Chapter 10
Myles
“Wake up!”
My body jolts.
I try to reach and wipe my eyes, but I can’t move.
My body jolts again as someone kicks the chair that I’m apparently strapped to.
My wrists are bound tightly to the rungs behind my back.
My ankles are bound to the legs of the chair as well.
I can feel dried blood crusted to the side of my face and in my hair. What the fuck just happened?
“I said, wake up, Langston! I want a God Damn answer!”
My eyes crack open. The lights are blinding as I blink. There’s a ringing in my ears as I gently shake my head, trying to wake myself up.
“Well, well, well. Mina may have fucked up at securing you the first time, but you made it too easy this time.”
Mina? Oh God…The memories of this morning come flooding back.
The diner.
The coffee.
The name…
Her name.
*Crack*
His fist connects with my jaw, snapping my head to my right. Blood fills my mouth as my teeth rip into my inner cheek. I spit blood as I run my tongue over my teeth to make sure they’re all still there.
“Now that I have your fucking attention, what the fuck happened to my father?” he snarls as he squats down to eye level with me.
I spit, spraying his face with blood. His eyes narrow on me as his lips curl into a sickening smile. He runs his finger through the blood before placing his finger on his tongue. He hums as he tastes my blood. My stomach knots as I watch him.
He spits at my feet. The saliva dilutes the red blood on the white tile floor.
“I’ll ask you one last time, Langston. What happened to my father? Why the fuck did you kill him?”
I think back. The last time I saw Jocko was when I was twenty-one…The year I left. Why the fuck would this guy think I had something to do with his dad’s death?
“Fine…You don’t want to talk? I’ll just have to fucking make you talk.” He stands, wiping the rest of my blood off his face with his sleeve.
“I don’t know what happened to Jocko. Why do you think I had anything to do with your dad’s death?”
He stops and turns back to me. His eyes are dark and locked on me. His upper lip twitches with rage. What the fuck happened to Jocko?
“I know you killed him. I want to know why!” he screams as he walks back to me.
“I’ve been gone for years. I haven’t talked to Jocko or seen him in almost twenty years…”
“LIAR!” he screams as he punches me across the face again. He hits the side of my nose. I can feel the cartilage crunching beneath his knuckles as blood begins to leak down my face and into the back of my throat.
“I’m not lying. Why the fuck would I kill him!?”
“He was going to find you…To tell you about Mina.”
“Mina…”
“Don’t play dumb. I know he told you she was back.”
“I didn’t…” My brows crease in confusion. Did everyone know she survived except me?
“So, you kill my father to prove a point. Then send me a threatening message and decide to show up at my club…MY CLUB…Why? Did you think you were going to take her from me now?”
“I didn’t know she was here. I didn’t even fucking know she was alive!” I scream.
“Bullshit,” he scoffs. He walks over to the side of the room. I glance around the room trying to get an idea of where we are. I think we’re still at the club.
“I swear, Declan. I never saw him. He never came to see me. Something must’ve happened.”
“You can keep lying all you want…You’ll tell me eventually,” he smirks as he walks over to a door along the far wall. He knocks twice, and I can hear a faint scream from the other side. It’s like a knife being twisted into my soul. I know in my heart that it’s Mina.
“I knew the minute you walked into my fucking club you were back for her.”
“How did Jocko know?”
“What?” he stops pacing and looks at me, confused.
“How did he know who she was? How long did he know?”
He rolls his eyes as he shakes his head at me.
“When she moved back to town when she was eighteen, she came in asking for a job. I was in charge of hiring back then. I hired her on the spot. When I told my dad her name, he was shocked.” He drags a chair in front of me, spins it, and sits backward on it.
He rests his arms on the backrest of the chair as he stares at me.
“And?” I ask impatiently. He laughs as he pulls a pocketknife out.
It clicks open, the sound echoing in the empty room.
The only things in this room are the chair I’m strapped to, a table full of what I’m assuming are torture devices, a hook on a chain dangling from the ceiling, and a gallon of some sort of cleaner.
He flips the knife around his fingers before stabbing it into the top of the backrest.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he asks as he twirls the blade, pressing the tip deeper as he carves into the wood. I can see the glint of silver reflecting off the blade into his eyes. His pupils are blown wide. His eyes are rimmed red like he’s out of his fucking mind.
“She is…” I agree. He glares at me as I say the words.
She’s the most stunning woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. It kills me every time I think of her now that I know who she really is, because I can never have her.
“She belongs to me,” he says with such arrogance that I can't help the scoff that comes out of me.
