Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
ANDIE
The gravel of the lot crunches under the vehicle’s tires as we slowly approach the dilapidated warehouse. The rusting corrugated sheet metal fa?ade shows the structure’s age and state of disrepair. Jax and I were able to leave Falcon Tower without bumping into the other guys. Part of me wishes they were here with us. But I know how they’d react. Especially Keane. He would try hard to stop me from what I’m about to do.
Jax gets out of the passenger side and comes around to open my door for me. The car ride here was made in silence, but I know he must have questions. Surely, he recognizes this place.
My legs unfold, and I take the hand Jax offers. Once I’m standing, I scan my surroundings. It’s so quiet. And dark. I can’t even hear the cacophonic noise from the interstate highway located a mile to the west. The warehouse is situated in the northern outskirts of the city in an abandoned industrial district where the old paper mill used to be. Most of the area is now an EPA Superfund site due to all the hazardous material and pollution the mill created and recklessly dumped into the surrounding environment during its period of operation. In ninth-grade science class, I had to do a report on it. I can still smell the chemicals and rot in the air; or maybe that’s just me being psychosomatic.
“It looks different from how I remember it,” I tell him.
Jax’s hand goes to his Glock as he steps in front of me. He’s in enforcer mode, making sure I’m protected.
“How do you know about this place?”
This is the warehouse Kellan unknowingly brought me to the night I hid in the trunk of his Mustang. It’s the night I saw who and what the guys were for the first time when they beat and tortured a man. It’s the night Max took what was left of Kellan’s soul, forcing him to shoot a man point-blank in the head. How many times have I relived it in my nightmares?
“I was curious, so I stowed away in the trunk of Kellan’s car one night,” I reply.
Jax’s mouth is thinned in a grim line when he turns slightly to look back at me. “What did you see?”
“Everything.”
His eyes fall shut, his lungs sucking in a deep, dejected inhale of regret.
Keane and Rafe have said more than once that they never wanted this for me—this life and the horrors it entails. But what they fail to realize is that I’ve always been a part of it. I know who these men are and what they’ve done. And I love them regardless.
A shadow passes over the side window of the SUV—a reflection of a face in the glass. A familiar face with soft brown eyes framed by dark brown hair. Kellan . It’s brief and fleeting and disappears almost as soon as I see it.
Kellan’s ghost has haunted me less and less lately. I’m still angry with him for keeping secrets, but I also miss him. It doesn’t hurt to think about him as much as it used to. Maybe that’s why I don’t see his ghost as often anymore. Maybe the broken parts of me are finally healing.
“Pearson should already be inside,” I tell Jax.
As we approach the building, the humidity infusing the night air causes lines of sweat to drip down my spine and neck. Even my arms feel like they’re already coated in a thin film of liquid salt. A light fog billows around our feet as we walk around the side building, searching for the door. The last time I was here, I climbed through a broken window in the back.
Just like in B-movie horror flicks, a black cat jumps out of its hiding place behind a loose drainage pipe, scaring the shit out of me, before hissing and dashing away.
“Fucking cats,” Jax mumbles. He’s allergic to them and thinks they’re the tiny spawns of Satan.
Finally finding a door, I give it a good tug. It opens with a loud creak, like nails on a chalkboard. The stench of piss and feces hits me right away. Not surprising. The north part of the city is known for its drugs, and abandoned places like this building are hotbeds for buying, selling, or shooting up. Or killing someone.
Jax pulls me to his side as we enter the empty warehouse. It’s hard to make out anything in the pitch black of the expansive building. My right foot catches on something, and I stop to get out my phone so I can use it as a light. The screen glows a faint blue for a few seconds, illuminating the floor and the used, shriveled-up condom and broken syringe I crushed with my shoe. Oh, gross. I’m going to need a scalding shower and several rounds of vaccinations and antibiotics when I’m done here.
The warehouse must be infested with rodents because I can hear their tiny squeaks and the pitter-patter of their feet scurrying around. A spear of moonlight beams down from an opening in the roof, and like a spotlight from the heavens, I see the woman bound and gagged on the floor right in the middle of it.
My footsteps are now sure and with purpose, bringing me closer to the woman who’ll soon regret she was ever born. The woman jerks and thrashes when she sees me. Her brown, terrified eyes and strangled whimpers beg me to help her.
“Where’s the man?” I ask Pearson as he slowly materializes behind her the more my vision becomes accustomed to the darkness.
