his soldier down, “well, in the end, he’ll lose you both. But this is how we create a man, isn’t it, Henry?” He stares daggers at the older Banks. Hatred pulsing in his veins. “We strip them down until there’s nothing left. We take everything from them, their identity. Their autonomy. Their hope. And when there’s nothing left except the broken pieces of a man who once was, the powers that be pick up those pieces and start rebuilding. But they manipulate and mold. They make damn sure the end product is nothing like the beginning. But they swear it’s for our own good. It makes us stronger.”
“You were never gonna make it,” Banks chokes out, his breathing already impacted by the rope around his neck. His blood pressure rises, his face reddening. Because he’s weak. His beating, too vicious. “You were always the weak link, Fuller. So when you died on the job and I pulled my men out of that club, I wasn’t sad.”
