Chapter 8 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
S omething shifted beside me, and I let out a weak noise, my eyelids trying and failing to flutter open.
“I was wondering what you’d choose.”
His voice sent my mind rocketing to an alertness my drug-addled body couldn’t keep up with. I tried harder to force my eyes open, seeing a blurry form next to me, sitting against the wall with an elbow resting on one knee. Looking for all the world like nothing was wrong.
My chest squeezed.
I squinted, the fuzzy outline of my dark prince coming in and out of focus. I could smell him. I reached a hand in his direction, but couldn’t move it more than a few inches as the drugs wore off achingly slow.
“I half expected you to starve yourself, but I figured if you’d pick something, it would be the oranges. Probably seemed the safest. Which is why they had the most Haldol in them.”
Of course he would know that. But why was he so far away? Why weren’t we leaving?
“Rook,” I tried to call to him, but my voice was nothing more than a muted rasp.
“Shh,” he said, his hands wrapping around my arms to drag me closer, to lay my head in his lap. “I’ve got you now, Angel.”
Angel?
He stroked my ratty hair, not with his fingers, but with a brush, taming the knots back to some semblance of smoothness.
His hand lay on my shoulder. My naked shoulder.
“Rook,” I tried again, my body beginning to shake all on its own.
Convulsing from trying and failing to fight the drugs in my system.
Was this what he felt like in that place?
The sanatorium where they kept him in line with so many different drugs he was only a shell of himself.
Until Grey got him out. Or was it Diesel who’d done that?
“Rook,” I tried a third time and this time his name came out a bit more clearly and the brush stroking through my hair paused.
“What did you say?”
The sharp edge to his voice threw me, and I realized the smell in my nose wasn’t Rook at all. It was citrusy, concealed with some sort of musk cologne.
I’d smelled something like it before.
“Rook?”
This time, his name was a question I was afraid to know the answer to.
“No.”
My stomach turned.
“Fucking… kill… you… motherfuck?—”
“Save your energy, Angel.”
I tried to heave my body away from him but only managed to put myself face down on the cement, arms flopping uselessly, unable to hold myself up.
Everything tingled as though a thousand insects crawled over the surface of my skin.
“I think it’s time for another dose,” he said easily, and I rolled my head to the side to see him opening a long stainless steel case, saw the syringe inside.
“No,” I managed around the lump in my throat, struggling to pull myself away with fingernails digging into the concrete.
“Then behave yourself.”
I stopped struggling.
He dropped the syringe back into the case and set it next to him. I looked away from it quickly, not wanting him to catch me staring. If I could just keep him talking. Get my strength back. Then maybe I could give him a taste of his own medicine.
I opened my mouth to ask him something. Anything. But my tongue still felt fat in my mouth, uncooperative.
Drake lifted a brow at my sad attempt, blowing out a breath as he messed with his hair. I had no sense of time in here. No idea how long I’d been stuck in this cell. But he looked worn as fuck.
With dark circles under his bloodshot eyes—so maybe it was night then.
I noticed the color of his eyes, remembering how one was blue and the other brown that night at the Docks. How the roots of his hair had appeared darker than the ends. How, if this man wore a good pair of contact lenses and dyed his hair, he could be someone else entirely.
He seemed content to just sit there and watch me lie, naked and pathetic against the cold floor, but I needed to know if the theory trying to stick in my slippery thoughts was right.
“Jericho,” I managed, butchering the name, but I knew he understood me.
His face lit up with a wide smile, showing two rows of perfectly straight white teeth.
“I knew you’d be the first one to figure it out.”
So, this was the Ace Becca was ‘dating.’
My stomach flipped, and I groaned, trying to hold in whatever was still in there when I remembered how I’d felt about Drake not that fucking long ago.
Whatever I thought… whatever I felt…
It was long gone.
“Drake?” I asked. The feeling was returning to my tongue, but I slurred the word anyway. He needed to think I still couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak properly.
I never pretended to be a great actress, even during the height of mine and Dad’s con days, but I needed this to be an Oscar-worthy performance for it to work.
He narrowed his eyes at me in reply. Of course that wasn’t his name, either.
“Who?” I asked.
“Shhh,” he hushed softly, smirking. “There will be time for all that later.”
