Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
AMELIA
Awarm breath on her cheek roused Amelia from the dreamless dark.
The grogginess receded enough that skull-splitting pain set in next.
She cracked her eyes, and a cinder block wall came into focus.
A shadow hovered over her but retreated when she wheezed with a dry cough.
Amelia rolled over on a thin mattress crusted in filth and mottled with stains.
In a small, humid room, brackish light seeped from a single fluorescent bulb.
The one-eyed man sat cross-legged on the floor next to the mattress.
Tall and sinewy, he didn’t move, only stared with disturbing vacancy.
Chin-length black hair framed a gaunt face of sharp bones and papery skin.
His one eye looked like a black marble, and the lids of his missing eye were fused together in a line of puckered skin that’d healed glossy pink.
It’s just a nightmare, she tried to console herself, but why then did the scent of mildew and damp rot fill her nostrils? And the blood. She tasted it in her mouth from a busted lip and, when she recoiled, thin rope cut into her bound wrists and ankles.
The man patted his knees before standing and crossed the empty room in airy shuffles. Amelia opened her mouth to scream, but her sandpaper throat produced only a yelp.
In a dark corner of the room, the man fussed with something then returned to the mattress with a metal toolbox. He placed it on the concrete floor and crouched in front. The toolbox groaned on its hinges when he tossed open the lid.
He stared at Amelia as he did it. Look away. She couldn’t. Look away. His maniacal gaze wouldn’t allow it as he pulled out tools.
Pliers. Hammer. Wrench. Ice pick.
Fear slid like an icicle to settle in Amelia’s heart, and cold dread gutted her next. She licked the tears off her lips and dry heaved at the saltiness. The violent urge to be sick sat at the back of her throat but went no further.
The man placed the tools in a neat row then settled back on his knees. With a hand propped beneath his chin, he surveyed the assortment. His fingertips were grimy and caked with what looked like either dirt or dried blood.
I can’t breathe. Amelia eyed the windowless metal door behind him and struggled in her binds. She could come out of her fucking skin. Itchy. She couldn’t scratch. Crawling. The mattress and its filth. And this man. This man.
Amelia whimpered. He didn’t respond, just admired his tools. Each and every one. The cold abandoned her, so Amelia burned alive right before his eyes. Her chest on fire. Her wrists ablaze. That nauseous heat. She came apart so predictably.
“Please,” Amelia cried. It was too polite. Why couldn’t she produce the panic turning her insides to pulp? “Please.” Too thin. Too breathy. Too fucking late. She was never strong enough. “Please!”
Her scream echoed damply in the room. The man shushed her with a finger to his lips and shook his head. As he did, the dim light carved shadows beneath his cheeks and eye sockets.
“Not yet.”
Like a cruel echo, the rasp of his voice wrecked in its familiarity. It wasn’t just his voice, though. There was the slope of Emory’s nose, the shape of Mirabelle’s eyes; jet black hair and bronze skin.
Ivan.
He didn’t have to say his name. She already knew and, with that silent knowledge, came a foggy memory. She’d left a note for Mirabelle. Emory had undoubtedly seen it, and maybe he’d resigned himself to letting her go. No one is coming for me.
Amelia squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the dirty mattress.
A sob escaped her. It sounded unearthly and foreign to her own ears.
She’d never heard that sound; not from anyone, let alone herself.
But then there was another sound; the ice pick scraping across the floor.
Ivan jabbed the sharp end into the hollow beneath her chin and forced her to look at him.
He studied her face with cold fixation. It stirred something sinister, but Amelia couldn’t place what it was; hatred or desire or some abomination of both.
“I can see why he likes you,” Ivan said as the ice pick sunk painfully into her skin. “Get on your knees and pray.”
Amelia shook her head. It wasn’t defiance. He’d gotten her confused with someone else, someone brave. He’d tell her to put up a fight and make it count. I’m not polite. I’m not brave. I’m not who he thinks I am. I’m not.
“I’m not,” she muttered, but the nonsense didn’t phase him. He smiled because he expected it and had done it all before, so clearly a master at his craft.
Her eyes darted around the room. Mold. Light. Dust. Dirt. She was smart but only focused on stupid things. The pipe in the corner. A chair in the back. The rest distorted at the edges like a fever dream. Maybe she wasn’t so smart.
