23. Gigi
23
GIGI
W hen I wake up in the dark, it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am. But then it all comes flooding back to me, and I’d do anything to fall back to sleep and never wake up.
Or maybe this is the nightmare. I can only hope. Either way, I’m trapped, and I can’t escape.
I’m alone in a musty, filthy trailer. My hands and feet are bound with rope, which in turn is chained to a table fixed to the floor. I try screaming myself hoarse, but it’s no use. No one is coming to help me.
Memories flash, painful and clear. The last thing I saw as I was dragged away was Mack fighting to get to me, before he was shot. I saw the blood from his wound.
I don’t know where the bullet or bullets hit him.
Maybe he’s dead. My stomach lurches at the thought.
Frantically, I look around for something, anything, to cut me free. But it’s no use. The rope binding me is short, the chain even shorter. I can sit upright, but only just. The bottom of the table is just above my head.
Speaking of my head, it’s pounding with the fiercest headache I can ever remember having. I can’t reach up to feel the tenderness on one side, but I’m sure a large bruise is forming. My lips and throat are parched. I close my eyes and lean against the post of the table. Taking deep breaths, I try to think of anything I can do to get out of here.
I come up with nothing.
A loud bang jolts me, making me bang the top of my head on the bottom of the table. It’s the door to the trailer, slamming shut. Blaze is standing there, omnipresent sunglasses and bandana in spite of being inside. Under the mass of his beard, he gives me a strange, unhinged grin. “You figure it out yet?”
I swallow painfully to clear my throat. “Figure out what?” I rasp.
“Shit, you’re so fucking stupid,” he sneers. “Get the fuck up.”
“I can’t.” I raise my hands. “Not enough rope.”
“Goddamnit,” he spits. Reaching into his pocket, he produces a knife. He slices through the rope, close enough to my wrists that a jolt of fear shoots adrenaline through my veins. “Now, get up!” He reaches for my arm and hauls me up painfully, then throws me against the upholstered bench. I stifle a cry, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of hearing my pain.
“Let me give you a little hint, since you’re such a fucking idiot.” Blaze pulls off the sunglasses. Then his bandana. I’ve never seen him without his head covered. I stifle a gasp. He’s mostly bald, but not in a natural way. There are uneven wisps of baby-fine hair here and there, long and scraggly. The skin of his head is puckered and shiny, like scar tissue. Like burn tissue. It’s the reason he’s bald, I’m guessing. He can’t grow hair any more.
But it’s his eyes, boring into me, that arrest my attention. Without the shades and bandana, there’s something so familiar about them. And not a good something. A very, very bad something.
“Are you getting it yet, you dumb cunt?” he says, pointing at his head. “Your brother did this to me.”
Oh my god.
“Dylan,” I whisper.
He throws back his head and lets out a bellow of laughter. “Fucking finally!” he howls, spreading his arms wide apart. “Jesus Christ, I thought you’d never fuckin’ get it.”
My ex-boyfriend. The one who hurt me so badly it took years to stop having nightmares. The one I thought…
“Connor said you…”
“He thought he killed me.” Dylan interrupts me. “Right? That what he told you?”
“Yes.”
“He almost did. The only fuckin’ thing that kept me alive was planning for this moment. Planning what I was gonna do to you.” He leers, his eyes snapping like fire. “Then, what I’m gonna do to him and his club.”
My throat closes as three thoughts come to me at the same time.
He’s going to kill me.
He’s got the Scorpions behind him.
He’s going to kill Mack and my brother and try to kill all the Royal Bastards.
I try to scream, but my voice has left me. All I can do is open my mouth and gasp for breath. Dylan/Blaze notices, obviously enjoying my terror. “You thirsty?” he says, snickering. “You seem pretty thirsty.”
He turns away from me and reaches for a bottle of water on on the counter and a plastic glass. He pours me a drink, then turns back around. “Here,” he says, offering it to me. “Gotta keep you hydrated.”
I consider not taking it from him, but I’m so thirsty that my hands reach out in spite of myself. You can’t fight back if you’re too weak. Drink it. I suck down the room-temperature water in great gulps, noting the slightly chemical taste. I don’t take a breath until the entire glass is gone. Swallowing a final time, I gasp in some air, then exhale in relief.
“More?” he asks. I shake my head, not wanting to accept any more favors from him than I have to.
But it doesn’t take long to realize it wasn’t a favor. A few seconds later, I start to feel strange. Woozy, and a little sick.
“What… what did you give me?” I ask, realizing that the strange taste of the water wasn’t just from the plastic bottle.
“The last good sleep you’re ever gonna have,” he tells me as everything goes fuzzy around me, and then black.
When I wake up, time has stopped.
