Chapter 15 #2
I start feeling lightheaded. My lips move, but his name gets lost before it can reach them.
He eases the pressure, and I suck in air.
My throat burns worse than it did when I first woke up.
Little black specs dot my vision. I’ve barely taken two breaths when he completely ignores my outburst and gets right to the interrogation part of the abduction.
“Who,” he starts, speaking slowly, making sure I hear every word, “did you think you were hunting?”
Well, that is definitely not what I was expecting.
Then again, if your abductor from seven years ago who’s supposed to be dead kidnaps you again, there’s probably very little that wouldn’t shock you.
At first, I can’t figure out what the hell he’s talking about. These past three years have felt twice as long with nothing to urge me forward. But if that’s what he means, I can’t even begin to guess where he’s going with it.
His thumb shifts slightly against my throat, feeling my pulse.
“Who did you think hired me to kidnap you?”
My brain is still scrambling to keep up with the fact that he’s here and alive and breathing, and now he’s interrogating me like I’m the criminal.
“Which time?” I snap back.
I’m rewarded with several more seconds of a lack of oxygen.
His grip around my throat is tight, but neither one of us backs down from the way we glare into each other’s eyes.
It goes on long enough that I feel lightheaded again.
His eyes are so fucking cold that I think he might actually make me pass out.
Aaaand…my dick’s hard.
Fucking awesome.
I couldn’t get it up for a hot, masc, pansexual goddess, but when it comes to my abductor who I’ve thought was dead the past seven years damn near choking the life out of me?
Choke me harder, Daddy.
And there it is.
Rock bottom.
Get it the fuck together, Cason.
I try to convince myself it’s just the sight of the gun hanging from the shoulder holster under his arm and the memories that come with it, but…well…
That doesn’t make it any fucking better.
Worse, probably.
He lets me breathe, and common sense rushes in along with air. I gasp and wheeze and cough, convincing myself instead it’s just the asphyxiation that has me ready to throw my dignity out the window as easily as I did before.
I’m not the same twenty-two-year-old from that basement.
It’s obvious Reese isn’t the same either. He may not be dead, but clearly a part of him died that day. Even when I remember the times he aimed his gun at me, he wasn’t as cruel then as he is now.
I slump back against the wall, practically held up by his hand still around my throat.
“Who?” he asks again.
I swallow, and I know he can feel it against his palm.
“All I know is it was someone targeting the Institute or my uncle,” I tell him, my voice even more fucked than before. “Someone with a grudge against the Bellrose name.”
“Convenient.”
Data and memories zip along the neurons in my brain as I make sense of what he’s implying.
So everything I thought I knew was a lie, an illusion. Okay, fine. I can roll with that. All I ever had anyway was a lot of anonymous usernames and codes. However, he better tell me what the fuck is going on, or I’m going to throw a worse tantrum than anything he’s ever seen.
But all he does is stare at me, searching my face like he’s trying to decide whether I’m lying.
Then something in the room seems to shift.
It’s in the lighting behind him. My gaze is pulled over his shoulder, and at first, I think it’s my drugged brain glitching again. But then I realize the shadows on the wall aren’t behaving normally.
They move.
And they absolutely shouldn’t be moving.
It’s not dramatic, not in some horror movie, swaying tree branches kind of way. Just a subtle ripple along the concrete like something is breathing beneath the surface of the dark.
I shiver, and Reese notices.
“Don’t worry.” His other hand comes up, his knuckles brushing my cheek with a deceptively gentle touch. It takes everything in me not to lean into it. “They won’t hurt you. Yet.”
Those are not comforting words.
And my dick is definitely not hard anymore.
My gaze meets his again. “The sh-shadows?”
His mouth curves slightly, revealing almost a hint of the man I remember. “Side effect.”
“Of what?”
He stares at me for too long, then drops his hand from my cheek, leaving it cold.
“Dying.”
The shadows stop moving, and the room goes quiet and still. The air falls about ten degrees. I still haven’t caught my breath, and it feels like I might never catch it. I’m very aware of where Reese’s hand is touching my throat again. I’m scared of him and desperate for him all at the same time.
“You did die?” I ask.
“Yes.”
