Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
STORM
I come to when cold liquid splashes on my face, inhaling and choking as I try to wake up. The water temperature stuns me because it’s frigid in comparison to the dry heat engulfing my skin.
The last thing I remember is standing in front of Shae as she screams because….
“Tempest! Raiden!” I shout, but my voice is a rasp. “Shae!”
I crack my eyes open, blinking and trying to get a sense of my surroundings. I’m in the art barn. The pungent scent of propane burns my nostrils. The hiss tells me the valve has been deliberately cracked wide open. Someone wants a fire.
Moving my head to the left causes sharp pain to shoot from my neck, but that’s about as far as I can go anyway—I’m pinned to a chair with thick rope binding my chest, legs, and arms.
Sweat pours down my back, and I don’t have to turn all the way around to know the kiln is on. Seeing as I haven’t used it in years, the fact that it’s on is dangerous in itself.
I rock back and forth, trying to free myself, but all that happens is the chair makes a terrible sound against the concrete floors.
“Nephew, calm down.” Lakeland’s voice ignites all the rage I’ve been sitting on tonight.
Hell, not just tonight, for the last eight years. For my entire fucking life.
“If you’ve so much as touched a hair of any of their heads,” I start, taking shallow breaths against the constriction around my torso.
“You’ll what, Storm? Beat me up?” Lakeland comes into view, walking slowly in a pristine all-black outfit. He’s gone gray since I last saw him, his beard and hair streaked with silver.
“Nah, I’mma fuckin’ kill you,” I grate out.
Lakeland laughs.
“Many have tried,” he says. “Including you. Well done on that hit. There’s something poetic about trying to kill a man while he’s getting some head.”
I stare hard at him.
“Unfortunately for you, I know how you move, Storm Sandoval.” He walks toward where I sit in the center of the space, and when he’s a foot from me, he bends and says, “I win. You lose.”
I spit in his face, my saliva landing on his cheek.
Lakeland lets it hang there for a long moment before chuckling and removing a handkerchief from his shirt pocket.
The punch he delivers next is no surprise.
“This is gonna be fun,” he says, spinning around and marching to the open sliding door. He sighs, as if feeling the temperature difference of the outside air feels good on his skin.
“You always said fire is your element, Storm,” he says, looking out the door as if he were waiting for someone. “It’s only fitting that you go out in a blaze of glory.”
“Why are you like this? What do you gain from all the shit you’ve done to me?” I ask, needing to know his reasoning—and give myself time to figure out a way to loosen the bindings.
“Why?” he asks, giving me a haughty look. “It’s because he took everything from me. He took her. ”
I scrunch my face, not knowing what the hell he’s talking about.
“Her? Who’s her?” I ask.
“ Maya. Your mother. ” My hands stop moving as I take in his words. He’s gone on a rampage…because of a woman?
“Dad stole my mom from you?” I grind out, still disbelieving that this is the source of all this pain.
He wanted revenge because of a broken heart. How…basic.
Marching over to me, he slaps me across the cheek, a disrespectful move in the symbolism itself.
“He stole her. He took her before I even had my chance. I met her first, I saw her first. She was mine . But your fuckin’ father swooped in and smiled at her, flashed those fancy degrees and that lil’ bit of money he’d already made in finance, and there she was—so ready to spread her legs for the richer Sandoval brother. ”
Keep him talking and keep working the rope, Storm.
“And the nicer one, the better one,” I add, goading him. Lakeland sneers.
“Your father was no saint, but I think you know that. You saw what he got up to on Isla Cara,” Lakeland says, grinning.
“Do you know it took a heavy dose of ketamine to get him to fuck another bitch? He cried and cried when he sobered up. He never really wanted to cheat on your mama. He ran all the way back to Chicago and begged for her forgiveness.”
He chuckles.
“You know the silly bitch actually forgave his ass?” He looks over to me. “You know, Storm, these hoes ain’t shit.”
I remain silent, internally rejoicing when one of the ropes releases tension a fraction.
“Anyway, enough chit-chat, ‘cause here comes my little helper,” Lakeland says, brightening.
I shouldn’t be surprised to see Skai walk into the studio, but I am.
She’s in an all-white nightgown; it looks like something out of Little House on the Prairie.
Or, actually, more like something out of a Jordan Peele horror flick.
Blood covers her from head to toe, staining her palms and splattering her dress.
She’s a walking massacre, and I know deep in my gut it’s not her blood. The sea of bodies replays in my mind, and it’s clear that’s her handiwork. It’s also clear this is not her first time murdering someone—or many someones.
