CHAPTER 24
DAMON
My skull is a goddamn microwave.
The phosphorus from the flashbang is still burning a hole straight through my retinas, leaving nothing but a white-hot blur and a high-frequency whine that’s drilling into my brain.
My central nervous system is completely offline.
I’m lying flat against the vibrating, rusted iron of the freighter deck and I can’t feel my fucking hands.
The weight of five men is pressing me into the metal, their knees digging into my spine, my ribs, my busted liver.
I can smell burnt magnesium. It’s thick and chemical, mixing with the cold spray of the rain and the hot stench of diesel pouring out of the ship's stacks.
Through the haze, I see the flashes of her boots.
Margarita. She’s kicking, thrashing like a feral cat, but two of them have her hoisted up like a piece of fucking luggage.
Her screams are distorted. They sound like they’re coming from underwater, muffled and broken, but they tear through my chest more effectively than any bullet ever did.
"Let her go!" I try to yell, but it comes out as a wet, choked rasp. "Don't touch her!"
"Damon!" Margarita’s voice cracks over the storm, hysterical, desperate. "Damon, please!"
I’m failing. I promised this girl she was mine to protect and I’m literally pinned to the dirt while she gets dragged away.
The primal, sickening failure of it makes my blood boil up my throat.
My fingernails scrape against a patch of loose rust on the slick metal, tearing the quicks right off.
Blood pools under my fingertips. I need leverage.
I just need one solid grip and I’ll snap every neck in a five-foot radius.
I manage to pull my right arm inward, bracing my elbow against the deck to heave myself up.
Before I can even lock the joint, a heavy, steel-toed combat boot crashes straight into the hinge of my jaw.
The impact is a hard reset on my consciousness.
My head snaps back, the base of my skull bouncing off the iron deck with a hollow thud that rattles the teeth in my head.
A blinding flash of stars explodes in my vision.
I bite down on my tongue reflexively and my mouth floods with the hot, iron tang of my own blood.
"Stay down, Boss," one of the nameless grunts grunts out, digging his knee harder into my kidney.
"You’re done, Locke," another one spits.
Everything is dark at the edges. I’m losing the thread of reality.
My body is failing me, shutting down from the fresh trauma and the torn stitches in my side, and that pisses me off more than the pain.
I don't get to pass out. I don't get to clock out while she's screaming.
I force my eyes open, blinking through the rainwater and the grit, staring at the boots trampling around my head.
A pair of pristine, black leather oxfords step into my narrowing field of vision.
They’re jarringly clean against the filth of the deck.
No mud. No blood. Just polished leather.
Cole Holt steps out of the shadows of the crane, holding a black umbrella like he’s attending a fucking garden party instead of a coup.
The scent of his expensive sandalwood cologne cuts right through the diesel and the sweat, making me want to vomit.
He looks down at me, his face twisted into a mask of pity and predatory delight.
He actually reaches over with his free hand and carefully adjusts his silver cufflinks.
The sheer, unadulterated arrogance of the gesture makes my hands clench into fists so tight my knuckles audibly pop.
"You always did have a weakness for strays, Damon," Cole says smoothly, his voice barely rising above the patter of the rain hitting his umbrella.
I spit a mouthful of blood onto the deck. "Fuck you."
"Look at you," he sighs, shaking his head. "Pathetic. I expected more of a fight, honestly. I brought twenty guys. Looks like I only needed five."
He leans down, closing the distance. He takes the tip of his umbrella and presses it right into the center of my fresh surgical wound.
I freeze.
He twists it. Slowly.
My entire body arches off the deck. A silent, agonized scream gets caught in my throat as the fishing-line stitches Margarita painstakingly sewed into my meat begin to snap.
One by one. I can feel the metal tip of the umbrella grinding against the torn tissue of my liver.
It’s a white-hot flare of agony that drowns out the storm, the ship, everything.
The sick fuck is using the exact spot Margarita saved to break me.
"Does it hurt?" Cole asks, tilting his head. "The girl did a sloppy job."
I can't breathe. My vision is swimming in red.
