Chapter 50
Raine
Is this how I’m going to die?
How ironic I find myself in the same position as one of my most recent assignments.
Blindfolded and chained to a chair in a cold, dank room.
Or is it a basement? No. Not a basement.
I smell oil and rain and can hear running water, but not from pipes.
It’s coming from outside. A stream or river maybe?
Or is it raining? I can’t tell, my hearing is fuzzy, warped; there’s a ringing in my ears making it hard to distinguish what sounds I can hear.
I need to keep pushing through the struggle.
I won’t have any ch—
My blindfold is crudely ripped off my face, followed by the duct tape that was plastered across my mouth. A layer of skin from my lips is removed with it, but I hardly feel the sting. My body is wrecked in worse places.
“Hello, darlin’.”
I squint through my swollen eyes to see who is talking to me, but all I can make out are shadows. My eyes are still adjusting to the sudden light. I clock two guys on my left and three to my right. All flanking this gruff-voiced prick who is kneeling in front of me.
“You’re in a world of shit. You realize that, huh?”
Forcing my swollen eyes to open wider, I finally get a decent look at him.
Blinking the caked blood from my lashes, I spit in his face.
He cops it, and I watch my blood-laced saliva drip down his bearded face. I smile. I can only imagine how psychotic I must look. Purple and blue face, bloody nose, mouth, and teeth. Sweat, grime, and dirt all over me.
Chuckling, he uses the back of his hand to wipe my bodily fluids from his face.
He stands tall, pausing just for a moment, before he backhands me, my jaw nearly shattering at the impact.
Then comes his fist, slamming into my stomach.
The wind is sucked from me. I gasp for breath and spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor.
I don’t cry out; I’m not giving this asshole the satisfaction.
Besides, I’ve been trained for interrogation.
I can find a place deep in my mind and disassociate from what’s happening to me.
Even if my insides are bleeding and fading out with every minute that ticks by.
Something cold presses on my temple. A gun. His ugly, bearded face drops close to mine.
“You took out our New York chapter. Who hired you?”
I slowly open and close my jaw before spitting out a tooth.
I run my tongue over my front teeth and breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t one of those.
Funny, isn’t it? The mind. Imagine being in so much pain it reverberates throughout your core (honestly, I think I might be dying) and being worried if your smile still looks pretty?
It’s irrational, but you can’t help what your brain does when it’s desperately clinging to life.
“Her. Name. Was. Cherry.” I don’t recognize my voice, it comes out raspy, wet, and thick. A sign that I could be bleeding internally. In fact, I know I am. It’s like I can feel my insides beginning to drown.
“What?”
“Cherry,” I choke out. “And you fucking dogs took her life.”
The bearded monster’s eyebrows knit together as one of the thugs in the background says, “This was about Derek’s dead old lady?”
Another one chimes in. “All this for her?”
I struggle to swallow. My throat feels scratchy and tight.
“Her. Name. Was. Cherry,” I grind out through gritted teeth.
“Well, you can join her, you pathetic cunt.”
The gun pressed to my temple clicks. The fucker cocked it, ready to blow my brains out.
It’s only fitting my shitty life ends in a shitty way.
My mind drifts to Soren. I wish I’d told him.
How I feel about him, but I thought I’d have time, you know?
And sitting here, tied to a chair, bleeding out, and with a gun to my head, I can see things with such clarity now.
The dull ache that buried its way in my chest ever since I met him?
I know what it is now. And I'm so glad to have felt it once in my life.
And in my final moments, I find myself feeling grateful.
Grateful to have met him and known a brief moment of happiness, a fleeting glimpse into what life might have been like in another lifetime.
And I would choose him again. Over and over, today, tomorrow, and into the next lifetime or after life. I would choose him.
I hope he finds his peace. He deserves that.
I squeeze my eyes shut, pushing my temple harder into the barrel. I’m ready to die. “I’ll see you in hell, asshole.”