No sooner does the sound leave my lips, he shoots up, knocking the chair away. Hot, searing pain erupts across my chest. When I glance down, I can see the open cut in my shirt and the blood beginning to seep through it.
“You’re fucking psycho!” I scream as another wave of pain hits when I strain against my bindings.
“Thank you,” he laughs.
He leans closer, running the blade along my cheek. It’s sharp and slices open my skin like a hunter skins his kill. It burns like nothing I’ve ever felt before, but I still don’t scream from the pain. I won’t give him that satisfaction.
“Where is she!?” I scream.
If he hurt a single hair on her fucking head, I’ll skin him alive. I’ve never been one for violence. My company has had to rough up a few celebrities’ stalkers over the years, but I have never been the one to do it. I prefer the mental torture over the physical.
“You want to see her?” he calmly asks as he tilts his head at me.
“I just want to know she’s okay.”
There’s that sickening smile again. Who the hell raised this kid? Jocko was never a sick, twisted fuck. Crazy? Yeah. A horny old bastard who went for women way out of his league? Sure. But he was a damn good guy. He cared about his club and the women here. He took care of them.
“Tell me what I want to know, and you can see her,” he says as he drags the chair back over in front of me. He sits normally in the chair now, facing me.
My stomach tightens as I hear another scream from behind the door. He tilts his head, angling it as if he’s listening to a sweet melody and not someone screaming in pain.
“Why do you think I’m the one who killed him?”
He rolls his eyes again as he takes out his wallet. He pulls out a folded-up piece of paper. It’s worn and torn at the edges. He slowly opens it to show me. Scribbled in blood is a note.
Consider this a warning.
He tosses the note to the floor at my feet.
“Look familiar?” he hisses through clenched teeth.
“Honestly, no.”
“I feel like you aren’t understanding how completely fucked you are right now. Keep lying to me, Langston.” He pauses. He glances toward the door before looking back at me.
“Declan, I swear. I had nothing to do with Jocko’s murder!”
“He left to go find you! He said he needed to tell you she was back. Said you deserved to know.”
I can still feel the warmth from the blood leaking down the side of my face.
He stands and leans over me, using the knife to cut the top two buttons off of my dress shirt before saying fuck it and grabbing the two sides to rip it open.
Buttons go flying everywhere. He drags the knife up my ribs.
A sharp pain follows the blade. When it reaches just above my heart, he presses the tip into my skin.
I can feel the deep, agonizing pain slithering through my chest again.
He stands and pulls the tip of the knife from my chest.
“Do you know what happened to Mina’s family?” I ask. I let my head fall forward until my chin touches my chest. He watches me as he slowly paces across the room.
“The car accident?”
“Their car went off the road…Off a bridge. They drowned. It took the cops three days to find their car. I was told everyone died in that crash. It broke me. Her dad, Adam, was my best friend. So, I left. I ran and never looked back. That’s why your dad was coming to find me.
” I try to explain, but he only looks at me with disgust.
“That doesn’t explain why you killed him!” he seethes.
“I didn’t fucking kill him!” I snap as I try to lunge at him. My bindings dig into my wrists causing him to laugh as he watches me struggle.
“Myles, Myles, Myles…” He shakes his head as he glances back at the door. I haven’t heard her screams for a while, and I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.
“Declan, I swear, I didn’t even know it was her until today when she told me her name.”
“Today?” His head whips back toward me. “ She didn’t tell you her name in the room last night?”
“No. This morning, when we went to breakfast.”
I watch his face shift. The wave of clarity washes over him. I might be able to get out of here. I think I finally got through…
“You two…went to breakfast?” His voice is dark and filled with hate. When his eyes lift to mine, a rage is burning there that makes his previous burning hatred toward me feel like a dull flame.
Fuck.
He storms over to the door and rips it open. The force causes it to hit the wall. I can hear the drywall crack as the handle dents it. From my angle, I can’t see into the room, only that it’s dark in there with a very low red glow.
“What the fuck happened?” I hear him shout.
I can hear the sounds of struggling. His incoherent screaming is drowning out the sounds of someone gagging and crying. What the fuck is he doing to her?
A moment later, he comes walking back into the room, dragging a chair behind him.
The chair is balanced on its back legs as it scrapes across the floor.
The phantom knife twisting into my soul twists deeper with each step.
Strapped to the chair is a very lifeless-looking body.
Her head is tilted back. Her eyes are closed.
Blood drips down the back of the chair and onto the floor, leaving a trail into the room.
“Mina!”