Chapter 53
Chapter
Fifty-Three
WREN
M y mind wakes up before my body does. That feeling you get when you’re in that land of being in between sleep and awake is flowing through me, making me almost dizzy. You feel like you’re floating along as your body catches up to your brain, and you can actually open your eyes.
Blinking the dizziness away, my eyes slowly open.
I’m met with darkness.
My head is pounding in my ears, and the pain is almost unbearable. I hiss on a wince as I try to move my arm. The same arm he roughly grabbed. It’s already sore to move, so I know there has to be a massive bruise.
It takes me another few moments to realize that I’m in a moving car.
In the trunk of a moving car to be exact.
I smash the top of my head on the roof as I try to sit up, making me cry out as I lay back down. The pounding in my ears intensifies to a new level that I didn’t even think was possible.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Wren,” I mumble to myself, and I try to feel out the lump that has formed on my head. “You know you’re in the trunk. Why would you try to sit up?”
I hope Matteo finds me.
I’m a fighter. You have to be living on my side of the city. But even a fighter can only fight for so long when you’re dealing with an unhinged lunatic.
And that’s exactly what this guy is.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why he thinks I need to die because I helped Matteo and saw his car. Does he know how many people still drive his car around? Maybe not on Matteo’s side of the city, but definitely on mine.
I’m pissed at myself for not having better aim with the letter opener. In a perfect world, I would have fucking killed him, but when has my life ever gone the way I wanted it to? I live in a constant state of ‘welcome to the shit show.’
I couldn’t have done that much damage if he’s still able to drive a car. Assuming that idiot is alone.
My body tenses up as I start to feel the car slow down to turn into what feels like a parking lot from the small dip the car took before going up again. The adrenaline is running through my body at an all-time high as I feel him park the car. I hold my breath as I feel the shocks of the car rise up slightly as he gets out, slamming his door shut behind him. The loud steps of his boots on the pavement echo throughout the trunk as he slowly makes his way toward me. My heart pounds with every step.
The trunk pops open, and my eyes take a moment to adjust, going from pitch-black darkness to one dimly lit by the street lamps. A shadowy figure comes into my line of sight, making me tense from the uncertainty of what’s to come .
He grunts as he bends over, reaching his hand out and pulling me out by my hair. I bite my tongue until it bleeds, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing my cries.
“You can struggle to get away from me all you want out here. No one is going to help you,” he sneers as he tightens his grip on my hair.
It takes me a few seconds to blink away the white dots that cloud my vision from him yanking my head around before I can focus on my surroundings.
I look at him out of the corner of my eye after I take in my old apartment building. The one place I never wanted to come back to. Even if after all of this mess was over and Matteo changed his mind, I wouldn’t come back to this shithole.
What kind of sick game is he playing?
“Go,” he says, shoving me forward. I don’t have enough time to pick up my feet before I’m toppling over the curb, landing hard on my hands and knees. I bite my tongue again, feeling more blood ooze out into my mouth as I try to contain another hiss from the sting. The metallic taste is almost enough to make me throw up, but I swallow it down.
I lift my head up, hoping and praying that Mark is sitting in his spot and not two sheets to the wind yet.
It takes everything in me to not laugh because, of course, out of all of the times I’ve come and gone, the one time I need him here, he’s not.
Fuck.
“Get the fuck up,” he growls, roughly grabbing me by the hair again and yanking me up, sending another jolt of pain through my throbbing head. The cool nighttime air feels like it’s slicing across my skin as it hits the cuts on my palms and knees.
I force myself to place one foot in front of the other with no other choice but to enter the building .
“What are you stopping for?”
I swallow as I quickly try to figure out how to answer in a way that won’t push him out of crazy town and into murder city. “I don’t have a place here anymore,” I say as slowly as possible, hoping something will penetrate.
The laugh he lets out is sickening. “Oh, I know. Good ‘ole Matteo just swoops in and saves the day. Everyone wants to be Matteo. I’m fucking sick of it. Matteo this. Matteo that,” he rants. “I don’t get it. What’s so great about fucking Matteo? I try and try to climb the ranks, and no one fucking notices me. No one fucking pays attention. Do you want to know how I’m rewarded for my hard work?”
I decide to stay silent because I get the feeling he doesn’t actually want to hear my answer.
“I’m cast aside and made to do a job that’s meant for a fucking kid.” He spits on the ground. “It’s fucking beneath me. Beneath me!” he yells. “Go.”
“Where do you want me to go?”
