Chapter 18 – Corvus
CORVUS
B arely three seconds after I entered the lobby of the Vandermark, my phone rang with an unknown caller.
“Where are you?” I growled down the line, making the early morning hotel guests give me a wider berth as I turned in a slow circle, searching for his rat face among the ridiculously opulent Christmas decor.
A rendition of Jingle Bells played over the sound system, a stark contrast to the black aura surrounding me.
“Go to the elevator.”
“Fuck that. Where. Are. You?”
“Excuse me, sir, can I help?—”
I spun on my heel, glaring down at the bellhop twiddling his thumbs nervously until he fell silent and stepped away. “Apologies, Mr. James. I didn’t recognize you.”
Eye twitching, I went to the bank of elevators. “Up or down?”
“Up,” Drake replied. “All the way up.”
“ Corvus —”
The sharp strike of flesh on flesh contact followed by a hiss cut off the sound of her voice.
“ Sparrow ,” I roared into the receiver; my pulse picked up. There was no mistaking her voice, even hoarse and pitched high as it was. This monster had my Sparrow. It wasn’t just a possibility anymore. It was a stark reality.
My phone screen cracked in my ear from my grip on it. “If you touch her?—”
“You’ll what? Up, Corvus. All the way to the top.”
I stabbed the button, my chest tight. “Let me talk to her.”
“No.”
I stepped into the elevator, hitting the button for the top floor, a miasmal feeling tapping at my bones. Telling me to turn around.
“Don’t!” Came my Sparrow’s desperate plea in the background of the call, and I crouched to the floor, dizzy, every muscle screaming with useless adrenaline. I couldn’t breathe.
Could do nothing to help her.
“Quiet,” Drake hissed, and I heard her muffled shouts as he shoved something into her mouth.
The line buzzed faintly with dead air for a moment as the elevator carried me up and up, and I schooled my breathing, knowing I would never get the frantic sound of her voice out of my head. Never. No matter how hard I tried.
The gravity of it settled in my stomach like acid coated lead. The others didn’t say it, but I knew they were thinking it. It was me. I was the reason she took off that night at the Docks.
I sent Drake after her.
Me.
“I’m going to kill you,” I promised him, my voice unrecognizable.
The elevator doors opened at the top floor, outside of a single door to the penthouse suite. Drake didn’t reply.
A muscle under my eye twitched as I rose back to my full height. “I don’t have a key.”
“Oh, you aren’t going in there. Take a left. Go to the stairs, Corvus. All the way up.”
Down the hall, an exit sign pointed to the door. Next to it a roof access sign hung on the wall.
I didn’t budge. “What is this? What do you want from me?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
I gritted my teeth.
Drake laughed hollowly down the line. “I want you to die.”
I shook my head, pushing the button for the elevator again. I wasn’t playing this game. No fucking way. “You can suck my left nut, asshole.”
The frenzied strain in his voice was clear in his reply. “Go to the stairs… or I’ll kill her.”
Bile coated the back of my throat.
He was bluffing.
All this just so he could have her. He wouldn’t kill her.
“You won’t.”
A grunt on the other end.
A pained cough.
I set my jaw.
“Go ahead, Angel,” Drake prompted. “Scream for your Crow.”
Another grunt.
“Stop.”
The tiniest whimper that told me just how hard she was working to keep herself silent despite the pain clearly being inflicted upon her.
“I said stop .”
He’d made his point. He may not kill her, but he wasn’t above hurting her to get what he wanted.
“Left. Take the stairs like a good little vulture.”
The door crashed against the wall behind me as I whipped it open and took the stairs one at a time. Each step a march in the black parade that could only lead to one possible ending.
My phone vibrated in my hand, and I chanced moving it a few inches from my ear to see Grey trying to call.
I shut my eyes tightly, jaw clicking as I ignored it and the door to the roof came into view.
It went off again. Twice.
I checked again, reading three text messages on the screen.