It would have been easy for her to take the guards unaware. Who expects a teenage girl to have aim like a fucking assassin?
“Well done, little baby. Did you get rid of everyone?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she says, her words flat and slow like a robot. “I did exactly what you asked.”
“Good,” Lakeland says, smiling down at her. “And did you bring my gift?”
Skai’s face remains flat, but there’s just a flicker of something in her gaze. I don’t know what it is, but what I do know is it’s proof that she’s alive in her mind.
Somewhere.
But analyzing Skai ends when she pulls on a chain I didn’t notice, and Shae stumbles into the space.
“Shae!” I yell at Lakeland, straining against the hold around my body. “I swear to God?—”
Lakeland bursts out laughing, getting close to Shae, who leans to the side as if she’s been drugged or knocked out like I was.
“She’s a pretty one, Storm,” he says, grabbing Shae’s face. She wrenches away from him, and he tsks . “Feisty, too. I like it when they fight.”
He pauses and looks at Skai, who stands so still, it almost looks like she’s in a trance.
“Here’s your present, Daddy,” she says, tilting her chin up with a dead smile crawling across her face. It’s like she’s sleepwalking, lucid dreaming.
She’s here, but she’s not.
“And you did so good, little baby,” he replies, patting the top of her head when she preens. “But where are the two bastards?”
Skai blinks.
“Huh?”
The smile falls from his face, going cold. He punches Skai square in the face.
The wet smack of Lakeland’s fist against Skai’s jaw echoes off the walls like a gunshot.
“The kids , you stupid idiot! Where are the kids?” He leans over his daughter, shouting in her face, as she sprawls on the floor.
“I-I don’t know! I didn’t see them. Maybe they ran away?”
My heart thuds in my chest. If she doesn’t have them, then….
Lakeland sighs and takes a step back, looking at his knuckles in disgust.
“You got my hands dirty,” he says, holding his fist an inch from Skai’s face. “Lick it clean.”
Skai hesitates, which seems to send Lakeland into another stratosphere of anger.
“Now, slut!” he shouts, and I look away when Skai scrubs his hand clean of the strangers’ blood.
I give my attention to Shae, whose eyes droop low. The quiet slurp of Skai’s tongue cleaning Lakeland’s knuckles turns my stomach.
Lakeland sighs, and I return my gaze to him when he takes a step back from his daughter.
“You are so fucking dumb, Laura,” he says on a breath.
“Go find where they’re hiding and bring them to me.
” Then, he moves away from the girl, winding a hand in Shae’s hair just as the rope around my wrist starts to give way.
I finally slip one wrist free, curling my fingers around the rope binding my chest.
Skai stands…and surprises the fuck out of me.
“Why?” she whispers. Lakeland pauses, giving her a deadly glare.
“Why?” he repeats.
“Yes,” Skai says. “Why do you want them? What are you going to d-do to them?” She shifts her weight from side to side, rocking as she asks the question, almost as if she’s trying to gather courage from the ground to face her father.
“Well, Laura,” he says in the same tone one might use to describe how rain is made to a child. “I have big plans for them. The boy and girl are at just the right age for some friends of mine. Especially that little girl. With those eyes? She’ll be delicious for the right buyer.”
I almost throw up on myself, working the ropes harder, faster, because I need to get my hands wrapped around this nigga’s throat more than I need my next breath.
Why the fuck did Axel and Riale have to run off now ?
Skai blinks several times, smiling then frowning rapidly as she processes his words.
“Oh,” she says. “I see. You’ll let other people…other men….”
Lakeland snaps his fingers in front of her face several times.
“Keep up, sweetie. I’m a businessman and there’s money to be made.”
Skai keeps blinking, almost as if she’s short-circuiting.
“Okay,” she says, her voice reed thin. “I’ll go find them, then.”
Lakeland gives her a fake smile.
“You do that,” he says.
Skai leaves the art barn, but not before giving a long look at the back of Lakeland’s head.
Then her eyes meet mine. There’s nothing in her expression; it’s like she blanks out so she doesn’t have to see me.
Determination has me freeing the rope around my chest, and now I have to make a decision: free my legs slowly so I remain undetected for as long as possible, or do it freely and tackle Lakeland before he has the chance to do anything else?
“I swear, finding people who can follow orders is the hardest fucking thing on the planet,” Lakeland snaps.
Keep him talking, Storm.
“What, like Zane?” I grate out, giving him a hard look. “How much did it piss you off that your golden boy couldn’t get the job done?”
Lakeland looks pensive for a moment.
“Ah,” he says, sighing. “I did like having him around for a while, but he was always such a whiny bitch.”
Lakeland shakes his head.