36. Brody
brODY
Darkness consumes me. No sound but whirring air vents somewhere behind my head. Then the bite of restraint, steel at my wrists, ankles. Industrial pipe cinched at my chest. Chair welded to the concrete.
My left eye is sticky, vision doubling, then clears. I flex my fingers, but they don’t move. Numb. Hands are splayed on my thighs, skin streaked with something dark.
A warehouse. I know the smell before I even open my eyes. Oil, metal, sawdust. Cold that enters through the skin. The whine of wind outside the loading dock, rattling thin windows. Industrial lights cut through snow-dusted glass, striping the shadows with lines of white and yellow.
I listen for footsteps, for voices. There’s nothing.
Plywood crates stenciled with serial numbers. Pallets stacked with cardboard, blue shrink wrap pulled so tight it looks like skin. Fluorescent ballast flickers overhead. Shadows of motion behind a mesh cage, too far to see clearly. Maybe guards. Maybe just ghosts in the grime.
My tongue probes a torn place in my cheek. I breathe and scan again. There’s a strip of dirty tape on the floor, three feet from my boots.
Outside the warehouse walls, snowfield. No real soundproofing. I track the howl of wind and the grit of melting slush in the tire ruts. If I really listen, there’s a distant metallic clang. Maybe a chain-link fence, maybe the gate out front. Not close enough for rescue.
None of this matters. Not unless I make it matter.
I keep flexing my fingers until the nerves start to burn. Warmth returns, pins and needles, like a thousand wasps gnawing at my knuckles. It wakes me up.
A door slams open on from above. Then, I hear footsteps. It’s not enough for Marcus to make an entrance. He needs every eye, every heartbeat, to freeze for him. He comes down the metal stairs. He doesn’t limp. Doesn’t wince from the cold.
He’s wearing a charcoal suit; expensive, tailored for intimidation.
Overcoat slung across one arm. The overhead lights catch the grooves by his mouth, the line of his jaw, carved like he’s been hewn from something harder than flesh.
Behind him, shadows. Two, maybe three bodies.
One shuffles, heavy, favors his right knee.
Muscle. The other’s just a presence, arms folded, head cocked for orders.
But all the oxygen in the warehouse bends toward Marcus. The rest of them are wallpaper.
He stops five feet from me, measures my face, studies the red on my lips. If I’m supposed to show fear, he’ll be waiting.
He smiles. Not a real smile. His eyes never move. “Evening, Brody.”
I stare at him. Let my pulse show, just for a second. Control, always. But not for his sake. He paces a circle, boots echoing off concrete. Palms the back of my chair, cool and measured. Like this is some gallery exhibit and I’m the fucked-up centerpiece.
“You broke into my world,” he says, voice level. “You took what’s mine. Now you pay.”
Shiver starts at my spine, but I clamp down on it. I won’t give him a show. Not when he’s hungry for one.
“What,” I manage. “You run out of little girls to terrorize? Had to drag me out here for fun?”
His hand clamps on my hair, wrenches my head back. No wasted motion. I feel the pull, the snap at my scalp, but I hold his stare. He leans down, his cologne expensive, but underneath is the sour sweat of someone who never doubts he’ll win.
“Don’t pretend you care about her,” Marcus says. “If you did, you wouldn’t have brought this down on her head. Lola is mine. She was always mine.”
The sound of her name elicits fire in my veins. It’s all I hear. I remember our last moments in the cabin. Her moans. Her body. Her shivering skin. Her vulnerable words in the dark. Her truth. She never willingly betrayed me.
I twist, but the restraints dig deeper, pipe scraping bone at my wrist. “If you touch her—”
He laughs. Quiet, almost affectionate. “You’re in no position to make threats.”
I try. I really do. I line up the words. But there’s a swelling pressure at my throat.
“I’ll kill you,” I spit. “You so much as lay a finger on her—”
He releases my hair and stands. Brushes invisible dust from his sleeve. “See that, boys?” he says to the men at his back. “He thinks he’s the one in control.”
