CHAPTER 18 THE NEEDLE AND THE THREAD POV THAYER #2
She stares at me, entirely horrified by the sheer, psychotic resilience of my command. To push a curved needle through raw, un-anesthetized muscle is a form of medieval torture. But she looks at the dark, stubborn finality in my eyes and realizes that I will not yield.
She threads the needle. She grabs a pair of surgical hemostats, clamping the metal jaws securely around the curve of the needle to give her leverage.
She leans over me again. Her face is mere inches from my chest. I can feel the frantic, erratic puff of her breath against my collarbone.
"I have to pull the edges together," she whispers, her voice completely broken.
"Do it."
She places her left hand against the outer edge of the wound, pressing down, physically forcing the jagged, severed halves of my muscle back together. The pain spikes again, a blinding flare that makes my vision go completely black for a fraction of a second.
Then, the needle pierces my skin.
It is a slow, agonizing intrusion. She has to force the heavy steel through the thick, tough epidermis, driving it deep into the muscle bed before curving it back up through the opposite side of the wound.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek until the sharp, metallic tang of copper floods my mouth. I refuse to scream again. I refuse to terrify her any further. I lock my gaze onto her face, entirely anchoring my sanity to the beautiful, frantic concentration pulling her brows together.
She pulls the black thread tight. The skin puckers, pulling closed. She ties a swift, clumsy surgical knot, securing the first stitch.
"One," she breathes, a tear slipping off her chin to land directly on my bare chest.
She moves half an inch down. The needle pierces my flesh again.
I watch her. I watch the woman I kidnapped, the woman I manipulated, the woman I completely isolated from the world, deliberately driving a steel needle into my body to keep me alive.
The intimacy of the act is profound. It is a terrifying, twisted inversion of the power dynamic.
She holds my life in her bloody, trembling hands.
She is causing me excruciating, blinding pain, and the darkest, most irredeemable part of my soul is absolutely, entirely obsessed with her for it.
She belongs to me. The thought is a narcotic, a dark, heavy drug that numbs the edges of the agony.
She pushes the needle through a third time. A fourth.
"Talk to me," she begs, her voice shaking as she ties another knot. "Thayer, keep your eyes open. Talk to me."
"What do you want to know?" I murmur, my voice a slurred, heavy rasp.
"Anything," she gasps, piercing my skin for the fifth time. I flinch violently, my knuckles turning white against the headboard. "Tell me... tell me about the first time you saw me."
She is trying to distract me. She is trying to force my brain to process a memory instead of the agonizing trauma being inflicted upon my body.
"Six years ago," I whisper, my eyes locking onto hers, the memory entirely crystal clear despite the fever burning my brain. "Your father's house. I had just broken his enforcer's jaw. I walked out of the office. And you were standing at the top of the marble stairs."
"I was terrified of you," she says softly, pulling the thread tight.
"You should have been," I reply, a dark, breathless smile curving my lips. "I was covered in blood. I was a monster. But you didn't run. You just stared at me with those massive, fractured blue eyes."
She pushes the needle through again. The pain is a dull, roaring background noise now, entirely eclipsed by the vivid, intoxicating memory of my initial obsession.
"I knew, right then," I murmur, my voice dropping into a dark, reverent hum.
"I looked at you, in that oversized nightgown, clutching the railing.
.. and the absolute, terrifying realization slammed into my chest. You were mine.
You had always been mine. The universe just took thirteen years to put you in my path. "
"You decided my entire fate in three seconds," she whispers, tying the knot, a profound, heavy realization settling over her features.
"I decided my own fate," I correct her softly. "Because the moment I saw you, I knew I was going to burn my entire life to the ground to keep you."
She pauses. The needle hovers over my skin.
She looks at me, the sickly pink neon light illuminating the absolute, unadulterated devotion burning in my pale gray eyes.
The cognitive dissonance is completely eradicated.
She understands the sheer, psychotic depth of my love.
It is not gentle. It is not kind. It is a violent, consuming fire that will destroy anyone who tries to extinguish it.
She swallows hard, her eyes dropping back to the wound.
She works for another twenty minutes. Every stitch is a battle of endurance.
By the time she ties the fifteenth and final knot, my entire body is completely soaked in a cold, feverish sweat.
The cheap motel mattress is ruined. The dark black sutures stand out starkly against my pale, inflamed skin like a row of brutal, ugly staples.
