80. Kiera
KIERA
The lack of sunlight was driving me mad. Time was starting to slip, taking my sanity with it. On the rare occasion that they did look my way, the guards acted like I might bite.
Good, they should be scared.
As I waited for my next slop drop, I sat back on my ass, absently flossing the chain between my wrists through the hard point on the ground.
At best, it was a half-hearted attempt to saw through my restraints, and at worst, the rhythmic grating of the metal was a metronome I could organize my thoughts to.
I’d been able to decipher precious little during the infinity I’d spent on this floor. Firstly, these were not Isaac’s men. If they were, I would already be dead.
Isaac is efficient.
Shink.
He doesn’t like to play with his food.
Shink.
But the symbol?
I’d seen it on the phone of a guard who got a little too close during one of my feedings. I’d swatted the phone from his belt holster and received nothing more than a scowl as punishment.
Weird.
But I’d seen it — the eagle with the lightning. The symbol from the clubs.
Who, who, who?
It would help if I knew how many days had passed. Was the wedding over?
It can’t be.
He would certainly kill me by then.
More shares for Maura, more shares for him.
Unless the men weren’t his. But another captor wouldn’t let me walk free either.
More valuable in hand. Vulnerable, afraid.
What was the point? To traffic me? To demand ransom?
My eyes shifted up to the dark, concrete ceiling before my mind could return to its spiral.
I can see the cracks. All I can see are the cracks.
Then, for once, there was something I could hear: not the booted footsteps of the guards I’d grown so used to. Dress shoes.
Company’s coming.
I scrambled onto my knees, refusing to be a sitting duck as a beam of hallway light announced my new visitor. The metal door slammed hard against the concrete as a tall, tuxedoed silhouette filled the bright doorway.
What’s the occasion?
I couldn’t make out the suited man’s face through the blinding light, but I could tell that the shoulder pads on his suit were tacky. He strode into the room like an overconfident child in his father’s formal wear. The armed guards flanking him probably validated his hubris.
But as he stepped closer, it was his scent that gave him away: cheap, metallic cologne.
It’s Gabe. Fuck.
The hairs on my spine stood as he crouched in the shadow in front of me, assessing me with a shit-eating grin. “How’ve you been Kiera? You look like shit.”
“Get fucked,” I spat. But as weak and dehydrated as I was, the saliva only made it as far as his shoe.
“Chipper as always,” he chuckled before standing and turning to his guards. “Get out. I want a minute alone with my girlfriend. This reunion’s long overdue.”
“I’m not your anything,” I growled as his guards shuffled out, shutting the door behind them.
“Oh don’t be so sour, Kiera,” Gabe chuckled, pacing around me in the dark. “You’re my prisoner, at the very least.”
The fluctuation between light and dark was seriously fucking with my sense of direction. I didn’t know where Gabe had disappeared to until he was behind me, brushing a hand through my hair.
“You know, this looked so much better when you would straighten it.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you think,” I shirked him off, leaning as far away as my restraints allowed. “You’re a fucking monster. I know what you did. I saw.”
“It was you who made that little house call?” He laughed, completely unfazed by the accusation.
If anything, his expression twisted into something more sinister.
Throwing the truth out in the open gave him the license to finally drop the mask he’d put up while we were dating.
He was ready to bare himself in all of his gruesome glory.
“I’ll admit, I’m impressed. I didn’t think you were smart enough to manage it.” He stepped closer, towering over me with a baleful grin. “But if you missed me, you could have just called. I’ve been looking all over for you, Kiera.”
“Rot in hell,” I hissed. “Why am I here? Need me for some grand plan to impress Daddy Isaac?”
“No, I don’t need you anymore, Kiera. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have you just one last time.”
As he reached for his belt buckle, his plan dawned on me with horrifying clarity. I was just another one of his trophies. After years of pretending to care for me, he wanted one more chance to show me how worthless I was.
He’d fuck me, he’d kill me, and then he’d leave my body as carrion for his guards. But as he stood before me and unzipped his pants, he didn’t realize what a grave miscalculation he’d made.
I was done taking his abuse.
As soon as his gaze lifted from his pants, I stretched to the limit of my restraint, grabbing the back of his left knee and headbutting him as hard as I could. It was just enough to throw him off-balance, knocking him flat back onto the hard cement.
“You fucking bitch,” he hissed, rubbing the back of his head. “You’re going to regret that.”
While he tried to gather himself, I reached down and yanked on my thumb.
Come on, come on, come o— fuck!
The joint released with a painful pop, letting me slip my left hand out of its shackle.
No time to free the right.
As Gabe tried to scramble to his feet, I fed my chain’s newfound slack through the hard point, giving myself about five feet of length between my right hand and the ground.
That’ll have to be good enough.
And before he could stand, I flung the chain forward, looping it around his neck and pulling it as tight as I could.
“What are you—?” The rest of his sentence was choked out by the chain tightening around his throat, pulling his back flat against my chest. “K-Ki…. Kiera…”
“Do you ever shut the fuck up?” I hissed.
He had a lot of advantages over me — size, strength, the armed guards outside the door. But I had leverage and surprise on my side.
