Chapter 19
DAMON
The delicious sounds of grunting, and pained shrieks, reach my ears just inside the large, metal door of the warehouse, and a ripple of pleasure races underneath my skin.
Cross and River's heavy footsteps echo along the gritty, dark concrete floor, as they make their way further into the space ahead of me after attempting, and failing, to get me to clean my unhinged princess’s lipstick off my face.
I like the way it feels on my skin, and I enjoy knowing that something that has been on her lips is now on mine.
A slithering humming begins in my head, as I take a deep inhale of the combination of bleach, old blood, oil, and terror.
The smell alone is enough to have my cock stirring in my pants.
My body shakes with the last remnants of all the drugs and alcohol left inside my system, and I instantly crave more to numb all the sensations that constantly keep me on edge.
Weak. Failure. Useless. The shadows that constantly plague me whisper around my body, forcing me to acknowledge their truths, even if everything within me wishes to deny them.
I make my way past the last barrier designed to obstruct the view from the entrance way, and allow my eyes to trail over the bleak space.
The warehouse consumes the sounds we make; its thick, concrete and metal walls almost seem to breathe, absorbing everything within them as if it were a menacing, living entity that protects the evil perpetrated here.
The small groans echo back to me thin and wrong, off bare cement, and the fluorescent lights above us buzz in a steady, clinical rhythm, like a mosquito that never dies.
A single dirty drain gapes in the middle of the floor, silver mixed with rust, obscenely, waiting for its contribution to the acts being committed here tonight.
How many deaths, and how much blood, have these walls and floors seen?
How much death will coat my hands before I finally take my last breath on this miserable earth?
We will never let you go, the wraiths that plague me hiss, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to rise.
Below the bright lights, that do nothing to disperse the shadows that torment me, a man is strapped down naked to a metal table, the type you find at the morgue.
Thick, brown leather straps brace across his bare chest and thighs, immobilizing him to the table, and around his thick wrists, cold, metal chains bite into his skin.
He’s a raw thing; bruises meld into each other all over the surface of his body, causing him to look like an abstract painting of red, deep purples, and black.
A split lip opens into a small, dark river that trails down the side of his face, and makes a path toward his thick neck.
His dark eyes are wide, too much of the white showing, mixed with broken blood vessels, and he tries to watch me through their swelling shells.
Measuring me with beseeching eyes, but pleading is useless here.
Begging sounds like a confession the shadows have already devoured.
There is no hope to be found between these walls, or at my filthy hands.
The shadows are loud tonight, vibrating, demanding, and entreating an offering after my miserable failure with the unhinged princess.
They crawl along the walls like insects coming out to feed off the carnage, predators that smear death into the corners of their teeth before they grin widely at you with satisfaction.
They whisper my name, and then argue over how to make him stop his mewling sound that not only entices them, but also annoys them with his weakness.
They tell me he betrayed us, that the dark, icy rain will be harsh and drown us if we forgive, as if that could ever be a possibility.
I want to immediately answer them the only way that ever quiets them, with noise louder than their voices.
With someone’s pain and blood, it instantly drowns out their malignant whispers, so that I can breathe without them suffocating me.
I pass a silent man, dressed all in black, with a menacing aura.
Everything about him screams alpha predator and death.
The shadows give him a wide berth as if even they're frightened of him.
His dead, green eyes follow each of us into the space, assessing whether we're a threat to him, and by his expression, he finds us lacking.
His large, muscled body belies his age, and is at the ready to dispatch us back to the hell each of us crawled out of.
The large, ugly scar that mars the side of his face shows the world that he's a survivor, and not one to be messed with. It's a deadly warning, in case you missed all the other glaring cues. He’s a walking red flag, and you’d have to be insane to mess with him.
Diego Cabano, the head of the Cabano family crime syndicate, stands with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, the deceiving calm of a man who trades in things that break and destroy people remorselessly, calling it business.
He’s the partner, the one who knows how to keep the weapons flowing across borders, the instruments of corruption clean, and the numbers of dead quiet.
The 'Venomous Snake' they call him. If you've earned his attention, you're already dead and just don't know it.
Beside him, like a dark, stunning porcelain threat, is his daughter, Julia.
A prize of the underworld, and from everything I've heard in the whispers, just as deadly and unapologetic as her father. She’s twenty, I’m told, a few years younger than us, young enough that the taste of mischief still sits sugary on her tongue.
Her exquisite eyes watch every movement that all of us make, like a vulture taking notes.
Her dark brow rises in my direction, but that’s the only reaction we get from her.
She is, by all accounts, her father's daughter. She doesn’t flinch, as one of her father's men strikes the man confined to the table, until a tooth flies out of his damaged mouth and lands just inches away from her dainty, heeled feet. She doesn’t look away, because where others in this room might find such scenes ugly, she finds the bloom of them alluring.
That makes something in me want to kneel at her unhinged feet, regardless of the danger her father represents, but a vision of purple hair soars into my mind unforgivingly.
It causes my chest to tighten painfully, and my head to throb from the injuries Olivia inflicted on me, reminding me that my loyalty and desire now belong elsewhere.
Julia smiles once, a small and precise gesture.
Her rose colored lips tilting invitingly upwards, forcing my thoughts away from the woman who has entwined herself into my very molecules, both with rage and lust. You can see clearly the pleasure Julia draws from what's happening here, from the calculus of fear, and the bloodshed.
It's almost a mirror to the shadow voices that plague me.
Not afraid. Not shocked. Not even impressed.
She’s somehow satisfied, and I feel a sense of that satisfaction in my chest, like an answered prayer.
For an instant, the voices shut up, and they rest in the hollow she leaves behind.
I find myself fascinated, an ache of curiosity and something colder penetrating me to the core.
The way she watches makes whatever I'm about to do feel sanctioned.
A benevolent, foreboding, angry queen, granting favors to her waiting depraved knights.
It causes a cold shiver to slide down my spine, as if an icy skeletal finger were caressing my skin.
Cross strikes forward, after acknowledging Diego and Julia with a short, respectful nod, and grabs onto the restrained man's chin, forcing his gaze toward him.
He squeezes his flesh so harshly that more blood pours from the man's mouth, and he spurts, spraying blood splatter across Cross's face and shirt, which immediately triggers him.
His fist instantly connects with the man's stomach, knocking what little air he was inhaling right out of him.
“What did you tell them?” Cross spits with rage.
His question is not curiosity; it is ownership being reclaimed by force.
He's a prince of the underworld in waiting, ready to take his father's crown and empire by any means necessary, and he's filled with the constant necessity to prove himself as a more heinous, deadly version of his sire. He wants to know whether names were said, routes exposed, and how many of our friends’ futures were sold for a handful of leniency.
He needs to determine if we're walking around with a rope tied around our necks, and on borrowed time, thanks to this cowardly fucker.
Judas, kill him! The shadows demand, but I ignore them, knowing full well that Cross will determine what happens next and not them.
Cross releases his hold with disgust, his furious, molten chocolate eyes meeting mine, and in them I see the command, the one to do everything and anything to get results, and the answers he desires.
The shadows shriek loudly with pleasure, and it causes my breath to increase rapidly, until my heart is a stallion galloping inside my chest. Cross begins to pace like a caged animal, a slow, furious rotation that has nothing to do with the man strapped beneath us and everything to do with the prize that slipped through his fingers earlier tonight and all the demands placed on him by his father.
Diego Cabano and his pretty daughter watch undaunted, waiting to see whether we will garner results, and whether we're deserving of their respect.