Chapter 6
ARIA
What the fuck is this asshole talking about?
He knew I would come one day? How the fuck would he know that?
I’ve never met the guy in my life, yet he seems hell-bent on the fact that he knows me.
It makes no sense. He’s clearly got the wrong girl, and for whatever reason, I’m now the one suffering her consequences.
It’s almost ironic how Stone is doing the exact same thing.
He’s spent years paying for the crimes of other men.
Well, kind of. Okay, not really. He killed them fair and square, and after the two guards he just murdered in cold blood right before my eyes, Stone more than deserves the sentence he received.
But it doesn’t change that gut feeling I have telling me that the men in Stone’s case were not innocent in the least. But I suppose I won’t have the chance to find out because there’s no way in hell I’m leaving this prison alive.
If Stone doesn’t kill me now, the other inmates will.
Chunks of concrete fall from the wall and smash against the floor as Stone’s hand tightens around my throat, completely blocking my airway.
My gaze flashes between Stone’s haunting stare and the men shamelessly trying to break down the wall. It’s clear as fucking day that I don’t stand a chance.
I should have let Janette steal the case out of my too-eager hands.
The door continues to rattle as the prisoners slam heavy objects against the crumbling wall between us. Stone leans harder into me, his whole damn body pressing against mine, and I start to wonder if he’s even aware of the assholes trying to get in.
My lungs begin to scream as stars dance through my vision. I’m desperate for a breath, but Stone doesn’t ease up. The fear is like nothing I’ve ever felt. The uneasiness. The way my body trembles. My heart races faster than it’s ever raced in my short twenty-four years of life.
I can’t die. Not yet. I haven’t experienced the world yet.
Haven’t had a chance to even discover who I really am.
Hell, I haven’t left the state. Haven’t learned how to cook.
Haven’t experienced any wonders of the world.
I live in my little apartment. Go to work.
Come home. Hell, sometimes I go to the gym, but that’s predominantly so I can screw Nathan Cole in the bathroom and thoroughly get off.
But apart from that, I haven’t lived, and I’m not ready to give it all up now.
My knee shoots up between us, aiming directly for the crowned jewels, but because the fucker is so damn tall, it takes almost a lifetime for my knee to connect.
With my lack of oxygen, my idea of a devastating blow is more like a love-tap, but it’s enough to surprise him, and for just a second, his hand eases on my throat enough to suck in a desperate breath.
Rage sparks in his terrifying stare. “You want my cock, Menace, you better fucking beg for it.”
I spit at him, clawing at his arms and trying to bend his fingers away from my throat, but he’s too damn strong.
Every inch of his body has been carved from the densest stone, and in comparison, I don’t stand a fucking chance.
“What? Your little pin dick? Oh, trust me, Stone Blackthorne, no woman in their right mind is ever going to beg for that kind of disappointment.”
He roars in frustration, pressing harder into me, that wicked stare burning me alive. “You—”
Whatever insult he was going to hurl at me is interrupted when the conference room door finally gives way.
The prisoners spill in like rabid animals, throwing one another into walls and shoving their way through the broken door to be the first to get their hands on me.
Their putrid stares focus on me, and I realize in the blink of an eye that I don’t fear Stone half as much as I fear these men.
He had his opportunity to take from me, but he didn’t.
He’s no rapist. Even after seven years deprived of having his dick sucked, he didn’t even attempt to touch me.
But these men, they sure as fuck don’t share those same morals.
They will destroy me. They will take and take until there is nothing left, and they won’t stop until long after I’m gone. I can’t go out like that. I just . . . fuck.
My body trembles as my gaze snaps up to Stone’s. “Please,” I beg, tears rolling down my cheeks as I desperately search for any signs of humanity within his dark eyes. “Please. Kill me before they get their hands on me.”
His brows furrow for just a second as if he’s caught off guard, but the moment the other inmates finally reach us, something snaps inside of him. It’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed.
“DON’T FUCKING TOUCH HER,” he growls, the sound echoing right through my chest as he whips around with such force that the two men closest to us fly back against the concrete wall, one of them cracking his skull with a sickening thud. His body goes completely limp against the ground.
“Is he . . . Is he dead?” I gasp, but my question goes unanswered as Stone sets his full attention on the other men in the room.
He moves like lightning, and I watch in horror as he almost seems to smile. It’s as though the idea of getting to slaughter every one of these men has filled him with the greatest happiness.
He lunges at them, one after another, as the alarm screeches through the prison, eerily echoing through the long hallways.
The men keep coming, their wicked stares locked on my body, but Stone is a fucking animal, taking them out one after another, but I don’t get it.
Why is he protecting me? Why go through all this if he only wants to see me dead? It doesn’t make sense.
As they keep coming, I drop to the ground, trying to curl into a ball behind Stone as he snaps necks like glass.