“You’re not what?” the man asked and narrowed his good eye. He expected an answer and would wait for it all night.
Amelia didn’t respond. She curled in on herself with her knees to her chest and closed her eyes to disappear. That agency—so precious little—infuriated him. Ivan grabbed a fistful of her hair and violently forced her up. His teeth sunk into the fleshy corner where her shoulder met her neck.
Amelia screamed as he ripped into her skin. “Stop! Please! God!”
Ivan pressed the ice pick to her temple, and his single eye darkened with lunacy and rage. “There is no God. Only me. Now, pray.”
More animal than human, his bloodied teeth gnashed with a guttural growl, and his hand shook furiously, as if he battled the urge to drive the pick into her head.
With a piercing scream, he threw it across the room just as the metal door flung open and two men strode inside.
One dragged in a bound and bloodied Richard and tossed him against the wall opposite Amelia. The other gestured to her.
“You fuck her?” he asked Ivan, who fetched the ice pick and calmly wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No.” He turned to Amelia and lightly stroked the barrel of the pick. “My brother will want to watch.”
Ivan winked at her, and his thin lips slithered into a hideous smile. Amelia slumped against the wall and pressed her cheek to the cinder block. Maybe she’d fall through to the other side and could float away. Just float away.
Ivan retreated through the door, and the two others followed.
After they left, Richard stirred. Sweat and dirt stained his wrinkled clothes, and dried blood flaked from his forehead.
There he was—the man who donned designer suits, drove luxury cars, and lived in a mansion with a ridiculous name—looking as though he’d been through hell.
Amelia lifted her bound hands to her neck and probed the bite mark that weeped blood.
Pain seared down her arm and throbbed in her fingertips.
Her limbs felt far heavier than they had any right to be and, if she closed her eyes, she swore she might even sleep.
If her soul wanted to float away, then her body wanted to shut down.
She jabbed her thumb into the wound, enough to anchor her senses to something.
It worked, and the room came into focus.
Clumps of dirt gathered in the corners, and scuff marks littered the dingy, off-white interior walls.
Overhead was a low drop ceiling with yellowed tiles.
Most were missing, but rings of mold splotched the remaining ones.
The place wasn’t just rotting. It was abandoned. No one will find me here.
Tears brimmed, and Amelia bit her lip to cease its quivering.
The room was sticky and hot, and she wanted to go home.
What a pathetic want. Survival should’ve been the ultimate ambition.
All she thought of, though, was her favorite blanket and the mug that fit so perfectly in her palm, even though a chip in the rim had once sliced her lip.
She bit down forcefully where the scar used to be. It only made her cry harder.
“Stop that,” Richard snapped.
With his legs kicked out in front of him, he groaned as he worked his way to the wall.
Amelia could have laughed at the audacity but instead demanded on a voice whittled thin, “Why did you do this?”
Restless quiet filled the room, all but the fluorescent hum and the soft scuffle of Richard’s shoes against the floor.
“They have my wife. They’ll let her go, but only if I brought you to them.” Richard contemplated Amelia’s wrists in binds and her neck bloodied from Ivan’s bite. “It’s nothing personal. Your father would’ve done the same.”
“No, he wouldn’t have!” Amelia cried, the salt from her tears itchy on her cheeks. “He’s not a coward like you.”
“Really? Then tell me why he bolted. He left Portland after your mom’s funeral, and no one’s heard from him since. If he’s so brave, he would’ve stuck around and faced what’s coming.”
A painful breath hitched in Amelia’s chest. “What do you mean? Where is he?”
Richard barked a bitter laugh. “I don’t know where he is, but I do know Ivan will find him.”
Regret plowed into Amelia. It stole her breath and ushered more tears. On a stormy night in Portland, her foolish heart had yearned to escape a life that was full of love and hope and all the precious things that’d be torn from her. I won’t survive the night.
“You take after your father so much,” Richard said and evaluated her through glassy eyes.
“Same stubbornness. Same righteousness. You know, after law school, Cal wanted to open up a firm with me. Some humble place that did honest work. He ever tell you that story?” Richard gazed up at a water-logged ceiling tile.
“God, I almost agreed too. You know why I’m as successful as I am? ”
Amelia glared at him. She didn’t care, but her silence seemed to unnerve him. Rich’s lip twitched into a scowl, and he answered anyhow.