Chapter 8
EIGHT
Jez
AFTER TONY RAN OUT, it didn’t matter that Gage remembered to lock the door to my attic prison. I was paralyzed, unable to rise... barely able to breathe.
Tony Scalise was tied up with Knox’s pack. Tony Scalise, the closest thing I’d ever had to a real friend, was connected to a human trafficking ring.
The beta guy who I’d once tried to protect from an assault—who I had protected from an assault—was now complicit in sentencing underage omegas to a life of terrible abuse.
This couldn’t be happening.
I tried to convince myself that it hadn’t really been him.
I was a mess. I hadn’t eaten anything in god knew how long.
Hadn’t slept for more than a few minutes, here and there, before remembering where I was and jerking my gritty eyes open.
Maybe it had been another slender, dark-haired beta named Tony, and my overstretched brain had superimposed my Tony’s face over his real face.
That had to be it. A simple hallucination, brought on by exhaustion and low blood sugar.
I tried to psych myself up to go rummage through the bags lying abandoned inside the door. Maybe there was something useful in there. Something sharp, or something that could be used as a garotte, or—
Footsteps thumped up the stairway outside, muffled by the heavy door.
Two sets. I took a deep breath and held it.
The beta guy would come in, and it wouldn’t be my Tony.
It would just be some other random asshole with no morals.
A paid lackey, sent to get me clothes and a toothbrush so Gage and his cronies could continue to keep me locked up in here.
“We’re comin’ in again,” Gage called. “Tony says you and him know each other. He wants to talk to you.”
My heart froze. Icicles pierced through the bloody flesh, making it flutter and skip. It’s a mistake, it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake, I thought desperately.
The door creaked open. Gage entered, the familiar gun barrel leading as he stepped over the threshold. And behind him...
“Jez,” Tony said hoarsely.
I swallowed a sob. An ugly, cut-off choking noise emerged instead.
Turning my head away, I refused to do him the courtesy of looking at him.
If Tony was mixed up in this, that meant he was dead to me.
Whatever connection I’d felt with him had been an illusion, because deep down, he’d been the kind of asshole who would do the same thing to other people that had been done to me when I was thirteen.
The silence stretched as I refused to acknowledge him.
“I...” he began eventually, before hesitating. “Gage, I need to talk to her alone, okay?”
“No,” Gage replied instantly.
“She’s terrified,” Tony said. “Look at her. She’s not going to talk to anyone while you’re in here waving a gun at her.”
“Still no.” Gage made a low noise in the back of his throat. “She nearly killed Knox, and she’s made two convincing attempts at murder since we brought her to the house.”
Frustration cut through Tony’s voice. “Look, if you want answers, you’ll let me talk to her without you looming over her like a gargoyle! Can’t you—I don’t know... handcuff her to the bed frame or something? So you know she can’t hurt me?”
My breathing grew faster despite my best attempts to control it.
“You think I carry around a pair of handcuffs?” Gage asked, sounding incredulous.
“You’re the one who wanted me to come back up here and talk to her!” Tony snapped.
Gage grumbled something under his breath.
After a moment, he said, “Fine. Take the gun. Keep her covered.”
My gaze shot up. Gage was unbuckling his braided leather belt one-handed. Both Tony and I cringed back.
“No,” Tony said. He was eyeing the belt with a scared-rabbit look that probably mirrored mine. “I’m not holding a gun on someone. You do not pay me for that kind of shit, Gage.”
“Jesus Christ,” Gage muttered. The belt slithered free of its loops, and he handed it to Tony, who took it like it was a live snake.
“Then go tie her right wrist to the bed frame. Put a bunch of knots in it. I’ll be right outside the door.
If she starts untying the knots, get out before she gets loose. ”
Tony looked like he was going to be sick, but he approached me slowly, taking care not to block Gage’s line of fire with the pistol.
My awareness slipped outside of my body, hovering a few feet above me as a clammy hand took my wrist in a gentle grip and looped the belt around it, tying it to the sturdy metal frame I was leaning against in a listless slouch.
When he was done, he scurried back like my skin burned him. “Okay, now leave us alone, please.”
“Don’t fuck around with her, Tony,” Gage said. “I’m not kidding when I say she’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, no. I know that,” Tony said.
Gage backed out of the room, closing the door as I watched from my hazy vantage point up near the slanted ceiling.
Once he was gone, Tony let out an explosive breath and crept closer to me again, hands upraised as though to calm a wild animal. He crouched next to me, lifting a finger to his lips for quiet, and quickly undid the tangled knots in the belt, freeing my wrist.
I blinked, abruptly back in my body as he backed away again.
“Jez,” he said, “what the actual fuck?”
I licked my lips, trying to bring moisture back to my parched mouth and throat.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I shot back viciously, cradling my wrist to my chest. The belt still looped around it, dangling free.
“Why—” He cut himself off and shook his head. “I’m not the one going around killing people!”
I bared my teeth, trying to summon righteous anger to blot out the betrayal. “No. You’re the one playing gofer for a pack of omega sex traffickers,” I snarled.
He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “What the hell are you talking about, Jez?”
“Omega. Sex. Traffickers.” I bit out each word viciously. “Or have you conveniently failed to notice the little kids with bruised faces being taken in and out of this house in unmarked vans?”
Tony’s head shook slowly back and forth. “What? No... Jez, you’ve got it all turned around. Sometimes they help out omegas in trouble, that’s all.”
Pity joined the ugly slurry of hurt, fear, and anger sloshing around in my stomach.
“You can’t really be that na?ve,” I told him. “Wake up and look around, Tony. You’re a fucking accessory to kidnapping and child sexual abuse.”
He took a step back so abruptly that he nearly tripped on one of the bags still lying beside the doorway.
“Don’t you dare talk to me about child sexual abuse,” he said, his voice wavering.
“Why?” I taunted, still desperate to use anger as a shield against everything else. “Did I touch a nerve?”
He steadied himself against the doorframe, an angry flush replacing his unnatural paleness.
“You know that asshole you killed in my apartment? Right before you ran off and left me to deal with a dead body on my own? That was my stepdad. He raped me for years until I finally got away and moved here. Then he tracked me down and nearly started up again, right where he’d left off. ”
I stiffened.
“So, don’t you come at me about that shit,” he went on, his tone flat and deadly. “Because you’re the one who doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
My anger rose to match his, finally giving me the strength to climb onto shaky feet and point an accusing finger at his chest.
“You think I don’t? My father auctioned my first heat to the highest bidders so he could pay off his gambling debts! Then he sold me to traffickers in Canada so no one would find out! Traffickers like this fucking pack!”
My voice had risen, high and shrill—loud enough that there was no way the sharp alpha ears outside could fail to hear what I was saying. I was so angry, though. Too angry to care what happened to me next.
Tony stood staring at me, his mouth hanging open, breathing hard. And sure enough, a moment later the door creaked open. Gage loomed in the doorway with his ever-present gun. His sharp hazel eyes took in my untied wrist, and he let out a gusty sigh.
“Goddamn it, Tony,” he said, sounding more tired than anything. Then his heavy gaze returned to me and settled there, pressing down on my shoulders like a physical force. “Still, I guess we’re finally getting somewhere, at least. Sounds like you and me need to get a few things straight, Jez.”