Chapter 20
Cobra
Two months of domestic bliss—by which I meant bickering arguments, getting thrashed at ten different games as of last night, and sex so good there weren’t fucking words—had left me weak.
Lynn brought me peace like I’d never known, settled all the demons in my head until I could manage to think even with them screaming at me.
I faced my past, just like she did, and with my woman beside me, I was doing well.
Handling shit better than I had in years, smoking less, drinking for fun instead of oblivion, remembering to eat three meals a day, even going to the gym for exercise rather than just beating the shit out of the punching bag.
On my bad days, I visited whoever we had locked in Tybalt’s torture dungeon, and put my demons to good use by beating information out of trash alphas and beta abusers.
Then the Knights used that information for good, to get people out of the hell I’d lived through, the hell Lynn had faced and fought and won.
I was thinking clearer than I had in years, breathing without the ever-present weight on my chest, so today hit me with the force of a cargo train.
Demons were easier to ignore when they were simply voices in your head.
Impossible to shut out when you could smell them, the stench of bitter chocolate and cherry an assault on my senses. In my peace of mind.
It was like someone grabbed me by the throat and physically threw me back seven years, to the hovel I’d lived in, suffered in, whored in.
The set-up here was exactly the same. Not a block of flats, but a run-down house just outside the city, with most rooms set up to hold two or three beds, the mattresses cheap and thin resting on metal frames, dents and scratches in the rails where people had been cuffed to them.
I rubbed my wrist with a shaking hand, tracing the scar tissue I’d covered with ink.
Invisible, but always there, always a remnant of my past. I hadn’t got free of those cuffs no matter how hard I fought.
And the worst part was I got myself into that situation.
None of it would ever have happened if I wasn’t a little prick and got myself arrested for stealing a glossy new phone from a shop we didn’t have the money to buy anything from.
It was my third offense, and when I got out of my short stint in juvie, Mum kicked me out.
Said I’d drag Em down the same criminal path.
The irony was, juvie was traumatic enough, and I probably would have gone straight after I got out, but it’s hard to live on the streets with no money.
Hard to live on the streets, full stop. I later found out Dad had no clue I’d been kicked out, and went fucking mental, took custody of Em, left Mum, and moved into a new, smaller place.
He looked for me the whole time, harassing the police until he was warned they’d arrest him next.
I never knew any of that while I was struggling to find a safe place to sleep, raiding bins for something to eat.
Around my eighteenth birthday, a guy my age approached with an offer, and it seemed like a gift, like the universe had decided I deserved saving after all.
The jobs were easy at first. Simple shoplifting, pickpocketing, petty crime.
I should have got out then. I would have if I thought anyone in the world wanted me, but Mum had done too good a job fucking with my head that I accepted a bigger job for a better pay-out.
It went so fucking sideways, and pissed off my employer.
Not the lad who recruited me—he was just the lure.
By the time I realised that, and understood how powerful the alphas I worked for really were, I couldn’t get out.
The police got involved after my failed job, looked too closely at the bosses, and I owed them for covering up my mess.
I owed them for keeping me out of jail when anyone else would have thrown me in a cell to rot.
I didn’t believe the shit about them seeing potential in me, but I was so desperate for the second chance, to stay out of prison, that I went along with whatever they asked. I was willing, at first. Like I said, I got myself into that shit. I only had myself to blame.
“Cobra,” Prodigy said quietly, coming to stand alongside me as I stared at the bare room, the sheets hanging half off the shitty mattress, the cuffs still dangling from one of the headboards.
Prodigy knew better than to touch me but I sensed he wanted to.
I must have looked a fucking mess if he was so concerned.
“Everyone else is downstairs,” he said, like an offering.
I jerked my head up and down, tried to swallow the knot in my throat.
Couldn’t stop staring at the room, couldn’t stop smelling bitter chocolate and cherry.
“My first friend died in a room exactly like this,” I said in a rasp, my stomach churning, a force building inside my chest. I gestured at the hovel.
“She was on that bed, left for dead. I was on that one.”
Not this exact bed in this exact room, but I thought Prodigy understood. “You got out,” he said in that gentle but firm voice only he could pull off. It usually pissed me off, but right now I clung to it like a lifeline as my demons howled and screamed and ripped through all the progress I’d made.
“How many did we find here?” I asked instead of acknowledging that.
“Five,” he replied, watching me.
I nodded. Swallowed. “There’s room for six. He’d have been renting them out, probably two or three clients a night, seven nights a week.”
Prodigy sighed. Heavily. Considered putting his hand on my shoulder and thought better of it.
“If that money’s still here, I want it split between those five people. Let them keep their own fucking money.”
“Cobra.”
“I’m fine,” I snarled, the pressure in my chest building. It would erupt, and soon, but I curled my hands into fists and held it together. “It’s just—the same scent. But I’m fine.”
“Go keep watch outside with Devil. We’ll handle everything here. I’ll tell Tyb to personally make the fucker who ran this place suffer, for as long as possible.”
“I’m fine to stay—”
“Outside,” he insisted, heavy on the dominance.
I sighed. I could have fought him on it, but I didn’t want to stay. I just didn’t want to seem like a coward. “Thanks,” I muttered, and headed for the stairs. But even outside, bitter cherry chocolate invaded my senses. I couldn’t escape it.
My stomach roiled so badly I tasted bile and acid. Every time I blinked, I saw that room upstairs, and then the room where I’d been sold over and over until I couldn’t stand to have anyone touch me.
“The fuck are you looking at?” I snarled when I caught Devil glancing at me.
He held up his hands, palms out. “Just wondering if you want a smoke.”
He wasn’t. He could see me losing it, my hands shaking, my leg bouncing. He could probably smell it in my scent.
“Yeah,” I croaked, my voice rough, broken. I accepted the cigarette and lit the end, dragging poison into my lungs, closing my eyes as it burned away that bittersweet scent. It was why I started smoking in the first place.
I dragged a hand over my head, dug in my fingernails. For a few short months, I’d felt okay. Better than okay—I was good. Stable. Looking to the future instead of constantly trying to outrun my past.
Now, I was right back there, and I knew the truth. There was no outrunning it. It would always find me.