Thirty-Seven
Jude
The knock on my door had me shooting off the sofa and running to answer. It was after three in the morning, and sleep still was impossible. Unless someone was dead, there was only one person who would show up at this time of night. My heart raced in my chest as I unlocked the bolt, needing to touch her, bring her inside, talk to her.
When the door swung open, it wasn’t Saylor. I held the door, my hand tightening on the wood. Was she okay? If something had happened to her—no, no. Terror started to take root as I looked from one man to the other. Had they come to tell me something that would shatter me in a way that no collar or vow could save?
“Hello, Jude.” Gathe said my name as if it was a nasty taste in his mouth he’d need to spit out. “Seems you made a grave mistake.”
My gaze swung to the other guy. Than, the guy she’d once called a cousin who changed the locks. His cold, level stare held mine, and then he glanced at Gathe.
A sharp pain crashed through my head before the world went dark.
Throbbing in my head as I tried to open my eyes tore a groan from me.
“Ah, good. He’s coming around,” a deep voice said in the distance. Or maybe it was closer. I couldn’t be sure with the thumping against my skull that felt like something was trying to split it open.
I fought to get the heavy weight off my eyelids, but when I tried to move a hand, I couldn’t. Going still, I took stock of my body. My wrists were tied together and over my head. I tried to free them, but I hissed at the burn, as if they’d been wrapped in a hot brand that seared my skin.
Tearing my eyes open, I had to immediately squint from the fluorescent light. I heard the sound coming from my chest as I tried to speak through the thudding in my head. Where was I?
Focusing on one thing at a time, I located a person. My vision cleared enough for me to make out the face.
He’d come to my door. I opened it. There had been two of them.
I swung my eyes over to find the other one. Where had they taken me? How?
The lack of windows with only concrete walls didn’t bode well.
“Like I was saying, you made an error,” one of them said.
I struggled to fight through the pain taking over my brain so I could focus on who was talking.
“Where—” the word came out like a croak. Saying more made the shitstorm in my head worse.
“Where isn’t your concern. The why I’ll share with you,” the same voice told me.
I could almost place it. The name was hovering, just out of reach.
“Saylor,” he said.
Hearing her name brought things together. Gave me a fight and purpose. Ignoring what felt like shards of metal being shot between my eyes, I stared at the man. It was Gathe.
“That got your attention,” he drawled. “Glad you could come around. I’d like you awake for story time. You can moan and plead for your life while we torture you until you die later.”
I said nothing in response as I watched him. Things were slowly coming back to my addled brain. The Southern Mafia. I lifted my eyes to see my arms bound at the wrists, hanging from a pulley in the ceiling.
“You hurt our girl. She’d already been hurt. The last heartbreak we couldn’t get retaliation for. There was no way to get vengeance. But you…well, that’s a different story, isn’t it, Father?”
I could tell them. Speak up. Explain. The sadistic gleam in the pair of eyes boring into me, however, told me they might not care what I had to say. I remained quiet. Waited.
“What? No pleading for your life? Begging me to understand?”
The grin on his face was one that I was sure sent chills down spines. Not mine. There was nothing he could do to me that would rival the torment I had already suffered. Pain I’d inflicted on myself.
Gathe took a step toward me, sheer loathing seething from his sneer.
“Might want to wait before you start with the torture. That is, if you want him alert for the first part,” the other one said.
Gathe stopped and glared at me while he turned his head to the side, cracking it.
“You’re right. Let’s start with eight-year-old Saylor,” he said, and then a softer smile came over his face. “You’ve never seen a little girl any prettier. You think those blue eyes and dimples are something now. Well, on little Saylor, they were fucking adorable. I was ten, but, damn, I was sure she was the prettiest thing ever created.”
He walked over to the other guy…Than. His name slowly came back to me. He held out a hand, and Than put a cigarette in it, letting my imagination picture Saylor at eight. A warmth spread through the pain at the thought.
“That,” he began as he lit the cigarette with the lighter, then handed it back to Than, “was the year they told her about her dad’s Parkinson’s disease. It didn’t really sink in for her because her dad was larger than life. He had always been her hero. Nothing could ever harm her because no one was stronger than her daddy.
“We were all kids, but I’d heard the adults whispering. I had known, but I didn’t know it was gonna go downhill so fast. It did. He began to change. He was weak. Saylor watched this man who she believed was invincible start to stumble when he walked. Then, his speech became difficult, and the tremors came. Her smile was less bright. She cried more, worried about her dad. Was scared to stay overnight at one of our houses, like she used to, in case something happened to her dad.
“Fia, her older sister, was a teenager and not as affected as Saylor. She’d known since his diagnosis, and she wasn’t a big comfort. More wrapped up in her own world.
“By the time Saylor was ten, her dad had to step down as the head of the Mississippi branch. It was a weird time for everyone. He’d been running it since he was twenty-eight.”
He took a long pull from his cigarette, and I waited. Wanting to know more. Wanting to hear about anything he would tell me.
“So, preteen years hit. Crosby and his pretty-boy face won her heart. They became a couple as junior high rolled around. With her dad no longer being as active in her life because of his disease and the battle he faced every day with it, she got what one might call daddy issues. She found her importance in her relationship with Crosby.” He paused and glanced back at Than for a moment.