“Don’t play dumb.” His angry whisper is sickening, sending a chill down my spine.
“I’m not playing dumb,” I grit out. “I don’t have the keys.”
“Why would I need a key? I didn’t need one the last time I visited.” He smirks. A wave of nausea hits as the memory of him dragging me out of the bedroom comes flooding back. I hear a click just before I feel something cool and hard press into my side. “Now, I’m not going to repeat myself again, so you better get fucking moving.”
I start to climb the stairs as slowly as possible, hoping that the creepy phone sex guy that no one has ever seen but only hears will miraculously leave his apartment and help me.
It doesn’t happen.
We reached my old front door faster than I would have liked. The bad memories will always outweigh the bad in this place. Every time I see this front door, an impending sense of dread wraps me up like a blanket. Only right now that blanket is trying to suffocate me.
“Don’t fucking move. I will shoot you.” Thanks. I got that by the fucking gun pressed into me the whole way up . I roll my eyes before I can stop myself. He has a limp from where I stabbed him in the leg as he steps around me, scaring me when he starts kicking the door in.
After five hard kicks, that’s all it takes. The door flies open, banging against the apartment wall.
“ This is your chance,” a little voice in the back of my head says . Without hesitating any longer, I make a break for it by taking the stairs down three steps at a time.
“Son of a bitch!” I hear him yell behind me. “Get back here, you stupid bitch.”
My ankle gives out on the landing, rolling and bending at an angle it isn’t meant to ever bend in. I cry out as I feel it snap; the sharp, almost unbearable pain shoots up my leg. Tears are running down my face before I can stop them.
My abductor reaches me, yanking me back by my arm. Hard. Another pop echoes throughout the corridor. My focus on him is quickly fading. White spots look like little pieces of confetti as they litter my vision from the blinding pain that is running through me right now. My arm feels like it’s just dangling, like the only thing keeping it semi-attached to my body is the skin that surrounds it.
I’m dragged back up the flight of stairs and down the hallway. If I make it through this, a small part of me wants to come back and kill every single person that lives in this building for not even poking a head out to see what’s going on.
Once inside, he tries to slam the front door shut, but the broken lock leaves it cracked.
Unfortunately, the place looks just like I left it, minus my shitty furniture. I close my eyes in defeat. More tears squeeze through the cracks and pour down my face, mixing with the blood that’s trickling out of the corner of my mouth. The salty metallic taste splits my heart in two. Matteo is never going to get to taste me again in that way, and it kills me.
“Now,” he sneers as he limps over to me, “let’s finish what we started, shall we?” He draws his good leg back, landing a kick so hard to my ribs that I slide a few feet back on the floor. The air is stolen from my lungs as the wind is knocked out of me.
I’m gasping for breath as I slap my hand on the hard floor, trying to pull myself away from him.
“I’m sorry, my knight,” I say so softly that I can barely hear it.
An eerie calm feeling washes over me. Knowing you’re about to die is such a weird feeling. You’re sad. Sad about all of the things you know you’re going to miss out on and the regrets you have from things you never did or said. You’re mad. Mad as fuck that the fight is being taken from you. You’re happy. Happy because you know you gave every single fucking ounce of everything you had to this shitshow we call life. And even with all of those emotions, you’re somehow at peace because you know the pain and suffering are coming to an end.
“I should kill you the way you tried to kill me,” he says as he limps toward me. “Stab you right in the fucking stomach. I spent a month not being able to get out of bed because of you. You’re going to pay for that too.”
“Don’t do this.” I gasp out; each breath I take feels like I’m being stabbed.
His dead laugh rings out through the apartment as he throws his head back and laughs manically. “You’re begging isn’t going to work on me, stupid bitch. As much as I want to draw this out, I won’t. Want to know why?” He pauses to stare down at me, his dead eyes looking at me, but I can tell they aren’t really seeing me. He’s too far gone. “Because I can’t wait to see the look on Matteo’s face when I send him a picture of his girl with her fucking face blown off.” He pulls a gun out of the waistband of his jeans and points it right at me.
I’m looking right down the barrel of a gun when shouting irrupts in the room, making him whip around.
This is the distraction I need. I just need to drag myself to my bedroom and lock myself in. I just need to get away from him.
My heart stops when he frantically turns his attention back toward me and aims his gun where, if he shot it, a bullet would hit me right between the eyes.
The last thing I think as I squeeze my eyes shut and a shot rings out is that I never got to tell Matteo I love him.