Chapter 36
CHAPTER 36
Ivy
I jump back on my bike and race off as fast as I possibly can, ignoring all the stop signs. I nearly get hit but manage to avoid a car by a hair. The driver hangs his head out the window to yell at me, but I ignore him.
There’s no more time.
I have to get to her before it’s too late.
Please, please, please, let Cora be okay.
Goddammit, I shouldn’t have asked Mrs. Schwartz to watch her in my apartment. I should’ve just let her bring Cora to her place. At least then those fuckers might not find her.
I fish my phone from my pocket while driving and call Mrs. Schwartz’s number three times, but she doesn’t pick up.
“Goddammit!” I yell across the street, ignoring everyone who looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, racing around like this in a tiny yellow dress, but I don’t care.
I stuff my phone back, so I can focus on biking as quickly as possible. Adrenaline drives me forward while sweat now cakes my entire skin as the heat rushes through my body, but I keep going. I refuse to give up. Not now. Not ever. I will fight tooth and nail until my last dying breath because that’s what I should’ve done to begin with.
I will fucking make it.
I’m coming for you, Cora.
I race through the streets, my lungs nearly collapsing from the amount of oxygen they have to process, but when I finally reach my area, my eyes light up. There’s no one here. Maybe I made it in time.
But the closer I get to my building, the more I’m feeling anxious. Weird. Like someone followed me here.
Still, I jump off my bike, park it in the usual spot, and turn around.
Only to be pummeled in the chest.
I’m knocked to the ground, headfirst. I groan, sucking in a sharp breath, but my lungs sting. Suddenly, someone crawls on top of me as two hands snake around my throat, squeezing tightly.
I can’t breathe.
What’s happening?
“You thought you could escape?”
In front of me is a black mask … with an emblem of Bones.
My eyes widen.
Oh God.
I fight back underneath the man, slamming my fist into his face, but it doesn’t even seem to faze him.
“You think that’ll stop us?” His fingers slowly unravel from my neck.
“Us?” I choke out, coughing.
More of those masked men come out of all the nooks and crannies in this street, even one from behind the building I live in.
“We know where you’ve been hiding, Ivy.”
My pupils dilate.
I kick around, thrashing, hitting everything in my path, but some other fucker holds down my feet while another drags me away from underneath the guy.
“Tie her up and take her to the van.”
“NO!” I yell. “Let go of me!”
I fish my knife from my pocket and slash at them as hard as I can, cutting through one of their arms. One of them howls in pain, but the knife is knocked from my hand with ease.
“Fuck, she cut me!”
WHACK!
A hard slap to the face makes my head spin.
“You’re a spicy one, aren’t you?” The guy laughs as he chokes me out. “This dress is far too fancy to spoil with blood. Maybe I’ll take you to the boss in a few hours instead of right away. Have some fun with you while you beg for your life.”
The sound of a motorcycle echoes through the streets, and the bright light blinds me. I shriek as it’s headed straight toward me, but right before it hits, it swerves and knocks down the guy holding my arms.
The biker then drives right over him, breaking bone after bone in his body.
The guy gargles out a screaming moan.
Finally, I can breathe again.
Until some other fucker clamps down on my ankles and refuses to let go.
“Get off me!” I shriek, kicking.
Motorcycle guy has turned his bike around again, but I’m far too busy shaking this fucker off my legs because he won’t let me go.
“Fuck off!” I scream, kicking him like my life depends on it.
After I roll around on the asphalt, he finally loses his grip, and I crawl backward away from him. The asshole still follows me, attempting to grasp my ankles again, so I swiftly get to my feet and attempt to brawl with him.
They wanna take me? Fine. I won’t go quietly.
Motorcycle guy jumps off his bike as five more goons appear from the sidelines, all sporting butcher knives.
“You messed with the wrong fucking guys.”
Motorcycle guy doesn’t say a word as he casually unzips his coat and pulls out two sizable knives while I avoid a knockout blow to the face.
I throw a left fist and punch the fucker who tried to take me by the legs in the gut.
He groans in pain but swiftly regains his composure and grips my second fist midair, knocking me back into a wall.
“Whoever the hell you summoned isn’t going to save you,” he grits. “You’re outnumbered.”
“Says who?” I grit, trying to lie my way through this.
A fist comes at my face, but I lean sideways and narrowly avoid it. However, a second hit of his knee in my stomach makes me buck and heave.
The guy grabs me by the hair. “Not so confident now, are we?”
He kicks me in the shins from the side, and I’m knocked to the ground.
Suddenly, a knife comes flying right at us and hits the guy in the back.
He groans and falls over on top of me.
Motorcycle guy grabs him by the shoulders and hauls him off me, shoving him aside. He stares me down for a second, but I can’t see his eyes behind that dark visor, and I shudder in place.
