Chapter 41
Forty-One
With both my eyes swollen shut, I can’t see the brass-knuckled fist coming, but fuck do I feel it.
My head recoils like a spring at the impact, and pain explodes like a bomb on the side of my face just below my temple.
A few millimeters higher and to the left, and I’d be dead from a brain bleed.
I’m powerless to fight back because my arms and legs are zip-tied and duct-taped. Guess they weren’t taking any chances.
The guy has been going at me for over an hour…I think. Time tends to suspend into a blur of blood and pain when you’re being tortured, where a short minute feels like a fucking lifetime.
I have no idea how long I’ve been here. Or where here is. I don’t even know who the hell is punching me. He hasn’t spoken a word the entire time. He’s letting his fists do all the talking.
Another blow, more painful than the last, the force powerful enough to send me toppling sideways to the floor on the chair I’m strapped to. My shoulder takes the brunt of the hard concrete, and I choke on the metallic taste of blood that fills my mouth.
“Fuck you,” I rasp.
He answers me by slamming the toe of his boot into my chest. The crack of bone breaking is loud enough to echo between the walls of the room. I try to pull in air past the constriction in my lungs and instead aspirate blood.
“Pick him up,” someone says. A woman. It’s the first voice I’ve heard since I woke from whatever they drugged me with.
I’m hauled upright, and my entire body protests at being moved. I wish they had left me on the floor.
“What do you want?” I ask the disembodied voice and get punched for my query. Fuck, I can’t breathe. Consciousness flickers in and out like a candle’s flame when it reaches the end of its wick.
Right before oblivion pulls me under, I hear the woman reply, “That bitch you call your wife.”