A loud crashing sound forces my eyes open. A smaller guy (prospect, maybe?) rushes in. He’s panicked, jittery, red in the face, eyes wide in alarm. He’s shit scared.
“Boss? We have a problem.” He wipes his hands down the front of his cut and looks back towards the door, like he’s waiting for an axe murderer to come marching in.
“I’m a bit fucking busy.” He stamps the pistol into my temple.
“S-someone’s here,” he stutters. “I-I think it might be him. The other one.”
I watch through swollen eyelids; the two standing in the corner pull out their phones. Their eyes round in concern.
“Fuck,” one says, eyes fixated on the screen. “It’s him.”
My heart begins to thump erratically with a feeling I’ve wished for my whole life and recently tasted: hope.
The room erupts in violence before I can allow myself to bask in the possibility of a savior. The pressure disappears from my skull as a shot rings out. My executioner has removed the pistol from my temple. Is he down?
I blink, trying to get a glimpse as to where the shot rang out, when I see the young prospect hold his chest and fall to the floor. A shot to the heart. Dead. What a waste of life. As the saying goes, though, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.
It’s utter chaos in this small room as the two in the corner rush to the figure clad in black standing in the doorway. Fists are flying as I realize who it is.
It’s the grim fucking reaper, dripping in death.
Soren, with eyes like hellfire. A gun in one hand, a knife in the other.
He’s not a man. He’s death incarnate. My unholy savior.
Panic overtakes bravado with the rest of the wannabe gangsters. Because at the end of the day, they aren’t trained killers. They are drug addicts with a bad attitude and a motorbike license. They don’t stand a fucking chance against a merciless Soren.
I can’t see much, my eyes are too swollen, but I know he’s shot at least two—the prospect and another one straight through the head. I’m certain because jelly-like brain matter lands on my leg which is utterly disgusting.
And the others? I’m fairly sure he is slicing and dicing them into pieces, judging by the sound of blades rushing through the air, and the gurgling screams of the men he’s murdering. All it takes is forty seconds for Soren to reduce five men to piles of rotting flesh on the floor.
Forty. Fucking. Seconds.
The last man standing (who has been crouching behind me while the bloodbath unfolded—what a pussy) rises slowly, gun now pressed firmly against my head (again).
“Let her go,” Soren demands in a voice I’ve never heard before. My god, it’s dark. So unforgiving and murderous.
The executioner snarls. “Not a fuckin’ chance.”
“One more time,” Soren repeats. “Let her go.”
“All this for a bitch.”
It happens in a microsecond.
I muster all I have left (which isn’t much) and snap my head back (probably not smart considering I’m already concussed), using the element of surprise to catch him off guard, giving Soren the window he needs (you’re welcome, baby).
My head snaps to his abdomen, swiftly followed by a single shot.
Soren shoots him right between his eyes.
His body drops to the floor in a heap behind me.
Before I can breathe, cry, laugh, rejoice (or, let’s be honest, bleed out and die), Soren rushes to me, his chest heaving as he drops to his knees, removing the ropes from my ankles and slicing the zip ties from wrists, freeing me from the chair.
I try to move, but I can’t.
My body screams and throbs and aches, my vision swims and blurs; every part of me feels broken.
Shit, I think I really am dying.
I can feel it, I realize.
Death. It’s warm and heavy and more comforting than I imagined it would be … wait. That’s not death, that’s Soren. It’s his hands that are warm and heavy, lifting me, holding me close to his chest.
“Raine.”
I press my forehead to his shoulder, blood dripping from my lashes. I feel his fingers tighten in my hair, his other hand pressing into my back.
I inhale his scent. He smells like death.
And it’s the sweetest scent of all, because it’s not mine. It’s theirs.
“I had it handled,” I stutter, shuddering.
He lets out a sharp, bitter sound, pressing his lips against my temple which is a much better feeling than a gun. “Shut the fuck up, Raine.”
And for once, I do.