21. Jack
Jack
The leather of the back seat is cold, smelling of cheap cologne and pine, but none of it compares to the ice running through my veins.
The steady thrum of the tires on the highway feel like a countdown, each rotation pulling me further from the life I built, further from Silas, and deeper into the grave I dug for myself.
Ray sits in the passenger seat, turned just enough so I can feel his stare pressing into me. He wears the same smirk he used to give me when he cornered me in the hallway as a kid.
“Look at you, stray dog,” Ray murmurs, his voice low and rough. “Knew you’d come home eventually. They always do when the leash gets pulled.”
I keep my eyes on the floor mats, my hands balled into fists.
I refuse to look at him. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me break, even though my chest feels like it’s caving in.
Every mile marker we pass is another nail in my coffin.
We cross the border into the States with papers my dad clearly paid someone off for.
“He’s quiet,” my dad grunts from the driver’s seat.
He hasn’t looked at me once since he shoved me into the back seat. His tone is flat, dripping with the same disgust he’s carried for me since my mother died. He hates that I look like her. He hates that I ran.
“Let him pout, brother,” Ray laughs, reaching back to pat my knee.
I flinch away from his touch, and his grin widens. “He’ll learn his manners back at the house. Ain’t that right, boy? You’re home now. And we’ve got work to do.”
They talk around me like I’m cargo. Ray drones on about the syndicate, about the underground circuit in Seattle that has been waiting for new blood. They talk about getting me into the ring as soon as my body “remembers how to take a beating.”
A fight is already booked for three weeks from now. Three weeks to strip away the warmth Silas gave me. Three weeks to turn me back into the mindless weapon they always wanted.
“Three weeks gives us enough time to sweat out the softness Silas put in you,” Ray says, turning back around to face the front.
His words cut deep, and I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood.
I can’t think about Silas. If I picture his crooked smile, or the way his fingers felt wrapped around me this morning, I’ll throw myself out of this moving car.
I stare blankly out the window as the familiar, dreary skyline of Seattle begins to loom through the grey drizzle, swallowing the last remnants of my hope.
* * *
The car stops behind a house that I don’t recognise. Before the engine even shuts off, Ray’s door opens, and he is standing beside my door waiting for me.
The moment my boots hit the gravel, the cold barrel of a gun presses firmly against the small of my back. It’s not subtle. It is a reminder of the leash, a silent command that keeps my spine rigid and my steps heavy.
“Move,” Ray mutters, nudging me forward with the steel.
We walk up the stairs to the front porch. Dad unlocks the door pushing it open, and Ray nudges me forward, and I step into the house.
I look around while they walk me down the hallway.
Carpet is worn thin under my boots, and the kitchen and lounge look like they were furnished straight from a back alley.
The kitchen table has a peeling laminate top, dishes piled across the bench like no one’s bothered to wash them in days.
The couch is torn in places, stuffing poking through the seams, and the TV sits on a shaky little table that looks like it’ll collapse if someone breathes too hard near it.
My steps slow as I take it all in, I can smell the neglect, the decay. It’s the feeling that this house is nothing but a shell, and it’s never been a home.
“Move, Jackie.”
We reach a solid wooden door at the back of the house. Dad yanks it open, revealing a steep set of stairs disappearing into pitch-black darkness.
My feet stop dead.
I stare into the dark, my pulse hammering in my throat. My voice comes out small, cracked, barely there.
“No.”
The click of the gun goes right off beside my ear, sharp enough to make my whole body jerk.
“Down.” Dad orders.
Something inside me gives out. Not strength, just hope.
I let out a shaky breath and step into the darkness. The air gets colder with every stair I take, thick and stale, like it hasn’t moved in years. A shiver crawls over my skin, like something alive moving under it, and my chest tightens until all I feel is pain.
I feel like I’m walking to my grave.
When we reach the bottom, Ray flicks a switch, and a harsh yellow light snaps on overhead, buzzing loud enough to make my teeth ache.
The glow is ugly, washing everything in a sick, dirty yellow colour.
It’s a basement.
But there’s also a cage.
I stand in front of the chain link fence and I look into the space beyond it.
On one side, there’s a narrow cot pushed against the wall. It’s covered in thin blankets and a pillow that is so thin, there may as well not be there. A small partition hides a toilet and a rusted sink. The whole place smells of damp concrete and old sweat.
But it’s the other side of the room that makes my stomach twist.
Rubber mats cover the floor. Free weights line the wall. A speed bag hangs from a beam overhead. And the heavy bag, thick leather, cracked and work, sways slightly, like someone hit it not long ago.
This is where I’m going to live.
This is where I’m going to they’re going to train me, hurt me. And deep down in my soul, I know this will be the place that I die.