ROOK
Where the fuck are you?
GREY
We’re here. We found Dies’ car in the parking garage. What the hell are you doing at the Vandermark?
My stomach twisted knowing they were somewhere in the building. Looking for me. The fucking tracking app. I forgot to disable it. Or maybe subconsciously I’d wanted them to find me. To stop me.
I pushed against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s locked.”
The door clicked. The lock disengaging.
For one beautiful second I actually thought he was really on the other side. That she was too. And I could finish this.
I raised my weapon and kicked the door open, ready to fire, and was left staring into the blinding amber light of a new dawn. Seeing the heart of Thorn Valley a few miles to the west of where I was standing. And nothing else.
Gravel crunched underfoot as I swept the roof but found nothing. No one.
I put the phone back to my ear, not bothering to speak.
“You look terrible.”
My brows drew, and I looked more closely at my surroundings, finding the small black eyes of cameras placed in several places around the roof.
“I’m sure you aren’t looking too hot yourself after taking that shot to the shoulder.”
“Just a graze, nothing to worry about, but thanks for your concern.”
“Enough. I’m done talking. Get to the fucking point.”
“You see that ledge in front of you, the one facing the front of the building? Walk to it.”
“And then what?”
“Jump.”
“ Don’t you fucking dare ,” my Sparrow growled, and I could hear the struggle in her voice. The strength shining through the hoarseness and the fear.
“How do I even know she’s really there?” I ground out. “That that isn’t someone else or a fucking recording?”
I knew in my gut it wasn’t, but I was stalling. And I needed to be absolutely certain. I needed to see her. I needed Grey and Rook to find me. To stop me…
“You don’t.”
“Then you won’t get what you want. I won’t jump.”
I hung up, my stomach plummeting.
He won’t kill her.
He won’t kill her.
It was less than a minute before my phone rang again. A different sort of ringing, and when I turned my phone to my face, I saw an incoming request for a video call.
My thumb shook over the answer button before I finally pressed it, my lungs refusing to take in air.
There she was.
My throat burned.
My Sparrow caged. Her wings clipped.
Tied to a massive wooden chair with thick leather straps, the chair bolted to the floor. Lengths of dirtied white cloth tied around her neck, her wrists, her forearms, her shins. Binding her so completely that I doubted she could move more than half an inch.
Fury and fear danced in her eyes, the dark hollows beneath them making the sharp sea glass color of them cut me to the bone. A red knuckle pattern marred her pale cheek. Blood stained the oversized white t-shirt covering her otherwise naked body. Her legs trembled against their binds.
Her chin quivered around the mound of gauze gagging her and she shut her eyes, trying to hide herself from me. To hide the reality of where she’d been. What she’d been through.
She didn’t want me to see.
“There,” Drake said and the image shook as he settled his phone somewhere so he could enter the shot. He strode toward her in the small room.
Cement walls. A drain in the floor. I couldn’t see the roof.
It looked like a cell.
I took a screenshot. Then another as he ran a finger over her collarbone and bile rose up the back of my throat.
Her eyes shot open at his touch, and heat flooded my veins.
“ Oh, ” Drake said, a smile widening on his lips as he crooned in Ava Jade’s ear. “He doesn’t like that, does he? That’s right. He’s the jealous one. Can’t stand to have anyone else look at or touch what he mistakenly thinks is his.”
He snatched her chin, his tongue flicking out from between his lips like a snake to lick her from jaw to earlobe. Her muffled attempts to shout at him only made it ten times worse as her body convulsed in disgust.
“You know, you were right,” he said, releasing her chin, his eyes on me while he reached lower, fingers dipping below the neckline of the t-shirt. “I won’t kill her. And it seems hurting her isn’t motivating enough, but…”
Her jaw clenched when he found her breast and the thin t-shirt material shifted as he squeezed it, hard.