Someone grabs the discarded chain off the ground and whips it toward Stone, but all it does is anger the beast as the chain bounces right off him.
He steps away, putting space between us, setting his sights on the chain wielder.
Without a single thought, I scramble across the blood-soaked ground, my eyes locked on my target.
Just a little bit closer, and I’ll be okay.
My knees slam against the hard ground, and I crawl like a fucking baby, climbing over fallen bodies as I inch closer and closer to the fallen guards.
Two of them are already dead, but the other two were only knocked out.
One has already been dragged from the room, and inmates are using him as a punching bag.
The other . . . if I could only get to him, then I might stand a chance. A small one at least.
I scramble like my whole fucking life depends on it, and just as I reach for the guard, something grips my leg, yanking me back so hard that I fall. My head slams against the ground, my white silk cami catching on concrete rubble from the broken wall and tearing right through the center.
A blood-curdling scream rips out of me as I’m pulled back. Stone’s gaze whips toward me, distracting him just long enough for someone to break through his wild defenses and land a devastating blow to his perfectly carved face.
Blood spurts from his cheek, splattering against the wall as the asshole clutching my leg drags me back. Adrenaline pulses through my veins, and as my fight-or-flight instincts kick into top gear, I fight for my goddamn life, using my other leg to whip around and clock the fucker right in the jaw.
I hear an awful crack, and as the asshole roars in agony and releases his hold on my leg, another inmate shoves him out of the way, the one with some kind of homemade knife in his hand.
My eyes widen in horror, my heart beating like never before, and as he hovers over me with his shiv in hand, the terror grips me in a chokehold. A vile grin pulls across his lips, making my stomach sink. “Oh, I’m going to enjoy this,” he rumbles, just seconds before he lunges at me.
I scream and throw myself back, scrambling toward the unconscious guard, lunging for his discarded gun. With my finger over the trigger, I whip back, point, close my eyes, and squeeze.
BANG!
A warm spray of blood splatters across my face and forearms, and I open my eyes reluctantly, keeping the gun raised in my shaking hands.
His eyes widen as he clutches the wound in his chest, and not a moment later, he falls toward me, the shiv still clutched in his hand and angling right toward my throat.
I hastily shimmy aside just in time as the inmate slams against the ground, the shiv clattering right beside my shoulder as heaving breaths tear through my chest.
I killed a man.
Holy fucking shit. I just killed a man.
The alarms still blare through the prison, hammering in my ears, and with more inmates pushing their way into the cramped conference room, there’s no time to dwell on the body bleeding out beside me.
“GET BEHIND ME,” I distantly hear Stone’s chilling tone cut through the madness, and his order breaks through the fog clouding my every thought.
Without a second of hesitation, I grab the discarded shiv off the ground and scramble back to my feet, racing to get behind Stone as he leaves a mountain of dead bodies in his wake.
My back slams against the wall, the gun in one hand and the shiv in the other, and even fully armed, there’s no denying that I still don’t stand a chance.
Stone glances back for just a second, seeing the two weapons grasped firmly in my hands, and he shakes his head as if I haven’t got a clue what to do with either of them. He’s kinda right, but that doesn’t change the fact that I just dropped a body. I’m not completely useless.
“Give me that before you hurt yourself,” he snaps, and before I can protest, he snatches the shiv right out of my capable fingers. Then, in complete horror and disbelief, I watch Stone Blackthorne effortlessly tear his way through men like a knife slicing through warm butter.
There’s no doubt about it; Stone is a beast. That much was clear the moment I saw him on TV all those years ago. But Stone Blackthorne with a weapon in his hand? Well, fuck. He’s an unstoppable machine.
Some of the prisoners take off, realizing they don’t stand a chance against Stone, but some aren’t bright enough to walk away from a fight. They’re too focused on winning me as a prize to escape with their lives.
Dead bodies pile up like offerings to a god that never answers, and I hold my gun like a lifeline, but I guess that’s exactly what it is.
I have no idea how to tell how many bullets are left, and I don’t dare risk taking my eyes off the men in the room to figure it out, but no guard in a maximum security prison is getting around with only one bullet in the chamber.
There’s got to be at least three or four, if it’s not completely full.
Minus the one that’s currently residing in my new friend’s chest.
The space in the room feels even more cramped as the piles of motionless bodies grow.
There must be at least ten to fifteen men on the ground.
There’s no way to count or to even know if they’re just out cold or meeting their maker, not until Stone moves out of my way, but he’s too big.
It’s almost impossible to see around him properly.
But the truth is, as long as he’s willing to stand in front of me and play the role of my protector, then I don’t give a shit how many bodies he drops at my feet.
The only problem is, sooner or later, the other shoe is going to drop.
He’s going to run out of men to slaughter, then his attention will return to me, and when it does, I’ll be ready. Because there’s got to be another bullet in this chamber, and it has Stone’s name written all over it.