My stomach twists as the memory plays out in my mind. There’s a part of me that wants to cry for him all over again, which is fucking ridiculous considering what a mean asshole he’s being right now.
And, you know…the fact that he’s kidnapped me again.
“Then how the fuck are you standing here? And what the hell is going on?”
His head tilts. “You should ask your uncle.”
The words hit harder than the punch I threw earlier.
“Wh-what?”
He doesn’t repeat himself. Instead, his gaze dips down to my mouth. Instinct has me looking at his too, and I want to fucking weep. Because it was barely a second. A sweeping touch. It was all we ever got to have before everything crumbled to dust.
Because of Malcolm?
I peer over his shoulder to distract myself. The shadows behind him are still. Maybe it was all in my head. Maybe he was only trying to scare me.
“Everything that happened,” he says as his thumb brushes along my pulse point. “Your kidnapping. My death. The media attention.” His voice is calm, detached. “It all went exactly according to his plan.”
Ice crawls up my spine.
I just want to fucking breathe, to understand.
“You’re saying that Malcolm—”
“I’m saying,” Reese cuts in, “that Bellrose Institute got exactly what it wanted. You were never the target, Cason. You were the distraction. You want to know who really hired me? It was Malcolm all along.”
My stomach drops through the floor.
His thumb stops brushing against my skin, and I realize how comforting the touch had been. I want to ask him to give it back, to keep doing it.
“No.” I shake my head, unwilling to believe it. “That’s—no. He wouldn’t do that.”
I have to be misunderstanding. After all, the chances of me being able to comprehend anything right now are very low. I’m standing here with the ghost of my abductor seeing shadows move.
I’m dreaming.
That has to be what’s going on. Because there’s no way in hell Malcolm would ever orchestrate his own nephew’s kidnapping.
My brain clings to that conclusion with the kind of desperate optimism normally reserved for lottery tickets and miracle cures.
It’s the only explanation that does make any sense.
I let out a shaky breath and nod slowly.
“Okay,” I say. “Great. Perfect. That actually explains a lot.”
Reese’s brows draw together.
Again, I look past him at the wall, the concrete, the lights that are just a little too bright, the shadows that may or may not be breathing like a suspiciously alive lung.
“Yeah.” I gesture vaguely with one hand while the other is still busy clutching his wrist like a stress ball. “This tracks. Trauma brain. Classic. My subconscious finally snapped under the weight of unresolved emotional damage.”
Reese just stares at me.
I nod again, more confidently now that I’ve invented a coping mechanism.
“I mean, obviously this is a dream,” I inform him like he should’ve come to that same conclusion.
“Or a nightmare, I guess. Which means I’m about to wake up in my apartment, Felix is going to be screaming at me for breakfast, and I’ll go back to my therapist who’s going to charge me extra for whatever the hell this is. ”
Silence.
Reese blinks.
“You think you’re dreaming,” he says flatly.
“Correct.”
He releases my throat, but his hand doesn’t leave for long. It forms a fist and comes flying at my face. The punch isn’t hard enough to knock me out, but my head still snaps sideways as pain explodes across my jaw. I stagger.
“Fuck!”
Okay, fine. I punched him first. Now we’re even.
“Still dreaming?”
“Unfortunately,” I mutter before spitting blood onto the concrete, “that felt extremely real.” I rub my jaw, glaring at him. “And, also…rude.”
He ignores that as he takes a step back. “You hacked half the dark web to get back at the person who hired me to kidnap you. Or who you thought hired me. The person Malcolm led you right to.”
My stomach tightens. “How do you—”
“You dismantled networks, burned accounts and contacts, exposed people who had spent years staying invisible, who depended on that invisibility to stay alive.”
Each sentence lands like another blow.
“You destroyed something I spent years building.”
Oh.
Oh no.
The rage in his voice finally makes sense.
It was him?
My mouth goes dry, and even if I could speak, I don’t know what the fuck I’d say.
The shadows move again, and now I know I wasn’t imagining it. They stretch along the wall, long fingers of darkness creeping across the concrete like they’re listening too. They ripple across the floor like dark water pooling toward him.
I keep my back pressed against the wall because I fear I’m at risk of passing out.
“You’re controlling those.”
He doesn’t answer. Which, for him, is absolutely an answer.