I’d never been hit before. Not like this. Not with a blinding hatred that ran so deep, there could be no scrubbing it out.
I sat in the corner of a cold, dank basement, the sound of dripping water slowly making me lose my mind, a single hanging light overhead swinging every so often as the AC kicked on.
When I first got here, they’d taken turns beating the hell out of me. Beating me in front of Ru. Beating Ru in front of me. They’d searched us and taken our phones, smashing them to pieces in front of us.
I’d been terrified they planned to rape us. There were over twenty of them here. But when they shoved us down the rickety wooden stairs, bloody and bruised but otherwise intact, I shivered with the notion that they meant to keep us here for a while.
I rubbed my fingers together for circulation, my hands still tied behind my back and my feet tied together in front of me. We’d gotten all the way here before they ruined the only chance we had of being found, and I just prayed the Roses figured out we were gone before then.
God, please let them come before I die.
I remembered the last thing I said to Jericho—we were friends, nothing more, and I didn’t want him around, that I needed space.
All fucking lies.
Sitting there in that basement, I wanted nothing more than his arms around me, his scent in my nose, and the feel of his hard body against my soft curves. If I got out of this alive, I’d never talk about leaving again. I’d marry him tomorrow and be his old lady for real. I just prayed I had the chance.
Mom, if there is an afterlife, please help me. Please look out for me.
Mom, I miss you. I love you.
They kept us down there for who knows how long, with a few of their henchmen watching us to make sure we didn’t try to escape. Their eyes glowed in the dark like monsters lurking in the shadows, and any second, I feared they’d strike.
There weren’t any windows. There wasn’t any way to get outside. I had no idea what day it was or how long we’d been captured. It felt like centuries, like I’d been down here since the dawn of time, each ticking second a full millennium.
Suddenly, the door at the top of the stairs opened and multiple sets of shoes echoed off the concrete walls. I scooted closer to Ru, touching her from shoulder to hip and kneecap since we couldn’t use our hands.
A man wearing an expensive suit and shiny loafers descended the stairs first, a cigar in between his fingers and his gray hair styled back from his face. Three other guys followed him, each as decadently dressed. Collectively, their outfits were worth more than everything I owned. God, how at odds they seemed with our surroundings. We were obviously in some backwoods cabin out in the middle of nowhere.
Benito loomed over us, taking a long draw on his cigar as one eyebrow shot halfway up his forehead. The light he was standing under cast him in sinister shadows, making him seem even more majestic and malevolent.
“So.” He tilted his head to one side as he ran his piercing gaze over the length of us, cowering in his dungeon. “Picked myself two little Roses. Now what’s an old man to do?” The big dickheads behind him laughed, and Benito looked at me. “Your boyfriend killed three of my men and my nephew, Julian.”
“They were trespassing on Rose property. They deserved it,” I sneered.
One of his thugs backhanded me quicker than I could blink, and the jolt of pain radiated down my spine. I’d already been smashed to bits, so this added to my injuries. I didn’t know how I’d be standing when this was all over.
“Keep your fucking hands off her,” Ru piped up.
The thug smacked her, too.
Fury rolled through me, and if I wasn’t sure they’d kill me, I’d lunge at this fucker’s face. I’d gouge his eyes out. And once the SR got here, I’d probably do that. Genetic ties or not, I didn’t see any of myself in him. Even though he looked like my mother, I didn’t see any of her, either. Mom’s eyes had always been loving and gentle. This man was soulless. Evil. He’d lost his empathy long ago.
“What do you want from us?” I sputtered, tensing my muscles so he didn’t see me shake.
“You? Nothing.” He shook his head and inhaled on his cigar again. The smell made me want to puke. “Now, your daddy on the other hand…” He shook his head. “It didn’t have to be this way, you know. I didn’t have any arguments with Aris or Crow, not like I did with Piston. But when I handled him, they both took that personally.” Benito shrugged. “That’s not my fault. They should have let it go. But desperate times, am I right?” The mob boss let out a sigh. “They went after my family, took my only daughter from me. Then they took my sister’s son, and I can’t let that stand.” He paused to let out a dark, twisted chuckle. “I’m just gonna keep going until no one can remember a single fucking one of you.”
He’d meant to be terrifying, and a little shiver of fear coasted into my gut. But Ru shook her head and laughed in a frightening dark tone.
“You think that’s funny?”
“You know how fucking sick in the head you gotta be to do this to your own flesh and blood?”
