Chapter 20 Wesley
Wesley
Pain—a sharp, pounding ache right behind my eyes, spreading backward through my skull like someone had split my head open and poured fire inside. I groaned and tried to lift a hand to touch it—only to realize I couldn’t.
My hands couldn’t move.
For a second, confusion fogged everything. I blinked hard, trying to bring the room into focus. The light was dim and yellowish, emanating from two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The air smelled like mildew, dust, and something metallic.
The floor was concrete, and I could see uncovered pipes running across the ceiling. I was in a basement.
When I shifted, the chair creaked beneath me—and the ropes around my wrists bit tighter.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, twisting once, twice. Nothing. My ankles were tied, too. The person who did this knew what they were doing.
I let my head drop forward, eyes shut as I forced my thoughts into order.
Last thing I remembered—
Fuck.
I’d been heading to the bookstore downtown. I’d parked near the corner and had just walked onto the sidewalk when five men, maybe six, had come out of nowhere.
They moved fast; they were coordinated. Not junkies or street thugs, but trained muscle.
I remembered drawing my gun, hitting three guys, and then—an impact, a sharp pain at the base of my skull before everything went black.
I exhaled slowly through my nose, trying to piece together how long I’d been out. My mouth was dry, my throat raw. Judging by the darkness outside of the narrow basement window, enough time had passed for the sun to set.
An hour or two, at least.
I tugged at the bindings again, harder this time. The chair rocked slightly, scraping against the concrete. Nothing budged.
“Think,” I told myself.
Who would take me?
Elias was the obvious answer, but I hadn’t thought he’d risk being this direct.
Unless…
A flicker of something colder threaded through my chest.
Ro.
If Elias had taken me, then he had already found out about everything.
And if he’d found out, then Ro—
I clenched my jaw and cut the thought off. Useless. Panicking over hypotheticals wouldn’t change anything. I needed to get loose, get my bearings, and then figure out if I was alone.
But before I could try anything, I heard footsteps. Each creak of the wood above made the pain in my head pulse harder, my instincts sharpening in time with it.
I straightened in the chair, every muscle taut, eyes locked on the shadows stretching toward me from the stairwell.
Whoever was coming down wasn’t in a hurry. When they finally stepped into view, I cursed in my head. I recognized him from the pictures.
If I didn’t know what he’d done—what he was capable of—I might’ve thought he was handsome.
The reddish-brown of his hair caught the light like polished copper.
His green eyes were sharp, intelligent, and unsettlingly calm.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in a slate-gray button-up that looked tailored within an inch of perfection.
Even his watch glinted expensively in the low light.
But I knew the truth.
I knew what a disgustingly sick freak the bastard was.
He smiled faintly when our eyes met, as if we were just two old friends reuniting. “Wesley,” Elias said smoothly. “Good. You’re awake. I was starting to worry I’d been a bit too rough with the welcoming committee. Don’t want you dead before the fun starts, do we?”
“Where is he?” I snarled, straining against my binds.
Elias chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t worry, he should be here soon. Hopefully, he remembers the address.”
I grimaced at the pounding in my head. Fuck, I hope I didn’t have a concussion.
“What address?” I asked. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere very, very special.” His verdant eyes crinkled with amusement. It made my stomach twist how easy he looked, how amused. Like this was just another casual chat before dinner.
“Somewhere special, huh?” I asked, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. “Why am I here, Elias?” I practically spat out his name.
His smile widened. “I think I can see why he likes you. Ro. I should’ve taken care of you myself from the start.”
He said Ro’s name with a sort of fondness that turned my skin to ice.
“Fuck you,” I growled.
He laughed like I’d told him a joke, then his face darkened, smile dropping. It was eerie. Like someone had just… turned off the lights behind his eyes.
“How was I to know that he’d actually like you? He’s never felt anything for any of his targets before. Well, maybe disgust, but never real attraction. No. He’s always been absolutely perfect for me.”
I glared at him, at the way his eyes warmed and his lip tilted up just at the thought of Ro.
“I hate you, you know,” Elias said solemnly.
My brows furrowed with confusion. “Huh?”
“Twenty years, Wesley. Twenty years, and not once has he ever looked at me the way he looks at you. Twenty years, and some stupid taste of love has him eager and ready to betray me, the man who took him in, always made sure he had the best clothes, the best food, the best training. Twenty. Fucking. Years,” he thundered.