It’s pitch dark inside the trailer again. But this time, I’m chained to the bed. Handcuffs secure my wrists; my feet are bound separately and secured to large, sturdy hooks in the wall. I’m on my back, splayed like an X.
And I’m naked except for my underwear.
I shiver and cry throughout the night, awaiting and dreading the moment when Dylan comes back.
Then he does come back. And it all starts.
Night comes and goes twice more. During that time, I endure things I never thought possible. He does to me the things Fury did to him. I know this because he tells me. He beats me. He cuts me — shallowly, so I don’t bleed out. He feeds me and gives me just enough water to keep me alive and conscious. He doesn’t let me go to the bathroom, no matter how much I beg.
When I soil myself, he slaps me and calls me filthy things.
Dylan doesn’t rape me — not yet.
But I know it’s coming.
I know because I can see the bulge in his jeans when he tortures me. When he cuts me and watches me bleed, his eyes are wild with rage but also lust. I know this because he got off on inflicting pain back when we were together. I recognize the expression in his eyes. My cries of pain turn him on.
So when I come back to consciousness on the third or fourth day, and see him coming into the trailer with a shovel, a towel, and a folded tarp in his hands, I know what’s next.
“See this?” he taunts me, brandishing the shovel. “Ask me what I’ve been doing.”
Wide-eyed, I can’t form the words. But he doesn’t seem to notice.
“First I’m gonna fuck you,” he hisses. “Then I’m gonna gut you like a fucking pig. And I’m gonna leave you to bleed to death in a shallow grave when I’m done with you. You better pray you die before the animals get to you.”
That’s what the tarp is for. To wrap me in and carry me to my grave while I’m bleeding out.
I work hard not to hyperventilate as Dylan pulls out the key to the handcuffs. He undoes one and then steps back. “Undo the other one, cunt.”
I do as he says. Trembling, I fumble with the key at first, from terror and because my hands numb and stiff from being cuffed for so long. As soon as the second one falls from my wrist, I wince and start to massage the feeling back into them. My heart is racing, fast and shallow, but I keep my face as expressionless as I can. I need to concentrate. I know I can’t waste any possible chance I get now.
Dylan pulls out his switchblade and flicks it open. The same gleaming blade that he’s been using to make thin track marks all over my body, he now uses to cut the ropes that have been binding my feet. Then he tosses me the towel. “Clean yourself,” he commands.
I do as he says, working to wipe myself off as best I can.
“Pull the sheets off. They’re fucking disgusting,” he orders. When I’ve done that, he grabs them from my hands and throws them to the other side of the trailer. Then, leering, he undoes the fly on his jeans, then pulls out his erection, palming it and starting to stroke himself. “This makes me so fucking hot,” he rasps. His forehead has started to perspire. He pulls off his sweaty T-shirt, revealing a torso that’s shockingly familiar. “Your pussy is gonna beg for me. And I’ll be the last man who ever fucks you, Gigi. You couldn’t escape. You tried, but you failed. You’re mine after all.”
My eyes never leaving him, I put my hands behind me and crab-walk to the far edge of the bed, my back to the wall. He takes a step forward, the knife still in the hand that’s not stroking himself. I brace as he kicks off his shoes and jeans.
Then, when he climbs onto the bed with the knife, I pretend to lie back and surrender. But then, I lift my heel up and kick him solid as I can in the face.
Dylan’s head snaps back, his body falling backwards. I lunge forward and grab for the knife, twisting it back toward him and ramming it into his stomach as hard as I can.
He bellows in outrage and pain. He grabs for me, but his center of gravity is off just enough that I can scramble away from him and off the bed. Sprawled backwards on the bed, he clutches at his stomach. Opening his mouth like a fish, he gasps, “You bitch…”
I reach for the first heavy thing I see, a smallish fire extinguisher attached to the wall. Pulling it free, I swing it, connecting with his head before he can duck. It makes a sickening crack; Dylan falls back onto his back. His eyes roll up into his head and he collapses, mouth agape.
I start to sob, but there’s no time to fall apart. Desperate, I grab the long T-shirt he was wearing and pull it over me. I rush to the door of the trailer, pushing it open, half-expecting someone to have heard the commotion and be running towards me. But there’s no one in sight. The trailer is on a weedy patch of land about five-hundred feet from a large square structure that must be full of Scorpions, judging from all the Harleys parked outside it. I exit the trailer, frantic and terrified but pushing forward because I have no other choice. I don’t know where I am or how I’m going to get out of here. But then I see something that gives me hope.
The keys to Dylan’s motorcycle are in the ignition.
“I can do this. I can do this,” I chant to myself under my breath. Barefoot, half-naked, I start up the bike and run through what I remember of how to operate it from my younger years. It’s heavy, and I almost dump it as I start off. But soon, enough momentum starts to help me and I pull away from the trailer, focused on nothing except moving forward and getting as far away from here as possible.