Benito shook his head, a sad, forlorn expression flickering behind his eyes. “She’s not my flesh and blood. As soon as her whore mother fucked that Rose piece of shit, she wasn’t mine anymore. My daughter died a long time ago.” He looked at me. “Your blood is as filthy as your sister’s. I mean that.”
My blood. As if my genetics defined me. As if I had any control over who had brought me into this world. If that alone wasn’t enough to infuriate me, hearing him call my mother a whore made my blood sizzle.
I swore to myself right then and there, before this was over, I would watch the life bleed from his eyes. Like a rabid dog, I would hunt him down to save the world from his mania.
Movement toward the back of the room brought my gaze over Benito’s shoulder, and I recognized the guy hiding by the stairs.
Pie.
Nikki’s new husband. The guy who had choked her and convinced her to blame Jericho.
The fucking traitor.
Imagining what the Roses would do to him made me laugh, sounding eerily similar to Ru’s.
“They’re gonna feed your own cock to you,” Ru said, nodding to Pie. “You know that, right?”
“I’m gonna kill your daddy in front of you,” Pie spat back. “You know that, right?”
“Now, there’s no need to be impolite,” Benito said. “We only need to decide which piece to cut off first. I’m in the business of sending messages, you understand.”
“You said you wouldn’t hurt her,” Pie interrupted. “You said this was about Aris, not the girls.”
“You’ll shut your mouth before I shut it for you, understand?” Benito sneered over his shoulder. “You seem to have forgotten my last name is Caputi. What’s yours again? Judas?”
Benito’s thugs laughed and Pie shut his mouth, darting his eyes between me and Ru, a fleeting look of sympathy in his features.
Benito decided to honor whatever arrangement he’d made with Pie because he shook his head and turned to head back through the crowd, pausing when he passed the proverbial Brutus. “Since you’re so attached to them, you stay down here to guard them.” Benito held up his cigar, pointing it just under Pie’s eye. “And don’t let me catch you sleeping. If I do, I’ll cut off your cock and feed it to you.”
Benito turned and walked back upstairs, leaving Pie to stand there with his arms crossed over his body.
“What did Aris ever do to you?” Ru shook her head. “What did I ever do to you to deserve this?”
“It ain’t about deserving,” he said.
Ru snorted out a sardonic laugh through her nose. “Jesus Christ. It’s about money. Isn’t it?”
Pie shifted uncomfortably.
“How much?” Ru shook her head, the words coming out louder when she said them again. “Look at me, you fucking coward. How much did it take to sell us out?”
“Two fifty,” he murmured.
“A measly two hundred and fifty K.” Ru made a disgusted noise low in her throat. “You’re pathetic.”
“They’re gonna kill her, okay?” He pushed off the wall. “Nikki. The baby. I owed them a ton of money.”
“How?” Ru clenched her jaw. “How’d you get in so deep?”
He shook his head and sighed. “Doesn’t matter anymore. They said they’d cut the baby out of her if I didn’t do it.” Pie rubbed a hand over his bald scalp. “So I did it. I don’t feel bad.” His voice got louder. “Don’t make me feel bad.”
“What about Nikki?” I asked.
Ru narrowed her gaze. “Does she know what you’re up to? Does she know you sold me out to the Caputis?”
Pie’s spine stiffened, giving both of us our answer.
No, Nikki didn’t know. If she did, would she condone it?
“That’s what I thought.” Ru let out a long, slow sigh. “You’ll be lucky to make it out of this alive, Pie. If Crow doesn’t kill you, Nikki’s going to.”
He shook his head. “Nikki’ll do what she’s told. She always has. This is the best thing for both of us. For our baby.”
“No.” Ru pursed her lips. “The best thing would have been for you to go to Crow with your problems. Now? Nikki’s gonna face the streets. The club’s never gonna be convinced that she didn’t know what you were up to. And that baby?” Ru made a dark and demented noise. “She might drown it herself to save it the shame of being related to you.”
I gasped. Pie froze, stalked forward, and hit her hard in the face.
She laughed and spit blood at him. It landed on his cheek and slid down to his chest, and he hit her again and again, hard enough to make her fall over on her side, unable to right herself.
“Stay down, you dumb fucking cunt.”
“Don’t fucking touch her again,” I said.
“Oh, you want some, too?”
I squared my jaw at him, prepared to take a hit if he was going to dish it out, but he didn’t. He chuckled and turned to switch off the light, leaving Ru and me in the pitch dark. The sound of his boots on the stairs echoed as he climbed them and shut the door behind him.
Once again, we were alone, cold, and unable to see.