With a look of disdain, he walked over to me and took my jaw in a painful grip. I bared my teeth at him.
“I gave him everything. And yet here we are,” he spat.
“He could never love you,” I told him, watching his nose crinkle as he sneered down at me.
He let go, only to rear his hand back and throw a punch. His knuckles cracked as they collided with my cheekbone. My head snapped to the side.
Before I was able to get my bearings again, a flash of steel filled my vision, and I shouted. Blood filled my vision, and I bit down on my tongue to stifle a pained cry. He’d slashed my face, cutting my left eye in the process.
Elias took a step back, then another, until he was standing with his back against the concrete wall. He flicked a switchblade in his right hand and had a deranged smile on his face.
“Woo,” he breathed out. “I needed that.”
“Freak,” I muttered.
He laughed under his breath, a wild, delighted sound that made the hair rise on my arms. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he snapped the blade shut and slipped it back into his pocket, every trace of rage evaporating from his face as though it had never been there.
Just like that, he was calm again.
It was whiplash-inducing—the kind of emotional control that only came from being truly fucking deranged.
I spat blood to the side, glaring at him through the sting in my eye. “You get off on this. Hurting people who can’t fight back. That’s why you raped a child. A child that you say you raised. You’re sick.”
“Oh, please. Seventeen is hardly a child. He’d already begun killing years before that.”
“You’re a pedophilic piece of shit,” I yelled, thrashing in the chair, needing to get my hands on his neck so I could fucking snap it.
He looked genuinely offended. “Please, Wesley. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I saw those fucking photos. He was a kid!”
He stepped closer again, lowering his voice as if he were sharing a secret. “He was never a kid, Wesley. Not since the night I found him.”
“You’re a monster.”
“Maybe.” His lips curled into a slow, satisfied grin. “But aren’t we all?”
He gestured broadly to the room, to the cracked concrete and the faint outline of a water stain creeping up the wall. “You still haven’t grasped where we are yet?”
I scanned the basement again. “No.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Elias said softly. He crouched again, level with my face, and his eyes glinted like a cat playing with its prey. “You see, after the police had their fun here—after they ripped out all the carpets, cut out the floorboards, tore up the walls, I made an offer.”
I blinked at him, not understanding. “An offer?”
He smiled wider. “To buy the house.”
The words landed slowly. He couldn’t mean…
He chuckled, a sound full of dark delight. “I see the wheels turning in your head.”
My breath hitched.
No.
“You’re lying.”
He tilted his head. “Am I?”
My pulse picked up speed, hammering in my ears.
“I would’ve preferred to do this upstairs,” Elias said, his voice tender now.
“It would’ve been perfect. I could’ve made you kneel in the exact spot his family died.
That would’ve gotten a big reaction out of him.
But the basement’s safer. You’re pretty prolific after all, and I can’t risk you escaping. ”
I stared at him in horror and outrage.
He leaned in close, his breath brushing my ear.
“He hasn’t been here since that night. I made sure of it.
I never told him I owned it. Actually told him that the city had bulldozed it.
But tonight…” His tone brightened, childlike with anticipation.
“Tonight, he’ll come back. I can’t wait to see how it breaks him. ”
I shook my head, but the motion only made the pain behind my eyes flare. “You sick son of a bitch.”
Elias stood. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Wesley. You should be honored. You’re part of the grand finale. I’ll make sure it’s a memorable death.”
I yanked hard against the ropes, fury thrumming under my skin. “You think he’s just going to come crawling back to you? That he won’t put a bullet between your eyes the second he sees what you’ve done?”
Elias smiled faintly, almost pityingly. “You still don’t understand him.” He turned and started up the stairs, voice floating back over his shoulder. “See you in a bit.”
The light dimmed as he reached the top step. The door creaked shut, and I was left staring at the empty stairs.
* * *
Elias and two of his men came back down after awhile, the silhouettes filling the stairwell like a slow rising tide. The light from above carved their faces into masks. Elias carried that same psychotic amusement from earlier.
“Almost showtime,” he said, like it was something to be excited about.
I kept my head down for a second, tasting blood and a hot, internal kind of fury.
“There’s something deeply wrong with you, you know that, right?”
Elias just smirked, adding fuel to the burning rage inside.