11. Audra
The gun presses hard into my back. "Move."
I stumble forward. The warehouse door screeches open, and they shove me inside.
The light hits me like a slap. Fluorescent tubes buzz overhead, flooding the enormous room with harsh, unforgiving brightness.
For a second, my eyes struggle to adjust. Rows of boxes stretch along the walls, stacked neatly on pallets.
Perfectly organized. Clean. It almost looks…
normal. Like any storage space in the city.
Except for the chair. It sits in the middle of the room. And someone is tied to it. My breath stops.
Pete.
His head hangs forward, his chin almost touching his chest. His shirt is soaked through; dark patches spread across the fabric. Blood. There's blood on the concrete beneath him. Too much of it. My stomach turns violently. There is something on the ground around his chair. Small shapes. Dark. Wrong.
My brain refuses to understand for a second. Until it does. Oh God.
No.
No—
His fingers.
A choking sound rips out of me, and I double over, dry heaving as bile burns the back of my throat. The man behind me grabs my arm and yanks me upright. "Move."
I stagger forward. My vision swims. Pete doesn't move. Doesn't react. Doesn't even lift his head.
Please be alive.
Please be alive.
The man with the gun shoves me toward the center of the room. My knees almost buckle when I see Pete up close. His face is pale. His lips are cracked. Blood crusted along his jaw. His hands… I look away before my mind can finish that thought.
"Boss," the man says behind me. "We've got the wife."
Pete's head twitches slightly. A weak, broken sound escapes him. "Audra…?"
My heart shatters.
"I'm here," I whisper.
I realize something else. We're not alone. There are more men in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. Suddenly, the bright lights don't make the room feel safe at all. They make it feel like a stage. And we're the show.
A bald man steps out of the darkness. He's short and fat. His shirt strains against his stomach, and sweat gleams on his scalp under the fluorescent lights. He smiles. It's not a nice smile.
"About time," he appears almost cheerful. "Maybe he'll talk now."
Pete lifts his head with visible effort. His eyes find me. "Audra…"
The bald man moves faster than I expect.
His fist slams into my stomach. The air explodes out of my lungs in a violent oomph as I crumple to the concrete floor.
Pain tears through me like fire. I retch, coughing, gasping desperately for air that refuses to come.
It's not the first time I've been punched in the stomach.
God knows I had my share of fights—boys, girls, it didn't matter.
Kindergarten, grammar school, middle school, High school.
Later, a bar fight. A jealous girl with rings on her fingers. But never like this. Never this hard.
"AUDRA!" Pete screams. "NO! Leave her alone!"
The bald man steps back casually, like he's swatted a fly.
"She doesn't know anything!" Pete's voice cracks, desperation tearing through every word. "I don't know anything! I told you!" His voice breaks. "Audra… I'm sorry…"
The words slice through me worse than the punch. I push myself up slowly, wiping the bile from my mouth with the back of my hand. My stomach still burns, my lungs still struggle to pull in air, but I force myself upright. The bald man watches me with amusement. I meet his eyes.
"What do you want?" I ask.
His grin widens. "Ah. The puta might have more sense than her husband."
The word is meant to bait me, but I say nothing. He tilts his head toward Pete. "Why is he looking into our accounts?"
For a moment, I just stare at him. Flabbergasted.
Accounts? My mind flashes back to the bedroom.
Pete's laptop. The maze of shell companies.
Four and a half million dollars. Oh shit.
Pete didn't stumble onto something weird.
He stumbled onto them. Shit, shit, shit.
The realization lands cold and sharp in my chest. Cartel.
These men have to be Cartel. I've seen them operate a few times when I was with Razor.
They're ruthless. They don't care who they kill.
They would rather kill ten innocents than leave one rat alive.
That's what this is. Who these men are. Not random criminals.
Not a mistake. Not something we can explain our way out of.
These men don't leave witnesses. Even if they believe Pete… we're already dead.
The bald man grabs my hair and jerks my head up. Pain rips across my scalp.
"I like you on your knees," he snarls into my face. His breath smells sour. "How about you suck my cock first?"
He glances at Pete. "What do you think, Pete? Will you talk then? Or will you enjoy the show?"
"NO!" Pete screams. The chair rattles as he struggles against the ropes. "Leave her alone! She doesn't know anything!"
His voice cracks. "We don't know anything! I just work for a bank!"
Blood is everywhere. His ruined hands shake violently against the ropes.