She drops the needle and the hemostats back into the Pelican case.
She grabs a heavy roll of sterile gauze and medical tape, quickly and securely wrapping my entire shoulder, pressing the bandages tightly against the closed wound to prevent any seepage.
When she is finished, she collapses entirely. She slumps forward, her forehead coming to rest gently against my uninjured right collarbone. Her chest heaves with exhausted, jagged sobs. The adrenaline has completely left her system, leaving behind a hollow, terrified shell.
"It's done," she cries, her bloody hands resting weakly against the mattress. "It's closed."
I slowly release my death grip on the metal headboard. My right arm is heavy, trembling from the sheer exertion of enduring the pain, but I force it to move. I wrap my arm around her back, pulling her fragile, shivering body completely on top of my uninjured side.
"You did perfectly," I murmur, pressing my lips to the damp crown of her head.
She buries her face in my neck, crying quietly, the sheer trauma of the surgery finally breaking her.
I hold her in the dark. The fever continues to rage, but the immediate threat of bleeding to death has been entirely mitigated. I am weak, exhausted, and hunted, but I have never felt more absolutely, terrifyingly victorious.
The woman in my arms is not a captive anymore. She is an active, entirely complicit participant in her own kidnapping. She sewed the monster back together. She chose me over the law, over her father, over her own freedom.
We lie in the silence for an hour. The rhythmic drumming of the rain against the motel window slowly tapers off into a faint, miserable drizzle.
Sybil stops crying. Her breathing evens out, the exhaustion pulling her toward the edge of sleep.
But my paranoia never sleeps.
The heavy, synthesized narcotics that Dante pushed into my IV at the compound are entirely burned out of my system. The pain is a sharp, agonizing reality, keeping my mind entirely alert.
I stare at the peeling, water-stained ceiling of the motel room, calculating the variables.
The FBI has the files. Arthur Vance’s dead man's switch effectively outed me to the federal government as a parricide and the head of the largest organized crime syndicate in the Midwest. They will freeze the accounts.
They will raid the safehouses. They will squeeze Dante and the Capos until someone breaks.
We cannot stay here. The ghost car is untraceable, but the motel owner is a liability. A blood debt only buys silence until the federal government offers immunity.
Suddenly, a sound completely shatters the heavy silence of the room.
It is incredibly faint. A soft, metallic scrape against the heavy wood of the motel door.
My entire body goes completely rigid. Every single muscle locks into a state of lethal, hyper-vigilant tension.
The scrape comes again. It is the distinct, unmistakable sound of a lock pick sliding into the rusted brass cylinder of the doorknob.
Someone is trying to quietly breach the room.
It isn't the FBI. Federal agents do not pick locks in silence. They breach with battering rams, flashbangs, and heavily armed tactical teams screaming commands.
This is a quiet, surgical hit.
The Commission. Or worse... my own men. If the Capos decided that my war against the federal government is bad for business, they would send a cleaner to eliminate the problem before the FBI could arrest me.
I do not hesitate. I do not groan or alert the person outside.
I gently, agonizingly shift my weight, sliding my uninjured right arm out from under Sybil. She stirs, a soft, questioning murmur escaping her lips as the loss of my body heat wakes her.
Before she can open her eyes and speak, my hand clamps firmly over her mouth.
Her eyes snap open, completely wide and terrified in the dim pink light.
I press my finger to my lips, demanding absolute, terrifying silence. My eyes are locked onto the heavy wooden door.
Sybil realizes the danger instantly. She goes completely still, her breathing entirely stopping.
I reach slowly, agonizingly, toward the nightstand. My fingers wrap securely around the textured grip of the suppressed 9mm Glock. I pull it across my chest, aiming the barrel directly at the center of the door.
I slide off the bed, completely ignoring the excruciating, blinding scream of my newly stitched shoulder. I stand up, my bare feet making absolutely no sound on the damp carpet. I step in front of the mattress, completely shielding Sybil with my massive body.
The lock clicks.
The brass doorknob slowly, silently begins to turn.
I raise the Glock, my pale gray eyes locking entirely onto the crack of the door, completely ready to turn whoever steps through that threshold into a bleeding corpse on the cheap motel carpet.
The door pushes inward.
A shadow steps into the sickly pink neon light.
I tighten my finger on the trigger, the absolute, cold detachment of the killer taking entirely over my soul.