He looks down at his feet to a large male body lying on the floor, his wrists duct-taped behind his back, and his leg bent at an odd angle. The way the man is positioned reminds me of a contortionist I once saw during a street performance.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes,” Pearson replies in English.
“Good. Thank you, Pearson. Jax and I can handle it from here.”
Pearson disappears back into the shadowy darkness. There’s a loud groan of hinges and a clank as a door opens and closes. I assume he’ll stick close by to make sure no wayward trespasser wanting to find a place to sleep for the night or get high will interrupt us.
Squatting down in front of the woman, I gently help her to sit up—which is difficult the way Pearson has trussed her like a turkey—and look her over. Up close, she has chestnut brown hair streaked with a darker auburn red. Brown eyes the color of smoky quartz. A heart-shaped face and a button nose. Small diamond studs adorn her ears. Her whimpers get choppier, and her crying gets louder when I brush her sweaty hair from her face.
“Shhh,” I whisper, peeling off the black duct tape covering her mouth and pulling out the wad of newspaper that was used to gag her. “What’s your name?”
Her throat works as she swallows. “St-Stacy.”
“Last name?”
“ Please don’t hurt me. Please . I’ll do whatever you want.”
My fingernail taps against my thigh, and I look up to Jax for guidance. But it’s not Jax standing there. My Grim Reaper has arrived.
“Ask her again,” he says.
I don’t have to. She takes one look at Jax, and terror fills her eyes. She senses what he is. The Angel of Death.
“Mar-Martinez.”
“Jax, meet Stacy Martinez. Stacy Martinez, meet Jaxson West.”
“Your knife, Angel,” Jax says, and I follow his lead.
This is why I need the Reaper. I’ve never tortured anyone before. I need his guidance. I need to draw from his experience and his madness and his bloodlust. Only the savage will win this war against the Ortiz cartel and the two men who run it.
I take my time, slowly sliding Jax’s red-handled knife out of my ankle holster, twisting the blade so that it catches the moonlight. Stacy goes into full panic mode. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hyperventilated herself into a passed-out blob on the floor. Can’t have that happening.
She cries out when I smack her across the face. I ignore the pain it causes in my broken finger and want to roll my eyes at being forced to do something so stupidly girlie. Punching is more my thing.
“P-please,” she begs, eyes wide and scared. “ Please, please . I didn’t want to do it. He threatened to kill my family. He’ll kill me!”
“What the fuck do you think I’m going to do to you if you don’t tell me what I want to know?” I reply with a deadly calm.
As I explained to Jax before we left Falcon Tower, Alejandro and Julio somehow got to the staff at the hospital. Sweet Nurse Stacy tried to inject Declan’s IV with a syringe full of air to induce an arterial embolism. A syringe that was given to Stacy by the male orderly. But they failed.
Pearson had the men we’d assigned to guard Declan’s room immediately transport Declan to the private hangar and put on a private jet where Mike was already waiting. The plane should arrive in Boston soon, where one of Cillian’s men will meet them and take Declan to a McCarthy safehouse. The phone call from Pearson was to inform me the plane with Declan on it had taken off, and that Cillian would be flying to Boston from Ireland tomorrow.
I rise from my lowered position and go over to the man moaning on the floor. It seems that he’s about to wake up and join the party.
Jax comes up behind me, his hot breath on my neck and his very hard cock pressing into my ass.
“Ready to play, Reaper?”
I feel his mouth curve on my skin. His hand slithers its way over my breast, fingers pulling and rolling my nipple through my shirt. I reach behind me and sink my nails into his shoulder, and my core tightens when he gives the tight nub one more hard tug.
“Jax, what are you doing?”
“Teaching you. Pain is pleasure, baby . ”
His tongue does wicked things to my ear at the same time his hand glides down my arm and his fingers wrap around the knife I’m holding. He guides my hand, lightly running the blade over me—thigh to pussy to stomach to chest. As he does, he explains in great detail the various ways I can use the knife that will cause the most amount of pain with the least amount of damage. Stacy watches in abject horror as Jax works my body with the knife, his touch sensual and his words filthy. I swear I could come if he keeps it up, I’m so turned on.
The man on the floor finally comes to, flopping around in the filth and dirt like a fish out of water.
Jax lets go of my hand and wrenches my lips to his. His kiss is full of sin.
“Now I’m ready to play, Angel.”