Pain sliced through my lower stomach, and I tried to pull my knees in.
“Bathroom?” Drake asked, and I realized that was exactly what the pain was.
No sooner did I realize it than my bladder completely lost control and warmth ran down my thighs, pooling around my middle.
“Oops, too late.”
“Fuck… you.”
His eyes roved over my naked body with a promise and I swallowed back bile.
“You know who I was with today?” he asked, changing the subject, seeming to be completely unfazed by the fact I’d just pissed myself and the stink of it was quickly filling the room despite the small drain in the middle of the floor slowly sucking it all away.
“Grey.”
My heart shuddered to a stop, fire stirring from the dormant coals in my belly.
“We spent hours together. Searching for Aries.”
I watched his face, looking for any sign of something more he might not have been saying, but the smug look was still in place as he returned the favor, searching my stare for information of his own.
“We didn’t find him, of course. And we won’t. I paid him to disappear. All part of the plan.”
Something in my eyes must’ve flagged my worry because he crooked his head to the left.
“Don’t worry, Angel. Grey’s fine. I did spend the evening dreaming up some very creative ways of killing him, but there were others with us and it’s not time yet.
Besides, he’s the one I hate the least. And now, pfffft, I mean, he’s not exactly a threat with just one eye.
It’s pathetic really. He could barely walk a straight line. ”
Grief and anger warred in my chest, flushing my cheeks with fresh blood, making my fingers curl in like talons.
At least he’s alive , I reminded myself.
You can’t believe a word he says, the darkness reminded me.
“Plan?”
“But I will kill him,” Drake continued, ignoring me, his gaze unfocusing as he imagined it.
I took the opportunity to wiggle my fingers and toes, see how far up my limbs the feeling went.
“When the time is right. Once things have calmed down and the Kings have Diesel’s trust, that’s when we’ll make our move.
Take the territory that I should’ve inherited. ”
His gaze refocused on me, and I let my body sink heavily into the floor. “That’s when the real work will begin for you, Angel. To remake you. But you’ll have to wait your turn. I can only orchestrate so many masterpieces at a time.”
I snorted. “Fuck, you’re pathetic.”
His brows drew together, and in his eyes, I saw a lick of something I hadn’t noticed there before. Or maybe just hadn’t been paying close enough attention to. There was a darkness there. A sickness. Like mine but also not. His sent a tremor of revulsion rolling down my spine.
“Don’t resist this, Angel,” he said, the hard edge to his stare never waning. “You will be mine or you will be no one’s.”
“Yep,” I said, coughing against the cement. “Pathetic.”
His lips pressed into a thin line.
“I can’t… belong to a corpse,” I said with a smile, forcing the words out sluggishly, making them sound weak. “And that’s all you’ll… be… soon. My guys will… come for me.”
That struck a nerve. The sickness flashed in his gaze and goose flesh rose on his arms.
“Not yours ,” he corrected me, his gaze lifting to someplace above me as he considered something. The air in the room felt heavier as I readied myself to strike.
“Yes mine. And me… theirs. I’ll never belong… to you.”
“Hmmm,” he said, rubbing his forefinger over his chin. “You have a point. They don’t appear to want to give up looking for you, and I hadn’t expected that. I thought once you were gone…”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, the rush of blood in my ears as my body sang back to life blocked out all other sound.
They’re looking for me.
They didn’t abandon me. They didn’t wish me dead. They were looking for me.
My eyes burned as precious H2O leaked down my face and my rib cage squeezed me tight. The tiny cell expanded around me, filled with possibility. My fists clenched and a reawakened resolve to get the fuck out of this hole filled me.
A shaky breath passed my quivering lips before I clenched my teeth.
“Oh well, it doesn’t matter. They’ll give up eventually.”
They wouldn’t.
Drake lifted the metal tin from the ground and removed the syringe.
I forced my body to stay very, very still. Dead girl still.
A slow, steady breath passed between my lips, and as he rolled off his backside to his knees, arm outstretched, I came back to life.
I pushed myself up from the ground and grabbed his wrist, pulling hard to bring him off balance.
He jerked forward, and my grip slackened as dark spots crowded my vision, trying to keep me down. I dodged a strike from him on a fluke and staggered back, almost slipping on the wet floor.
“So fucking crafty,” he growled through gritted teeth as he lunged at me, lifting his right hand high.