My breaths came hot and ragged. The ground beneath my feet seemed to shake. But I couldn’t look away, forcing myself to watch what I allowed to happen.
“But there are other things I can do,” Drake continued, flicking his hair back from his face as he withdrew his hand only to snatch the collar of the shirt and tear it clean down the middle, exposing her naked body to the camera.
Fuck.
Fuck .
Her lower abdomen was a map of purple, black, yellow, and blue. Swollen.
I shut my eyes against a wave of vertigo.
“I was going to wait until she begged me for it, but maybe I’ll sample her now.”
“Don’t touch her.”
“Unless…” Drake looked at me expectantly.
My eyes tracked to the edge of the roof and back. No.
I needed to end this bastard, and I couldn’t do that from six feet underground.
“Then just remember,” Drake said, his smug expression souring with impatience. “This is on you . Not me.”
He bit his lower lip, his dirty hands finding her breasts again, twisting her nipples until her eyes watered.
“Tell him how good it feels, Angel,” Drake crooned, removing her gag as he twisted her left nipple again and she bit back a cry.
“ Fuck you ,” she hissed through gritted teeth, her eyes lifting to the phone. To me. “I don’t care what he does to me. Hang up. Just hang up the phone. Corvus .”
Drake rounded the chair, kneeling in front of her, between her splayed legs, leaning to one side so I would have a better view while he pushed a hand up her thigh.
My knees hit hard gravel.
My Sparrow’s gaze lifted to the ceiling, trying not to watch what he was doing between her legs, every tendon and vein in her neck taut and swollen. “Just don’t look,” she urged me, the fire in her voice almost enough to cover the edge of panic.
“Stop.”
He did as I asked but didn’t remove his filthy hands from my woman. “Jump now and I promise you I will not touch her again until she asks. And she will ask.”
“How can I trust that?”
“You can’t,” Drake said with a smile. “But you can watch me fuck her if you prefer.”
I met her eyes in the camera, lifting a trembling finger to the screen as if I could touch her through it.
The texts from my brothers were non-stop now, flashing over the top of the video, frantic.
They couldn’t find me, I realized. If they did, Drake would only force them over the edge, too. And they’d go…
My mind was already made up.
Ava Jade gasped as Drake drove two fingers into her pussy, her jaw clenched so tight I could see every edge of the angled bone.
“ Stop. I’ll do it.”
“No!”
He withdrew.
My Sparrow continued in an onslaught of threats and curses, all of them aimed at me. I deserved it. I deserved it all.
What better way to prove how sorry I was for everything? That I loved her?
I would rather die than watch him touch her for another second. I would rather spend eternity in the fiery pits of hell than see the strain in her eyes. Hear the fear she worked so hard to hide in her voice.
I should’ve died twelve years ago. In that bedroom with my fucked up family.
I should’ve died a hundred times since.
Numb, I lifted the phone to my face, hating that I’d never see hers again, but my brothers would.
“Rook and Grey will find you,” I promised her, speaking over her broken, shouting voice.
I looked at Drake now, who pushed himself to his feet, the triumph in his eyes making my chest burn with rage. “I’ll see you in hell.”
“Looking forward to it.”
My Sparrow sobbed, her curses and shouts weaker as she lobbied them through the dam blocking her voice. “I hate you!” she screamed at me. “Don’t do this!”
But I was already walking to the edge, stepping up to the plate. Batting my last fucking round.
She’d be fine without me. They would all be.
Rook and Grey had a bond far stronger than I shared with either of them. And who’s fault is that ? My subconscious hissed.
My own.
I didn’t let people get close. Wouldn’t let them in. Let them see what hid beneath the layers I sealed myself inside.
And now I never would.
“I’m sorry, Sparrow. For everything.”
I dropped my phone onto the gravel and turned away from the view of the city I’d come to call home, shutting my eyes. Spreading my wings wide. My heels shuffled beyond the ledge, hanging over empty air.
…and I fell.