CHAPTER 17 #2
I flipped the pillows over and pulled the red comforter over the bed, sitting myself down on a clearly wet spot that was a tad bit darker than my covers.
I’ll let the guy in and kill him before he has a chance to blow the whistle on me.
It’s the only plan I’ve got, but—my knives are in the fucking bathroom.
Oh, God…oh, no…think Bridget.
The door opened and a guy I’ve come to understand goes by ‘Rex’, popped his head into my room. “You ready? Boss says he’s not letting you off the hook tonight. Need one on the roster if you want dinner.”
“Yeah, he told me. I’m good. Just had to freshen up.”
Rex smiled like a deviant. “He make you scream, yes? Think twice before you fuck with his money.”
“Just let them in. I’m hungry.”
I hope I get to watch this one die. Or at least see what he bleeds like afterwards.
I didn’t even look up as I straightened the mask and adjusted the straps of my gown. I heard footsteps and Rex mention that dude only gets an hour, and then…a choking sound before the slam of my door.
“The office. Where.”
My head shot up, and I think my heart gave out.
“Idi na hui…American pig.” A masked figure held Rex by the throat, slamming him against the wall next to the door and raising his feet slightly off the floor. I sprang up while the little fucker scraped at my savior’s sleeves.
“Where’s his laptop? Don’t fuckin’ make me ask again.”
Chest heaving, I stepped forward. “I—I know where it is.”
That head turned and I saw acid-green contacts.
I think I cried a little, but I’ll never say so.
“Oh…good.” A huge knife was pulled out of his waistband and immediately plunged into Rex’s gut, shoved at an upward angle until the steel of the blade disappeared, and then he turned it until the bitch stopped moving and his arms dropped.
Rex thudded to the floor and Dec turned towards me, slowly.
“You’re a long way from Witherle, Little Doe.”
“Thought I told you not to come looking for me,” I breathed, half weeping as we stood about a foot apart. He studied every inch of me, looking for anything that would fuel his rage a little more. A bruise. A scratch. Any sign of mistreatment.
“No…you told Declan…not to come looking for you. You didn’t say shit about Batman.”
I’m caught between beating the brakes off of him, laughing, and bursting into tears. So, naturally…I just stood there like the epitome of this weird fucking pet name he thinks is gonna stick.
“Did they hurt you?”
Yes. No. Mostly just my pride.
I raised my shaking hands and slowly slipped my mask off. His eyes zeroed in on the blood still on my face. “Nope,” I smirked, popping the ‘P’. I stepped to the side, pulling the covers back and showed him what was underneath.
“Where’s he at, Bridget?”
I didn’t consider how hard it would be to look him in the eyes after what I had to do. Dead, or not…Mikhail did take something from me. And it’ll never be the same. I tried not to let it show that I was about to crack…but Dec’s smart. Really smart. And he sees right through me.
“In Hell where he fuckin’ belongs. Please tell me Seven gave you my message before you rode in here on your white horse.”
His eyes raised in the corners, and I knew the devious smile that was hidden under that mask.
“I see you, and I raise you…thirty grand.” I felt the demon tear out of the cage and wore its smile while I stalked to the shitty wardrobe in the corner and started slipping out of my dress. “What are you doing? We need to leave.”
I saved the outfit they’d taken me in, stiff with blood, for this moment. “I’ve had to be somebody else the entire time I’ve been here. I won’t leave as anybody but me. When this place goes up in smoke…I want them to know who really owned them.”
Screams started sounding past the closed door, and throughout the whore house. Loud thuds. Terrified girls. The sound of our freedom...
Music to my fucking ears.
I fastened the last buckle on my boot and turned to face him.
“Let’s play, Batman.”
It was an effort not to wrap my arms around Seven while she shielded one of my girls from chaos and met eyes with me. Chunks of sheetrock and cheap wood peppered our faces as bullets flew in the dark.
“How many total, Bridge?!” she yelled over the noise.
“Twelve!”
Sev covered little Jessie, the timid doe-eyed teenager with the voice of a mouse.
She barely wore a stitch, and I knew it was probably because they’d got her while she was sitting on top of some guy that I’m positive is bleeding out in that shitty bed.
He deserves worse, but at least his sorry life is over.
They disappeared around the back corner to where I assume Seven has been breaking them out.
I grabbed Declan’s gloved hand, and we ducked as I led him down a couple hallways to Mikhail’s office. We slammed the door behind us.
Not a soul in here.
I clacked to his desk and ripped the cord from the laptop while Dec flipped it over.
“What are you doing? We’re not taking the whole thing?”