I let the backhand connect with my face to focus all my energy on ripping the syringe from his other hand. I grunted when his knuckles knocked across my cheekbone and the piercing tip of the needle went straight through my hand.
I blinked rapidly, seeing the pointy end through the backside of my palm, a perfect teardrop of bad medicine hanging there, about to fall.
My mouth opened.
Drake paused.
Before I could think, I closed my hand around the syringe, the needle through my hand feeling so disgustingly foreign as my muscles and tendons worked around it.
I screeched as I ripped it away from him, my fingers slipping on the plunger, accidentally spewing all the sedative over my bare chest.
Fuck .
My heart lurched in my chest, feeling like it might give out at any second. The lingering sedative and adrenaline in my veins did not want to play nice together.
I shook my head fiercely, the useless syringe in my hand forgotten as I attacked, throwing myself at Drake with claws and venom. Ready to use teeth if I needed to.
I landed a hit to his jaw, and he grunted, deftly avoiding my next blow and delivering one of his own.
The fist in my stomach pushed all the air from my lungs, and I couldn’t get air back into them fast enough, choking as stars danced with the dark spots in my eyes. As the taste of blood coated the back of my tongue.
His elbow jabbed hard into my kidneys, and I went down hard, gasping against the concrete.
“Someone needs to be taught a lesson.”
A booted foot connected with my middle, and I hunched in, coughing as a cramping pain spread and vomit joined the blood in my mouth.
He kicked me again, lower, below where my arms protected the soft flesh of my belly.
The sharp pain in my cervix erased all other pain, and I bit my teeth together against a scream he didn’t deserve.
“Had enough?”
“That all you got?”
He kicked me again and again. Until I couldn’t breathe. Until it felt like my insides were liquified. But the pain reminded me I was still alive. And as long as I was, I could kill him.
Blood splattered from my mouth onto the cement on his next kick, and he stopped. I rolled onto my back, barely conscious, a hand over my broken, beaten, bleeding body.
I coughed, finding his face through the heavy curtain of unconsciousness snaking its way over my eyes.
Drake’s body heaved with each breath he took, the bite of insanity in his eyes clear even in my state. But the lines in his forehead told me he didn’t mean to take it this far. That poisonous stare roamed my body, angry, as though I’d done this to myself.
I smiled up at him, but my face twitched, not cooperating with my command. “Didn’t think?—”
My words were choked off when a sharp, stabbing pain stabbed into my belly and I groaned, a blanket of white searing through my eyes.
I thought he’d stabbed me, but when I blinked through the brightness, I found him still standing there, staring down at me with something like worry.
He knelt, reaching a hand toward my middle.
I knocked it away with a snarl. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“I’m sorry, Angel?—”
“I’m not your fucking Angel.” I spat at his feet. “I’m a Crow. Always have been. Always will be. I belong to them .”
He stared into my eyes, reading the truth there before rising steadily to his feet. “Not as long as they’re still alive.”
Cold fear and white hot rage curled opposing fists in my chest.
“I see that now.” He threw a hand through his hair, nodding to himself. “Fine. They’ll die first. It’ll make taking back what rightfully belongs to me that much easier, anyway.”
“They’ll eat you alive.”
Drake grinned at me. “No, Angel. I don’t think they will. They won’t even see me coming.”
I clawed back to my stomach, trying and failing to drag myself to him. To stop him, cursing at the spoiled floor.
“Don’t touch them!”
Drake stepped out the door, leaving it ajar.
I clambered to my feet, off balance, my belly aching with a persistent throb, the flesh there already turning fifty shades of blue.
My hand closed on the threshold, and I stepped out into the hall for half a second before he was there again, snatching my wrist, peeling my hand from the doorframe.
I threw a weak fist into his chin, but he ignored it, sticking a fresh syringe deep into the side of my neck.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Drake said in a smooth voice, catching my body against his when my knees buckled. “There’s one other problem I have to take care of first. Your scavengers have at least one more night to live.”
I moaned, sickness roiling in my stomach as my face fell against his chest. He ran a knuckle down my cheek, and I felt the press of his mouth against my temple before the sedative stole my sight, his next words a garbled mess of sound in my ears. “Hush, now, Angel. It’ll be over soon.”