Chapter 11 Sly
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SLY
Icatch her as soon as she starts to fall. I had seen her eyes grow distant, so I’d called out her name, but her eyes just rolled back in her head as she started to collapse.
“What happened?” Pete asks in alarm.
“I’m not sure, but let's move quickly and clean her back while she’s out.
It’s the best chance we have to do it with minimal pain,” Elias says as he grabs the supplies and moves into the bedroom as he starts barking out orders, “Dex, lay some towels down on the bed. Sly, lay her on them on her stomach. Pete, get a bowl of warm water and some clean cloth to clean her up with.”
Nobody argues as we start moving. I look down at her and frown. How do I carry her without touching her back?
Jagger seems to see my dilemma cause he bends down and gestures as if to lift her feet. I hold her by her armpits as we carry her to the room. Dex finishes laying down the towels as Jagger and Elias help me lay her on her stomach.
Elias doesn’t take a second to pause, quickly cutting away her top and peeling it from her back so fast, even I wince from how painful it looks.
Blood starts to slowly leak from the cut lines, and I clench my fists in anger.
“I’m gonna murder that son of a bitch,” Dex says, mirroring my thoughts.
“You might have to get in line,” Elias says as he starts cleaning up her back with a wet cloth and antiseptic wipes.
When he glances up at me and sees my frown, he gestures to Jagger, who’s standing silently with his arms crossed on the other side of the bed, staring down at her back with a mix of anger and pain.
“I think Jagger might want to take out his dad himself.”
Jagger’s eyes lift to meet mine. I see surprise there, but there’s something else, too. Shame. Guilt.
“Elias told us Ivan’s your dad,” Pete explains.
“You should have told us,” Dex adds. “Or at least you should have told Wren.”
Jagger nods, looking even more guilty as his eyes drop to her.
“She knows now?” Elias asks, and he nods again.
“She didn’t care, did she?” Dex asks knowingly.
“You don’t even need to answer. I know she wouldn’t care.
Only that you didn’t tell her.” His lack of response tells us Dex is right.
I’m not surprised, Wren is too forgiving, but I couldn’t say I wasn’t grateful for the way she looked beyond our pasts and instead judged us on who we are today.
I watch silently as Elias starts to lay fresh gauze over her wounds. “Won’t that just get stuck in there, too?” Dex asks worriedly.
“Hopefully not. We need to keep it clean. I’ve put some antiseptic cream on there to help clean the wounds. Tomorrow, if they don’t look infected, we can let them breathe a little.”
Elias climbs off the bed and gestures for Jagger to lie down beside her. I can tell it’s painful when he peels his shirt off and blood starts to drip down his back.
I can’t believe he’s Ivan’s son. They have the same eyes, but the similarities end there. I never would have guessed the connection. I understood why he didn’t tell us, and by the state of him, it’s clear he wasn’t secretly working with Ivan this whole time.
Jagger lies on his stomach then motions for something to write with, and I unlock my phone, open the note app, and slide it into his hand. He types one-handed and gives it back to me.
“He wants us to tell him how we got here.”
“It’s a bit of a long story,” Pete begins, “but it looks like we have some time. I guess we should start at the beginning. When you and Wren were taken, we were surrounded by the feds. Elias had been shot in the arm, and the rest of us were forced to the ground and cuffed. That’s when he started to make a deal. ”
Elias picks up the story from there. “I had previously worked with the agent that was in charge of the scene, Simmons. I told him if he let us all go, we’d get rid of Ivan and get a list of all his contacts.”
“We were carted off to a jail cell at the field office while Elias was taken to the hospital,” Pete explains. “We were there a few days when Elias came in and said he’d made a deal, that we were free to go. We went back to the safe house so we could track Wren—”
“Elias put a tracker in the necklace he gave her,” I explain before letting Pete continue.
“Right, so we saw the signal was in Russia. Elias got the feds to fly us there in their jet, then it was just a matter of planning your rescue.”
“You were a few steps ahead of us,” Elias explains.
“Sly and I had just reached your room when you must have gone out the window. The tracker showed you in the yard, so we ran back to where the others were waiting by the truck and decided to just drive around back to get you, following Wren’s tracker to get there. ”
“I can’t believe you put a tracker on me,” Wren says, suddenly sounding wide awake.
“Wren!” Pete says, in alarm, as he drops to his knees at her side, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”
“A little dizzy, and my back hurts a lot, but I’m okay.”
He holds her hand tightly and nods. “I’m sorry, angel. Do you know why you passed out?”
“I think I just got overwhelmed.”
“It has been a busy day for you,” I tell her, my eyes trailing over her back. “A busy few days, I think.”
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Elias asks as he finishes up with Jagger’s back.
“No, I don’t think so. I was actually left alone most of the time. I only saw Jagger for the first time yesterday when Ivan started to try and play us against each other.”
“What do you mean?” Elias asks as he rounds the bed to stand behind Pete so he can see her face.
“Do you know what happened to Jagger? With his parents?” she asks.
“We know most of it,” Pete confirms.
“Well, I think Ivan wanted Jagger to feel the same pain he did when Jagger’s mom left him. He told me Jagger was his son, hoping that would make me angry, and when that didn’t work, he tried other tactics, like only providing one meal and making me choose who gets it.”
Dex snorts in annoyed amusement. “Something like that would never work on you two.”
“On any of us,” I add.
“Ivan doesn’t understand what love is,” Wren explains. “I don’t know how he treated Jagger’s mom, but I don’t blame her for leaving him. He’s a psycho, and for all we know, she never wanted to be with him.”
I shiver, understanding what that might have meant, that she was raped.
“Jagger, do you know?” Pete asks, and Jagger shakes his head no.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Now we’re out of there, we don't have to play his sick games anymore,” she says with more fire than I expected.
“Is that how you got these marks?” Pete asks, gesturing to her back.
“Yes. First, he asked Jagger which of us would get five lashes. He chose them for himself.”
We all turn our heads to Jagger, and I nod in silent thanks. We all would have done the same thing, but I am pleased he was able to spare her from that. Although she still got marked somehow.
“Then he asked me the same question.”
“Shit, angel. You should have given them to Jagger,” Pete says gently.
“Are you crazy? Look at his back! Imagine how much worse it would be if he had twice the amount. No, it had to be this way. But that's why we knew we had to get out of there.”
“How did you manage to escape?” Elias asks as he sits on the edge of the bed beside her.
“Sergei, he was one of my guards. He gave me the key to Jagger’s cuffs.”
Even Jagger lifts his head when he hears that, looking confused. He clearly didn’t know this piece of information.
“Why would he do that?” Elias asks her.
She shrugs. “I have no idea why he helped us when he did.”
“Then you gave the key to Jagger?” Dex asks, moving the story forward.
“Yeah, I snuck it to him at breakfast, and a little while later I found him outside my window and let him in. We waited until the shift change out back to make our escape. We saw cameras around the perimeter, so we had to loop back through the yard. That’s when you guys found us.”
“We’re all here now so you two can rest and recover,” Elias tells her before glancing over his shoulder at Jagger, who nods in approval.
Wren reaches her left arm backward toward Jagger, and when she finds his hand, he wraps his fingers tightly around hers.
What they went through must have brought them closer together. But that’s not what causes a strong surge of jealousy to spike through my system.
Kneeling on the bed, I lean between them and grab her hand, tilting it so I can get a better look as I ask through clenched teeth, “What the hell is on your finger?”