Chapter 15 #3
The next second she presses the hot end of the cigarette to my collar bone and I feel my skin searing in a perfect circle. Of all the things they’ve done to me, this is actually the least painful. Burns are something I’ve handled before, as the scars on my back are a testament of.
I almost want to laugh at them for even trying it, but I keep my mouth closed.
I bite down on my tongue as I’m burned again and again, all the way up my torso to my jawline.
On the face hurts more than on the rest of the body, but at this point I’m not concerned with the scarring so much as how much longer they’re going to continue this cat-and-mouse game before they realize I’m really not going to say anything.
I’ve been watching them for hours. I know exactly how they move.
Where they prefer to stand in the room. I know the patterns of the guards on the doors.
The best way to get their guns out of their hands and into mine.
I’ve calculated everything down to how long it will take before the woman burning me will get tired of what she’s doing and pass it along to the next guy.
I even know that if I twist my wrists a certain direction, I’ll be able to get out of the ropes with just a little rope burn to show for it.
So, why don’t I just get it over with?
It’s not time.
They’re not fatigued enough. I need to get them right at the edge of wanting to kill me.
“He’s being a pain in the ass,” the guard burning me says as she tosses the mostly finished smoke to the side and pulls out her gun. “Why don’t we just end him here and now. He’s not going to say anything.”
She places her gun to my head.
One of the other male guards steps over and pulls out his gun. “I should be the one to do it. I barely got to interrogate him.”
“Fine, you want to give it a shot?” she sneers at him. “Go ahead. He’s nothing but a worthless lackey for the Dresvannis. Probably doesn’t even know who he’s really working for.”
I glance at her with curiosity for a second, wondering if she knows something I don’t, but I quickly decide that she simply means I don’t know anything about the Dresvannis or what they’ve done.
She’s wrong.
I know about the cruelty and darkness of their past and present. I know that Carmine has killed men with his bare hands. And so have I.
The difference between Carmine and Eivor is simple.
Carmine kills with reason, Eivor kills simply to sate his ego.
That’s all this is. A power grab. He wants to be the biggest and the baddest that there is, and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt in the process. What allies he loses.
Even the Tulos trying to kill his niece doesn’t seem to faze him nearly as much as the idea of being on the losing side.
The new guard smacks me upside the head with his gun and then presses it to my temple.
“I know you know something,” he growls. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. You wouldn’t be protecting them if you didn’t.” I hear the click of the safety turning off on the gun.
“Is your life really worth it?” he asks me, leaning in closer. “Is your life worth one measly little crime family?”
If they were so measly, Eivor wouldn’t be trying to invade them, would he?
I bite down on my tongue even more and set my eyes forward.
I continue to count. It keeps me grounded.
It’s now been six hours and five minutes.
He reaches over with his other hand and pushes down on some of my bloody wounds on my chest with his fingers, digging into them violently.
I can’t help but hiss in pain and my head is going fuzzy from the blood loss.
My blood is all around me. On the floor, the chair, and my clothing that was torn up and ripped off my body.
I sit only in my boxers, the heat from adrenalin in my body the only reason I haven’t started to freeze.
“Answer me!” he yells, getting frustrated. “Open your fucking mouth!” He hits me in the back of the head with the gun and it goes off, shooting something nearby with a loud clang. The bullet ricochets, narrowly missing my leg and finally lodges itself into the floor.
“See what you made me do? You disgusting little maggot,” he grabs me by the throat and squeezes hard, forcing me to look into his eyes.
He puts the gun to my head again. He’s so close that I can feel his breath against my face.
“You have one more chance,” he tells me. “Either you spill what you know about the Dresvannis or your fucking brains will be spilled all over the floor in ten seconds.”
I quit counting the time.
Now I’m counting something else.
I have ten seconds to do what I need to do to get the fuck out of here. I’m light headed, but suddenly coursing with determination.
I twist my wrists in their bindings as he begins to count.
“One. Two. Three.” His face gets more and more red with anger.
I suck a breath in through my nose, calming myself down.
Just as I’m about to pull my hands out of the rope bindings, gunshots blast through the lock on the door to the abandoned building.
I don’t need to know who it is or why, all I need to know is that the guard with his gun to my head is suddenly distracted. He looks to the left, and I make my move.
I pull my hands out of the ropes and reach up for his gun. I grab it out of his hand and point it directly at him. I don’t give him time to plead. I don’t wait for him to even process what’s happened. I shoot him point blank in the head.
He stumbles backward and then falls limp to the floor.
I reach down and work quickly to undo the ropes around my ankles as I hear gunfire going off all around me.
“Damian!” Alessio’s voice calls out to me.
I look up and see across the building the man I was doing all this for.
I only get to look at him for a split second before several guards are standing in front of me, trying to keep me from leaving. I shoot at them quickly, hitting one of their knees, the other in the arm. It’s enough to get them down before they’re able to shoot at me in return.
I stand up as quickly as I can, adrenalin rushing through me.
Blood is everywhere. It doesn’t matter whose it is.
I dart behind a barrel and look over to the other side, trying desperately to find Alessio and whoever else he’s brought with him.
Just as I’m about to get up and rush toward the side with the doors, someone is on top of me. It’s the female guard that I shot in the arm. She’s got her gun to my head and is baring her teeth.
“You’re not getting away so easily!”
I point my gun at her chest, knowing that even the bulletproof vest she’s wearing won’t help her from such a close distance.