Ray steps back toward the stairs, his shadow stretching across the room.
“You’re gears in the locker,” he says, like this is normal. Like is is fine.
Dad throws my bag through the door of the cage, and his eyes meet mine, cold, empty, nothing behind them.
“Welcome back, son.” He says as he motions for me to step through the door into the cage. They’re locking me behind the cage. Behind the mesh.
Back into my kennel.
Ray laughs, and I watch as dad turns and closes the door, locking the padlock, sealing me inside my caged coffin. No windows. No fresh air. Just the buzzing yellow light and the smell of damp stone.
“You eat, you sleep and you train,” Dad says through the mesh. “Nothing more. We’ll be down in the morning to start your training.”
Then he turns and follows Ray up the stairs, and I hear the door shut and the deadbolt slam shut with a heavy, final thud that echo through the room, straight through my chest.
Their footsteps fade above me, and silence drops over me like a weight.
I stand there for a long time, staring at the cot, the mats,the walls that already feel too close. My legs move on their own, carrying me to the bed. I sit down, burying my face in my hands.
The quiet is suffocating, and in the quiet, everything hits me at one.
I try to breathe, but my chest won’t open. My throat is tight and my eyes burn with tears. Then, for some reason, I think of my mother. Her soft voice, warm hands. And her smile. The way she used to tell me I was meant for better things.
But then she’s gone, and I’m back with the men who only ever knew how to break me.
Back on the cot with the threadbare blankets, the pillow that’s hardly there, I lay down, pulling my knees up to my chest, curling myself into as small a ball as I can, and I try to think of Silas.
I feel the ghost of his fingers on my skin, his hands, the way my fingers would trace his tattoos, and watch as goosebumps would surface wherever my fingers would touch. But the thoughts hurt to much. Those memories, those feelings are to warm and gentle for a place like this.
Silas. I think. Sol, please come for me.
But I have to shut it down, I can’t think of him, because if I do, I’ll fall apart, and if I fall apart, they’ll go after Hale.
I swallow hard, staring at the far wall.
This is the beginning. My first night, my first step back into the nightmare I swore I’d never return to.
The light turns off, throwing me into suffocating pitch black. The darkness is a heavy black cloak laid across my body. I close my eyes, trying to keep it out. This is my life now. My future of darkness
And the worst thing about everything, isn’t Ray, or my dad.
I don’t know if I’ll ever see Silas again.
* * *
Without the sun, I count the passage of time by the rhythm of my father’s heavy boots descending the stairs each morning. He brings a plate of eggs and toast, fruit and cereal, sliding it across the floor under the cage door before retreating upstairs without a single word.
When the plate is empty, the training begins.
Ray and my dad push me until my muscles burn with a white-hot fury, until my lungs feel like they are tearing apart, and my knuckles are split and bleeding against the heavy bag.
They both spar with me, not to teach me, but to punish me, driving their fists into my ribs until I hit the rubber mats gasping for air.
Then they leave me alone in the dark to heal just enough so they can break me all over again.
To keep my sanity from slipping entirely away, I track the days on the wall near my cot. Using a jagged piece of loose metal I pried from the underside of the bed frame, I scratch deep lines into the rough concrete. Four vertical lines, crossed by a diagonal slash.
A series of fives.
They grow day by day, group by group. Right now, there are four clearly marked groups of fives sitting on the wall, twenty agonising days of imprisonment. Twenty days of living in a tomb. Twenty days since I last felt the warmth of Silas’s hands on my face.
On the twenty-first day, the heavy deadbolt turns with a sharp, metallic screech that makes me flinch. The door pulls open, my uncle walks in, his gun aimed directly at my chest.
“Get up,” he barks. “We’re going.”
My legs feel weak and unsteady as I stand from the cot, my body aching from yesterday’s beating. They throw a coarse, oversized hoodie at me, and I pull it over my shoulders, pulling the hood low over my face, and then march me up the stairs.
As I step across the threshold and out into the open air for the first time in three weeks, the light breeze hits my face.
It’s cold, sharp, and smells of rain and pine, and it feels like a physical shock to my system.
The blinding glare of harsh daylight that makes my eyes scream in protest. I throw my arm up, squinting through my fingers as my dad stands by the car, his face carved from stone.
I take a deep, desperate breath, but my lungs seize up with sudden, blinding terror.
They are driving me to my first fight. They are leading me out to the slaughterhouse, and every step forward feels like I am walking closer to an executioner’s block.
My heart hammers against my ribs like a trapped bird, and a cold sweat breaks out across my skin as the terrifying reality crashes over me.
I am trapped in their world again, and there is no escape.