Then, he continued, “Crosby was the kind that commanded a room when he walked in. He was all smiles and charm. He was a really big-ass light, and everyone around him just became a part of that light or headed to the shadows. While he loved Saylor, like we all do, he was never in love with her. He just didn’t realize the difference. They’d become a habit. Saylor tried harder to be the best. She morphed into everything she thought Crosby wanted. I saw it, but I always paid attention to Saylor. Crosby was more self-absorbed.”
“Easy,” Than said, his tone a warning.
Gathe gave him an annoyed glance. “Saylor is a leader. She just didn’t know it because she wasn’t given the chance. Don’t get me wrong; she has always had a sassy mouth, she’s always been spunky as hell, and she doesn’t take shit off anyone. But she grew up with a bunch of boys and learned early how to handle them. It was just Crosby she was different with.
“She’d always get these ideas. Once, it was the damn Salvation Army trees, where she had us going to get the kids’ Christmas lists and buying all the gifts for them. Then, she wanted us to help her with a fundraiser for the local pet shelter when she found out they didn’t have enough funds to keep all the animals alive. The list goes on. She saw a need, and she wanted to fix it. Crosby always talked her out of it. He didn’t want to be pulled into her ideas and convinced her to let it go. The day came when she stopped them altogether. One more step in forgetting who she was.”
He stopped and sucked in the nicotine as he stared at me. I waited.
“You gonna interrupt, beg for your freedom, cry?” he asked.
“No.” The word was raspy. My throat felt like sandpaper. “I’m listening.”
Gathe’s nose lifted in a snarl. He wanted me to suffer. I was already doing that in ways far worse than physical.
“Then, Crosby was killed. Shot down while she was walking right beside him. He was gone in minutes. We were all rocked. She mourned him, withdrew—we all did to an extent. Then, Halo showed up in our lives. Pregnant with Crosby’s baby. Then, there was all this proof from a burner phone he had left behind that he had been so in love with Halo that he had planned on leaving the family to have her.” He inhaled deeply, the cigarette clamped between his teeth.
I realized I hated a dead guy.
“That was what broke her. She finally shattered. Everything she’d thought she had, all those years loving him, changing for him, and he hadn’t loved her back. Not the way she wanted. Not the way she deserved.”
He pointed at me with the cigarette between his fingers. “Then, you came along. She’s smiling again. Happy. Starts to remember what she enjoys. What she excels at. And you soak it in. Enjoy her. Let her fall in love with you, and you crushed her. Left her, only for her to get drunk and ramble on while she cried on my shoulder about how she’s unlovable and she wants to be someone’s goddamn Halo.”
He gets in my face then, but I don’t flinch. “You—YOU—did that to her. Because you love a dead girl. Well, lucky for you, I plan on sending you to see her once again.”
The force of his fist into my ribs took my breath, and I gasped for air.
“You sorry-ass son of a bitch!” His words were just below a roar as his next hit landed on my jaw.
Warm blood ran from my nose. I said nothing, waiting for more. Needing it. Every hit I deserved. If they could cause enough physical pain, maybe it would ease the internal.
Another hit, and my teeth rattled. I spit out a molar as the taste of copper filled my mouth. The whirring in my head made it hard to hear his words. Some of them were shouted, and I could catch pieces. The message was clear—I’d hurt someone they loved. This was payback. For her, I would endure it until I couldn’t hold on anymore.
The singe of a burn over my heart was physical this time, and I dropped my eyes to see the cigarette being put out on my skin. I strained to hear his words as blood drooled from the sides of my lips. He held up a knife, showing me the blade. His mouth moved, telling me something.
Then, he turned around abruptly, and I lifted my gaze to see Bane Cash standing in the room. His gaze did a quick once-over of me, and then he began talking to Gathe. It felt like swimming through fog as I tried to hear their words.
“She’ll kill you.”
“This isn’t the answer.”
“Fucker deserves to die.”
“Why did you help him?”
“Let ’em finish,” I said as loud as I could, drawing all their eyes to me. I repeated it. “Let ’em finish.”
Gathe started toward me, but Bane grabbed his arm, jerking him back. I could hear yelling, and then Bane pointed at the door. Than stood and put a hand on Gathe’s back, trying to get him to move. Gathe looked back at me, the promise that he would be back to finish clear in his eyes.
Time ticked by. Minutes, hours—I didn’t know. They were all gone.
The blood had stopped trickling from my nose and mouth. I could feel my lips were swollen and busted in more than one place even if I couldn’t see or touch them. The feeling in my arms and hands had long since gone. My legs were weak but I kept my feet firmly planted on the ground.
Images of Saylor smiling at me played in my head. The way her hair fell like golden waves when she threw her head back, laughing. Her lips as her mouth fell open when sounds of pleasure escaped her. How she tasted. Her sweet scent.
My conscious mind came and went. Memories I wanted to remember, haunted by the ones I wished I could undo. Rewrite. Change. Those came to me in my dreams.
I couldn’t die down here without seeing her one more time. She needed to know. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness. But taking my last breath, knowing she thought I hadn’t loved her, that she had been my second choice, I couldn’t let that happen. Before they silenced me, she needed to know that I’d chosen her.