“I go out, you go out,” I growl at her.
Before she can say or do anything else there’s a gun to the back of her head. Her blood splatters across my face and chest in an instant. A hole bored into her skull with a bullet that may as well always have been meant for her.
I look up to see the hand that holds the gun belongs to Rosalie.
“You just gonna lay there or get up and fight?” she asks me.
I push the now-dead guard to the side, and the body slumps over into a pool of its own blood.
Rosalie extends a hand to me and I grab it, letting her help pull me up from the floor. I’m surprised at her strength, but I brush that off. She’s clearly more qualified than I was led to believe.
“They got you good,” she comments, looking over me, but then quickly darts to the side. Several bullets meant for me just barely miss as I pull out to the opposite side and aim in the direction they came from.
It’s an all-out gun fight.
I know it’s dangerous to be trying to find Alessio in this mess, but there’s two guards left and I can’t risk them hurting him.
I see one of the guards nearby crouching behind a couple of barrels of which contents I’m uncertain, but he’s pulling out his radio, most likely to call for backup.
I can’t let him do that.
I decide that whatever’s in the barrels might help me in this situation and I shoot directly for them, once, twice, and a third time.
An explosion rings out in my ears and the guard on his radio is propelled forward as the barrel lights on fire and causes the ones next to it to go up in shrapnel and flame as well.
He’s on the floor, his skin seared and peeling, blood dripping down his face and clothing singed.
My own skin is red from the heat of the fire, but I step closer anyway. I can tell he’s still breathing, and I know what I need to do.
There’s no space for mercy when I know that he would kill me if he had the chance.
I send a bullet through the back of his head just as he’s trying to get up from the floor and he goes limp.
My head whips around just in time to watch the last guard staring directly at me, gun pointed in my direction.
I don’t have time to lift my gun, not before he’ll shoot me.
It doesn’t matter, I’ve done my job. I look over and see Alessio and three guards on our side still alive.
Their guns pointed at the final guard in the warehouse.
He’s done for. Even if he shoots me, he’ll be dead as soon as he’s pulled the trigger.
He changes his mind last minute. He moves his aim to the side of me, and I realize as he’s pulling the trigger who exactly he’s aiming for.
Rosalie.
Guns go off in quick succession and his body jerks with each bullet that enters his head and neck before he collapses to the floor.
I turn around and see Rosalie falling to the ground, grabbing at her arm.
“Rose!” Alessio hollers.
Both of us rush to her side, and she growls in response, or perhaps due to the pain.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she insists.
Me and Alessio pull her up from the floor. We all jump slightly as another explosion goes off in front of us, another barrel set on fire by the others.
Fire is beginning to engulf the building, and soon enough all the bodies of Eivor’s guards and the Dresvanni guards that didn’t make it, will be licked away by the flames.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Alessio calls out to the other guards and they rush ahead of us.
We have to run through a line of fire to get to the door and it nearly catches what’s left of my clothing on fire. The door frame is creaking and moaning as it struggles to keep itself up while the structural frame of the building is being demolished by the fire.
Rosalie struggles to walk, and I stop us for a moment, pull her into my arms and lift her up. Carrying her out of the building bridal style while Alessio staggers breathlessly behind me.
My wounds and dizzy head don’t matter in this moment. What matters is getting out of here.
“You don’t have to—” Rosalie tries to fight me, blood soaking into the leg of her pants.
“It’s still my job to protect you,” I tell her matter-of-factly.
“It’s not,” she huffs, her eyes starting to glass over.
“For a few more seconds, just fucking pretend it is,” I hiss at her.
One of the guards has opened the door to the nearest car and I quickly shove her into the backseat.
“Get her to a hospital, call the family doctor, whatever you need to do, just get her out of here,” I tell the nearest guard who looks the least wounded.
“Yes, Sir,” he nods and gets into the driver’s seat.
I turn to Alessio, but he’s already grabbing me by the hand.
“We need to get you out of here,” he says hurriedly. He pulls me toward his car and I only let go of his hand so I can get into the passenger seat.
“Are you injured?” I ask him, not bothering to put my seat belt on while he’s starting the car.
I look in the rearview mirror and see several cars heading down the road behind us. There must be two ways out of here because the car with Rosalie in it is speeding the opposite direction.
“You’re the one they tortured! I should be asking you,” he spits out as he revs the engine and speeds after the car with the other guards.
“I’m fine,” I insist. My blood is caked into almost every part of my body and I’m going to have two dozen more scars to tell the story, but I wasn’t shot and none of my bones are broken.
Which is surprising. One of the first things that captors usually do is break some of your fingers.
“They sucked at their job,” I tell him with a rough laugh. Even so, I tilt my head back against the seat. My vision is getting blurry.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Alessio reminds me. “And put your seatbelt on.”
I glance over at him. He’s not wearing his seatbelt either.
“You put your seatbelt on,” I reply.
He growls and turns a sharp corner as soon as he’s able to, and while the car with Rosalie goes left, he goes right. All while the cars I’d seen before are heading into the factory compound. Too little too late for what I assume are more of Eivor’s lackeys.
Alessio tugs his seat belt on a second later and then shoots me a sharp glance.
“Alright, alright.” I put my seatbelt on.
It’s a good thing too, because a second later black spots fill my vision.
“About that…whole…not falling asleep thing,” I mumble.
I stumble into unconsciousness like I’ve taken a hammer to the head, and there’s no stopping me.