A fist crashes into my jaw from the side. I hear the pop before I feel it. More blood, thick, iron-rich. I rock with the impact. My head pounds, vision fuzzes.
He waits for the pain to settle, then crouches, eye-level. “What is Richard up to?”
“You’re scared,” I say. “You wouldn’t drag me out here unless you were.”
He doesn’t crack. Not a blink. He glances at his men. The nearest one, the one with the knee, unscrews a baton. It glints in the fluorescent light.
“Answer the question,” Marcus says.
“Fuck you,” I hiss. “I don’t give a shit about his plans. I took Lola for my own personal gain. That’s all that matters.”
He sighs, impatiently. “You’re not being reasonable, Brody. You’re not even being interesting.”
The guard slams the baton across my thigh. Hot agony flares up my leg. I choke down the noise, but it claws at the back of my throat. He does it again, lower, close to the knee. Pain swarms my body. Drowns out everything but the white-hot certainty: Lola.
He has her. Close enough to use against me.
Marcus lets the violence cool. He squats, forearms on his knees, and looks at me like a cat considering how to toy with a dying thing. “Last chance,” he says. “What did Richard send you for?”
“Richard doesn’t control me. Nobody does.”
He tilts his head. “You’re wrong. Everyone answers to someone.”
He signals, and the guard belts me in the gut. All the air leaves my lungs. My brain stutters. Lights, darkness, lights again.
I blink, spit a red string onto the floor. I can’t stop thinking about her. Lola. Lola. Lola. Her face, wide-eyed, ruined if he touches her. Her pulse, her body, under his control. The idea is poison. It eats me alive.
“You’re not going to get away with it,” I growl.
He stands, brushes off his coat. “You’re not listening, Brody. I already have.”
He paces in front of me, measured, like it takes effort not to kill me for sport. “Lola is here. On my property. Safe, if you cooperate.”
I jerk at the restraints. “If you fucking hurt her—”
He steps forward and leans in. His eyes are black and bottomless. “You’ll what? Bleed for her? Die for her? So dramatic. Of course you would.” He steps aside so the light hits his face like a slash. “But you won’t get her back.”
For a flash, something primal almost takes the wheel. I would tear my hands off at the wrists to kill him right now. I would eat the flesh off his face, bite through tendon and cartilage. The hunger isn’t even human.
He circles again. Keeps talking. “You know, your mother wasn’t nearly as stubborn as you are. She stopped fighting. In the end.”
That’s the knife. That’s the edge.
Red blisters my vision. “You killed her. You killed my mother. You took Lola from me.” I can barely get the words out. “You’re a fucking monster.”
He offers the faintest shrug. “Survival of the fittest. And you? You don’t even rate, Brody. You’re just Richard’s garbage. Broken toy.”
He signals the guard, this time a blow to the side of my face. My head rings. Every nerve in my body riots. I try to focus on the warehouse. I try to paint her face on the inside of my eyelids, Lola’s eyes wide, lips parted, maybe terrified, maybe fighting.
I have to believe she’s still in the game. Still herself.
Marcus leans down, voice so soft it’s almost gentle. “You want her so much, don’t you? You’d burn for her. I can use that.” He pauses, letting the words hang. “Or I can hurt her. Tell me, which do you prefer?”
My ribs shudder. I glare at him, all hate. “If you touch her, if you scare her, I’ll rip you apart. I’ll do it slow, I’ll carve you up. You have my word.”
He just smiles. “I like you better when you’re angry, Brody. That’s the real you.”
His shoes click away on the cement. He’s done with me. For now. They leave me in the chair, wrists leaking blood, mind feral with her name:
Lola. Lola. Lola.
Every heartbeat is a promise. I will get her back, or I will die in the process. No in-between.
Snow howls outside. The warehouse sits in its own ice-bound silence, but somewhere close—maybe just a wall away—she’s waiting.
I’m coming for you, Bambi. Even if I have to chew through bone to get there.
Nothing else matters. Not aching hands, nor the blood on the concrete. Just her, hunger, and revenge.