Chapter 12
Flashback - The day before the pleading.
Try as I might to stay awake, I just can’t seem to manage it.
My nerves feel like raw live wires.
Every time that my eyes start to drift closed the panic only intensifies.
It feels like this stay here in prison is breaking down the man that I know myself to be and I’m not entirely certain that I’m going to recognize the man that comes out on the other side. Assuming that I make it out of here at all.
Word spread quickly that my court date got moved up to tomorrow and now those who are out for my blood are out of time. The sheer number of threats that were made against my life over the course of dinner should break some sort of record. I know better than to sleep tonight. The weeks of barely catnapping and living on edge are catching up to me. One more night. I just have to stay awake for one more night and then it will all be over. Win or lose, it will all be over tomorrow.
I can stay awake.
I can.
Next thing I know - my lungs are on fire. I awake from a startle reflex as my limbs splay out wildly around me, grasping for an attack that I didn’t see coming. While sleep still clings to me, my mind doesn’t want to piece together what’s actually happening. Yet, somehow, I already know who is the one who managed to bribe the guards to get access to me. The Camorra. It can be no other. He would have ensured that nobody else could move against me but him. His ego simply wouldn’t allow it. Rough hands grasp my ankles and wrists, attempting to pull my hands away from the plastic bag that’s over my head, cutting off my air supply.
There’s no time to panic.
It doesn’t stop the rush of adrenaline coursing through my body the second I register that I’m dying, almost dead. My lungs are on fire. I grasp at the plastic around my mouth, reaching to puncture it with my nail as best as I can. There’s got to be at least four of them holding me down, or trying to. I kick at them, but they manage to dodge.
There - a slight snag in the bag and it’s enough. Sweet oxygen rushes into my lungs but I keep gasping for air like a fish.
It’s enough.
Now that my hands aren’t needed to breathe, I can use my hand to fight off those around me. It takes all of my strength to throw them off of me. I hear at least one of them howl in pain as their body collides with their metal bunk bed. Must just be my cellmates. But the opening is enough. I yank the plastic bag off my head and toss it aside. It’s too torn to be of any further use to me. One lunges for me, and I put him in an easy sleeper hold. They know that with me on my feet, they don’t stand a chance. It would be absolutely pointless for me to call out for help and they know it. Nobody is coming to save me. Nobody is going to help me here. I have no choice but to fight until the morning hours… or kill them.
If I kill them, my whole case is ruined.
The one in my arms falls to the ground in a slump, unconscious. The two that had been holding down my feet come at me next. It’s a smart strategy on their part to attempt to take me all at once. No doubt they think that I’m going to be a far easier target if they double up on their strength. The joke’s on them, that’s been one of the acts that used to make me the most money back in my fighting days. They loved nothing more than to toss me into the fighting rings with two men much larger on me. For a time, they bet on me being slaughtered - then as they realized just how good I truly am, so they started betting on how much blood I could get on my fists.
These two men won’t know what’s coming. I just can’t hit them anywhere that’s going to leave too big of a mark or that’s going to go against me. I can’t let them ruin my case tomorrow. I just have to keep tossing them off of me until we come to a standstill.
I was an easy target while I was asleep. Not so much when I’m awake.
There’s no other option than for all of us to reach an impasse until morning.
It’s going to be a hell of a night.
After tomorrow’s case - this will all be over, at least I have to hope so. The Camorra can’t still have any men on the outside. I took them all down. Didn’t I?
Guess I’m going to find out.
Present Day
I didn’t think that leaving was going to be quite this hard.
If you had asked me a handful of months ago if it would have been a struggle in the slightest to pack up my life and move to another part of the country, or hell, even go back to the motherland, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
The first stop that I make is to the nearest bathroom stall that I can find the moment that they released me. I’m not hiding. I just have some damned urgent business to attend to. Things that I haven’t been able to handle since Kate’s last visit to the prison. Her damned face and those full, sensual lips had been plaguing me for days. I just need to get her out of my system. That’s all. I just need to satisfy that particular urge that started when she let me push her up against the wall in that visitation room. Then I will be free of her.
The problem is, my hand feels nothing like hers. It doesn’t feel like her soft skin or even better - her full lips wrapped around my cock bringing me pleasure. I can imagine her all I want but it’s not going to be enough to quench that fire that she built inside of me. I’ve never felt a woman match me pace for pace in the way that she did. It was like she was waiting to see what else I had up my sleeve. She felt like the sort of woman who was longing for somebody to push those boundaries to really let herself go fully. I have imagined her surrendering to me countless times now.
If only there was an opportunity to make it come true.
Why can’t I get her out of my head?
I’m not ready to be done with her. I know that much for sure. Whatever chapter has been started between Kate and I, I have to see it through.
I can’t leave until it’s done.
One way or another.
Orders be damned.
This might be a new personal low for me.
Regrettably, my actions over the last handful of hours can only be described as stalking. I followed Kate home so that I know where she lives. Horus, of course, is parked outside in his damned car just like I knew that he would be. Why wouldn’t Alek have assigned my old right-hand man to Kate? It makes perfect sense. Though, I won’t deny that there’s a deep-seated feeling of betrayal that I can’t get rid of when it comes to Horus. He is what he is because I made him that way -- and then, at the last moment, he switched sides? He didn’t turn out to be the person that I thought that he was.
Complicated. Best to avoid him if at all possible.
If he were to spot me, he might go running off to tell his new boss on me.
How juvenile.
With great difficulty, I push aside the bitter feelings rolling around in my gut and force myself to think about the present problem that I’m facing. I have to get inside of her house Horus seeing me. Furthermore, I have to not scare her too badly in the process. The lights in her kitchen are still on. I wonder what she’s up to. Has she wondered where I went? Over the span of the next hour and a half, I watch as she puts her daughter to bed and starts to wander through her house. Insomnia? There’s so much that I don’t know about her and need to know.
Funny how fast that desire became a need.
I don’t dare approach until the kitchen light is the only one left on. Now that she’s in there all alone and her daughter’s asleep is my chance. I just need to see her. I just need to say goodbye if nothing else.
There’s already somebody on her doorstep when I move up. Thinking that it’s Horus, I take a step back into the shadows around the side of her house and wait to see how things are going to play out before moving forward.
For a moment, until the door opens and the tall, thin man is bathed in the warm yellow light of Kate’s living room. Just for a moment - and then I hear the words coming from the man’s mouth. Foul, hateful words and then a hiss of pain.
Not on my fucking watch.
I move without thinking - without a single care for what the consequences might or might not be before I am on him. He’s not a very strong one. Certainly not in comparison to me. I’ve been fighting my whole life. This prick? He’s just a man who gets off on making people fear him.
My fists move like a blur. I channel every bit of rage and bitterness that has built up over my time in prison - nearly being murdered last night, my frustrations and just the general rage of Kate’s gasp of fear and pain. The man doesn’t even have a chance. He’s sputtering on his own blood, gasping from his broken face and even then - it’s only Kate’s sob that makes me stop.
Kate isn’t a woman that should ever have a reason to cry.
It’s so unlike the image of her that I have in my mind that it makes me pause.
I release the body in my hand - letting him fall to the shadowy front lawn of Kate’s house in a wet thump. I have never wanted to soothe somebody before - it doesn’t even feel like myself as I pull Kate into my arms. Her body wraps into my hold as her tears break loose like a damn being lifted. I hold her in my strong embrace and step into her home and kick the door shut behind us both. I lock it and let the pair of us fall back against the front door where we slide into a messy heap of limbs until she can get her bearing.