“I only need the hard drive,” he said, dismantling the thing. “Check his drawers for flash drives or paperwork.”
I stuffed whatever I could find that seemed useful into my pockets and the waist of my jeans, and then…
I hit the jackpot, opening one drawer with a shiny Desert Eagle…
loaded and polished. I’m not usually into guns, but…
Daddy would have loved this. Both of us jumped as the door burst open, and one of Mikhail’s men stood, keen on blocking our only way out.
He pointed a pistol, not at Dec…but at me.
“I knew you were liar,” he spat through clenched teeth. I held the pistol under the desk and Declan held the remains of the closed laptop out of view. “He should have—”
“Ole Bessie was braugh, and unusually tall, and she made for one hell of a vieeeeew…” I know that voice…and that horrible singing as it trailed in from way down the hall.
Malek.
“Your death can be quick, or it can be slow, mate. Which is it gonna be?” Dec asked, slipping the laptop in front of me as a shield. “You’ll die either way, but you’ve got about five seconds to ‘figger out how you wanna bow out.”
“Ohhh, I sank me stiff cock, in the wool of her sock, thinkin’ I had what’s long overduuuuue…”
Dude’s eyes darted between us and over his shoulder, not sure which of us to anticipate…and I took the shot, blowing a hole in his stomach just as Malek appeared, bloody and grinning, catching him as he fell and burying his knife in his chest.
“Aaahhhh, fed up with me frolics, she snatched me poor bollocks…and twisted ‘em into a knoooot…” Mal twisted the knife and sang into the guy’s ear. “Ole Bessie, I cried…I just fancied some pie…but me balls still went into the potttt.”
StabStabStabStab…
The body dropped to the floor, and we clapped as Malek bowed, Simon waddling in from behind him.
“Song good. I like.”
“Thanks, it’s an old fave,” Mal grinned, winking. “Evenin’, brat.”
I didn’t have the words. I held back my bitch tears and ran to him, throwing my arms around his neck. The weird guy that was wearing Declan’s hoodie when I’d left Leviticus joined us in the doorway.
“We’re rigged. The ones still left alive are cuffed together in those rooms…with the dead clients on the metal beds.”
Those beds are all chained to the wall. Beautiful…just flawless.
Malek pulled back and tilted my chin up. “Sev’s got every one of the girls. Unharmed. On their way to a hospital. Good on you, little sister.”
Cue the waterworks. “Thank you…”
“Don’t thank us. Thank that bloke…right over there.” He pointed behind me at Declan, who had taken the mask off. “For what it’s worth…you’ve got my blessin’.”
I ambushed him.
Both hands on his face.
Lips locked on mine.
Catching air while he lifted me off the ground.
He tastes like my future.
He feels like my king.
And worthy as fuck is this messy Irish head.
A matching crown will sit real pretty on it…
“Bleedin’ Christ, get a room.”
Fuck that. I have a house. Our house. And that’s exactly where I’m starting over, with this nerdy, tattooed degenerate at my side.
So, his name is Dan.
And Dan…likes to tell half-truths.
I think I like Dan.
Not only were the stragglers strung up using the same handcuffs that they used on the girls…they were also zip-tied face down, all fours spread…over the men that paid to rape us. My heels clacked over the wooden floor as I walked around the beds, admiring this work of pure art.
“Doesn’t feel so good, does it boys? What if…I go search the house for any available broom stick? Mop? Didn’t one of you use a cattle prod as a punishment on Adrienne for crying?”
Declan popped his neck and stretched. Simon scraped a huge blade on the edge of a nightstand that was falling apart. Malek…just bounced impatiently from one foot to another.
“I think that’s a swell idea,” I continued, earning pleads from a couple of them, and growls from another. “Let’s see if they like the taste of their own drug before we show them the preview of coming attractions, yeah?”
“Fucking bitch! You fucki—”
Dec slammed one of their foreheads against the head of the dead patron underneath, and…well…he didn’t say anything else.
Pout.
We did exactly what I suggested. It wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it might be, but ‘Simon says’…it just means I’m not a hundred percent evil. I got a cool anatomy lesson, watching Mr. Miyagi sever a couple of Achilles tendons for spite. I almost stepped on a tongue laying on the floor.
Declan had only been here for a small bit of all this, and so I went to find him—only to learn that he’d hung Mikhail from the ceiling in my room by old ceiling fan wires and was patiently waiting for me to have my fill while he threw knives at his corpse.
Just when I think I can’t love you more, Declan McCann.
I walked hand-in-hand out the front door with him, smiling while the bitches screamed for mercy inside…
Boom.