"She’s quite the little surgeon, isn't she?" He straightens up, pulling the umbrella out of my side. Blood immediately wells up, spilling over my soaked shirt. He turns his head, looking past the railing toward the pier. I follow his gaze. There’s a heavy, unmarked van idling in the rain, the side door open. The men throw Margarita into the back. She’s fighting the whole way, but she’s small and they’re huge.
"She’s going to be very busy, Damon," Cole says, turning back to me.
He sounds almost conversational. "My men are going to need patches.
The takeover is going to get bloody. I need a doctor who doesn't ask questions.
Someone who knows how to operate in the dark.
" He smirks, a slick, greasy smile that makes my skin crawl.
"A surgeon in the day, and whatever I want at night.
You made her valuable. I should thank you. "
The thought of his hands on her. The thought of him touching a single hair on her fucking head.
The rage transcends whatever physical limits my body has left. I don't feel the torn liver. I don't feel the concussion. I hack up a thick glob of bloody phlegm and spit it dead center onto the toe of his polished oxford.
Cole looks down at his shoe, his smile faltering for a fraction of a second.
I stare up at him. My eyes are dead. I don't have an ounce of fear left in me, just cold, hard certainty. My voice comes out as a wet, broken rasp, but I make sure he hears every single syllable.
"I’m going to keep you alive for a week."
Cole’s jaw tightens. "Shut up."
"I’m going to use her scalpels," I tell him, the words scraping out of my ruined throat. "I’m going to take you apart piece by piece. I’m starting with your fucking tongue so you can't scream."
"You’re in no position to make threats, Locke."
"It’s not a threat," I say, baring my blood-stained teeth. "You won't have eyes to see her when I'm done. Enjoy the chair, Cole. It’s the last one you’ll ever sit in."
His face hardens. The smugness drops completely.
He realizes the truth. As long as I have a pulse and two working legs, I am going to hunt him down and rip his heart out of his chest. He pulls a silenced Beretta from his waistband.
He doesn't aim for my chest. He doesn't aim for my head.
He points the barrel directly at my right thigh.
"Can't have you chasing after us, can we?"
He pulls the trigger.
The thwip of the suppressed shot is instantly followed by the wet, sickening thwack of a 9mm hollow point shattering my femur.
The force of the round pinning my leg to the deck causes my entire body to violently spasm.
It’s not just pain. It’s destruction. The bone literally explodes inside my leg.
A sudden, overwhelming heat washes over my thigh, bubbling out of the small, steaming crater in my jeans to mix with the freezing rainwater.
Then comes the numbness. A terrifying, heavy numbness that tells me the structural integrity of my body is officially gone.
I collapse flat against the iron, my breath hitching in my chest.
"Consider this an early retirement," Cole says, putting the gun away. He steps back, looking at the men holding me down. "Take her. We’re done here."
They let go of me. The sudden absence of their weight makes me gasp for air. Cole turns his back and walks away, his men following him into the storm like obedient dogs. I lie in the spreading pool of my own red blood on the iron deck, listening to the rhythmic slap of the ocean against the hull.
I roll onto my stomach. Every nerve ending is screaming, but I dig my elbows into the grit and pull.
My broken leg trails behind me like a sack of dead meat.
It leaves a thick, dark smear across the rust. I drag my two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame inch by agonizing inch toward the edge of the ship.
My muscles are tearing, my liver is bleeding out, but I keep pulling until my hands hit the bottom rung of the railing.
I heave my upper body up just enough to look over the side.
The van doors slam shut. The heavy engine revs, tires spinning on the slick pavement of the pier.
"Margarita..." The name barely makes it past my lips.
I watch the red taillights cut through the rain, speeding away into the neon-lit maw of the city. They disappear around the edge of a rusted warehouse, taking everything I have with them.
"I’m coming for you," I whisper to the empty dock.
I let go of the rail and slump back onto the deck. The rain is washing my blood into the scuppers. My leg is useless and my side is open. I need to find a tourniquet and a gun before I bleed to death on this boat.