The terror on his face tears something open inside my chest. I know he's already been through hell.
I know he's breaking. But seeing him sob and plead like this…
it fills me with a strange, aching shame—not just for what's happening to us, but for how small and helpless he looks in this moment.
Then the panic inside me simply… stops.
A cold calm washes over me. I straighten my spine and lift my chin despite the fist still gripping my hair. If this is how it ends, I won't meet it screaming and crying. I refuse.
I'll face it with dignity. For both of us.
"If you shove your cock down my throat," I tell him quietly. "I'll bite it off."
His hand explodes across my face. The slap throws me sideways onto the concrete. Pain bursts through my jaw. Warm blood fills my mouth.
"Maybe we remove your teeth first," he grins, and I don't doubt him for a second, not even before one of the other men steps forward.
Holding up a pair of pliers. The metal glints underneath the bright lights.
My stomach knots. I can accept the fact of dying.
But what these men are planning is so much worse.
Pete thrashes in the chair. "PLEASE!" he screams. "PLEASE!"
The chair scrapes loudly across the floor.
But the ropes don't give. I push myself upright.
Everything feels strangely distant now. Like I'm floating somewhere above the room watching this happen.
Pete is still begging. Still crying. Still trying to save…
him? me? I don't know for sure. Suddenly, I feel something that surprises me: embarrassment.
Pete's screaming? It won't change anything.
"Pete," my voice sounds calm. Almost gentle. "They're going to kill us." The room goes quiet. I wipe the blood from my mouth and look straight at the bald man. "Isn't that right?"
He studies me for a moment. Then he nods. "Ah, I like a smart woman."
I turn back to Pete. God, he looks so broken. "I love you."
I do love him. Just not like a wife is supposed to love her husband. But he doesn't need to know that. Especially not now.
His head shakes violently. "No—no, Audra?—"
I turn back to the bald man. "Look. My husband is telling you the truth." He narrows his eyes. "Where were you going to buy something?"
He blinks. "How do you know that?"
"Because my husband works for the bank you're trying to buy through.
" For a moment, he just stares at me. I bite back the insult burning on my tongue.
You ignorant bastard. And. If you want to do business in the States, you should learn the rules first. Instead, I chose my words with care.
"He just got carried away with his research. "
The bald man studies me. Long. Hard. Then he lifts the gun and presses it against my temple.
Pete screams. "No! Please! No! Audra! Please!"
I look at him one last time.
"Honey," his voice breaks, "I love you."
The bald man sighs. "Enough of that wailing."
He turns the gun. The shot explodes through the warehouse.
I flinch. Pete's body jerks once. Then slumps forward.
Still. The sound echoes through the room.
For a moment, I feel like my heart has stopped beating entirely.
Pain shoots through it. So much it can't take it.
But the pain is followed by more resolve.
Resolve to go out dignified. I won't let them see how much they just hurt me.
I refuse to cry. The bald man looks back at me.
Pete. The thought of him lying there hits me like a knife. There is grief. Of course there is. A deep, tearing grief that threatens to swallow me whole. But beneath it, coils something darker. Something I never expected.
Hate.
It rises, slow and hot, in my chest, wraps around my ribs like a tightening fist. I hate him. I hate the men behind him. I hate the ones who dragged me here, the ones who cut Pete, the ones who stood around watching him bleed like it was entertainment.
For one wild second, I want to jump up and claw the man's face off. I want to knock him down. Pummel him. Rip his heart out and shove it down his throat.
The sheer violence of the thought shocks me.
Where the hell did that come from? I've never been a violent person.
Never been the type to fight or scream or throw punches…
No, that's not entirely true. I've always had a very strong sense of right and wrong.
Not the kind written in law books. The kind older than that.
Biblical. An eye for an eye. I believe in that.
Always have. And right now, every part of me wishes I could rip the gun from his hand and shoot every single one of them for what they did to Pete.
He was such a good man. He never hurt anyone in his life.
He didn't deserve this. My fingers curl slowly into fists.
The bald man raises the gun. Points it at my chest.
"I believe you, puta."
One of the other men suddenly steps forward. "Boss," he warns quickly. "She'll bring a lot of money. Look at her."
The bald man studies me again. Slowly.
"She would," he agrees. He shakes his head. "But she's not the type to break." His eyes grow colder. "She's a liability."
He lifts the gun. I stare straight at him. No tears. No begging. If I'm going to die, I'm not giving him the satisfaction of fear.