Serves him right for underestimating me.
Between the hardpoint, my cuff, and the way my left arm hooked around the chain, he’d have to knock me out before he had a chance of escaping.
And he certainly tried. As he choked, Gabe clawed backwards to grab me, threw his weight back to crush me, and scrambled to pry my hands away from the chain.
But if I was going to die in his hell, I was sending Gabe down to the real thing first.
He went more quickly than I’d anticipated. It only took about ten seconds of fighting to knock him out. At one point, he coughed up a mouthful of blood all over my forearm and hand, but I didn’t dare loosen the chain. I wasn’t risking him coming back.
As his arms went limp and his breathing slowed, I pressed my fingers to his neck, waiting until the pulse was gone. I couldn’t tell how long I’d held him there, but eventually, the sweet, hard-won silence was broken by shouting and gunshots in the hallway.
Did Isaac send his men to finish the job?
I had no choice but to let Gabe go. The odds that I survived what came next were slim. I was outnumbered and delirious. I’d used so much of my strength on killing Gabe. But there was no way that I was going out without a fight.
I let his body slump to the ground, his purple and red-flecked face thudding hard against the cement. With booted footsteps growing closer, there was no time to linger on the strangeness of his death, but I was surprised by the warmth that bloomed in my chest at the sight.
I searched his pockets for anything I could use to protect myself. He didn’t have a gun — I supposed he left most of the dirty work to his lackeys — but I did find a small pocket knife and a set of keys.
My cuffs!
I held my breath, trying to calm my shaky hands as I slipped the key into the right cuff. Much to my relief, the lock opened quickly.
After popping my left thumb back in, I gripped the knife in my right hand and slunk over to the door. If I acted quick enough, I could get at least one of them before they shot me down.
But before I made it over, the door burst open.
Not to guards, but to three familiar figures. My angels.
My saviors.
Tears welled in my eyes as Leo and Spencer burst into the room ahead of Dom. All three of them were covered in blood: from the looks of it, they’d slaughtered every man in this building to get to me.
Relief knocked the air right out of my lungs. The knife fell from my fingers and clattered to the floor. My lovers quickly whipped their attention in my direction, nearly pointing their guns at me.
But as I stepped forward into light, relief washed over their faces too.
“Kiera?” Dom’s voice wavered, her eyes quickly shifting from me to Gabe’s dead body in the center of the room. “Are you—?”
I ran to them, throwing my arms around Dom’s neck. For a long moment, I couldn’t get words past the lump in my throat. There was only sobbing, all of the fear and sadness and anxiety I’d held in bubbling out all at once.
“It’s okay.” Dom stroked my hair as she cradled my head against her shoulder. “We’ve got you.”
Spencer cased the room while Leo hovered over Gabe’s body, making sure that he was really dead. And Dom held me, letting me cry and cry into her shoulder until I could breathe again.
“I thought we lost you,” she muttered, pulling me closer in her arms. “We’ve been looking for you for days. I didn’t know what they had done to you, I didn’t know—” she pulled back abruptly, searching my eyes with concern. “Did they hurt you? Did they—”
“No,” I shook my head. “They barely touched me, and the one person who did…”
I looked back at Gabe’s body, surprised to see it was still dead.
“I was selfish, Kiera. I knew that keeping you so close was a risk, and I convinced myself it wasn’t. I should have never let you back in that house, I should have insisted—”
“Don’t,” I shook my head, “I belonged there. I belonged with you.”
“I thought I lost you,” she muttered again, and this time, it was her eyes that brimmed with tears. “I thought I lost you forever.”
“I’m here,” I reached for her hand, pulling her tattooed knuckles to my lips. “I love you.”
The words tumbled from my lips before I had time to consider her reaction. Just a moment ago, I had been convinced I was going to die without ever saying them. And now, I knew I couldn’t live without telling the truth.
“I love you, Dom. I will always love you.”
And in an instant, I watched the doubt and the fear and the darkness fade away from her eyes. All there was were crystal clear skies and the single tear rolling down her cheek.
“I love you too, Kiera.” Cradling the nape of my neck, she pulled my lips to hers. The kiss was fevered and passionate. Admitting what this was made the weight of what we’d almost lost hit even harder.
There was still so much to figure out — we hadn’t made it out of the woods quite yet. But as my lips met hers, for a moment, everything was right in the world.
As we parted, my other lovers hovered across the room, looking absolutely aghast at the admission. Leo rolled her eyes, “Get a room, lovebirds.”
Spencer just shook her head, “I’m sorry, is that the first time you guys have said that? I didn’t think that was news.”
I couldn’t help but smile up at the teasing. “What can I say? I’m a late bloomer.”
The laughter that bubbled from my chest filled me with a new wave of energy. After countless hours in this dark room, I could finally see the light.
“Enough of this sappy shit, Viper. We’ve gotta go.” Dom murmured, shifting me off her lap so that she could stand.
Peering up at her, I realized I had no idea what came next. “What day is it, even?”
“Doomsday,” Spencer wiggled her eyebrows.
“Come on,” Dom said, reaching out a hand to guide me out of the room. “We’ve still got a wedding to crash and an empire to crumble.”