When the guy comes up to a crawl, another knife is thrown at him… straight in the back of his skull. Blood explodes everywhere—on the asphalt, on my clothes, my skin, on his helmet.
Who is this guy?
In shock, I stare, still on the ground, as Motorcycle guy waltzes off and slams his fist into another one of those fuckers who came for me, pummeling him to the ground before piercing his eye, pricking it to his knife like a goddamn marshmallow he wants to roast.
The guy screams in pain. “What the fuck?!”
Motorcycle guy grips his mouth and cracks open his jaw, shoving the eye inside.
What the fuck—
Two hands grip my ankles, dragging me across the pavement, and I shriek. “NO!”
I grab the knife stuck in the dude’s head and rip it out, ramming it into the asphalt in an effort to save myself from being hauled away.
Motorcycle guy chucks one of his bloodied knives right at the fucker who’s grabbed me, and it punctures his neck near the base of the skull, severing the connection to his own brain.
He collapses on the ground while I crawl away to a safer spot.
“What the fuck do you want?!” one of the other guys yells at Motorcycle guy.
All I can do is gape at the massacre in front of me.
Motorcycle guy straightens his back, muscles clearly rippling through his outfit. “Touch her, and it’ll be the last fucking thing your fingers touch on this goddamn earth before I wipe you off it.”
Wait a minute … I recognize that voice.
He swings his knife around like it’s a toy. “Now … who’s ready to die?”
“You motherfucker, you’ll pay for this!” one of the men yells at Motorcycle guy.
Two, three, four guys all come at the stranger at once, but he dodges their attacks like he’s done this a million times before. He shoves a knife into the first guy’s temple, then pulls it out to slice the second one’s face from ear to ear.
But a third one approaches him from behind, and I scream, “Watch out!”
I snatch the knife from the ground and attempt to chuck it at the third guy.
Too late.
The guy cuts him with a butcher’s knife from the back, jamming the knife straight through his visor, shattering it to pieces.
I squeal in response, worried he’s hurt, but in a millisecond while he turns to face the fucker, his green eyes find mine in the dark while red streaks of blood roll down his sharp nose. Those black-and-white hairs fluttering around his forehead make me hold my breath.
Is that…?!
He rips the butcher’s knife out of his visor and jabs the guy straight in the heart.
“Fuck…” the guy groans before collapsing.
The fourth one’s neck is sliced open, and blood sprays everywhere.
All of them fall to the ground while Motorcycle guy is covered in their blood from head to toe.
The road in front of me is littered with bodies, and I barely believe what I just saw with my own damn eyes.
An absolute slaughter.
My heart is going a million miles an hour.
But what surprises me the most is the thrill in my heart at the sight of vengeance over the people who tried to take me.
Motorcycle guy walks up to me, and I take a few deep breaths as he towers over me.
“Silas?” I mutter in disbelief.
He squats in front of me, the knife still firmly clutched in his hand, as he finally removes the helmet. “Nice to see you too, twig.”
I’m too stunned to say a word.
Silas Rivera came to save me?
My eyes scan his face and flutter to the knife in an attempt to decipher the meaning of this.
He grips my face and turns it left and right, glancing at the red marks. But then his fingers curl underneath my shirt and tug it up, exposing the bruise on my stomach.
I immediately grasp his wrist. “I’m fine.”
His gaze intensifies. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
My jaw slowly drops as my brain finally kicks back into gear.
“How did you find me?” I frown as he glances at my bike, and I realize what’s going on. “You put a tracker on my bike.”
“You think I’d let my property out of my sight?”
“ Property ?” I parrot. The insolence. “I’m no one’s prop—”
He grips my chin and leans in, pointing the sharp end of the knife at my lips, and I shudder in place as it slowly slides down my neck all the way to my chest. “Did you forget the deal you made with me that night, thief?”
His knife circles my heart.
“I let my friends play with you because I love to see you squirm, but don’t mistake my interest in sharing for leniency. Everything you are belongs to me. This body. This brain. This heart.” He inches so close I can feel his hot, bloodied breath on my skin. “These lips and every inch of your skin is my belonging. My property. Mine .” A diabolical grin forms on his face. “And no one touches what I deem mine.”
My eyes travel across his face in an attempt to decipher why it feels like it’s being suffocated.
Like I can’t look anywhere else but at his face and those droplets of blood rolling down his cheeks, a testament to his power as a soulless killer.
He maims with ease.
He could end my life in an instant.
Yet he chooses to defend me instead.
With his bloodied knife, he draws a heart on my chest.
I try to breathe.
Honestly.
I swear on my life.
But my lungs are in dissent.
And my body, God, does it hurt … and ache … and long for more.
Fuck.
“I killed them all to protect you. Now, are you finally going to tell me why you need all that money, and if that’s the reason they were after you?” He tilts his head while sporting a smirk. “Or do I have to fuck it out of you?”