37. Kaleb
Kaleb
Asteady pulse beats behind my eyes, each throb sending another wave of nausea rolling through my stomach. Heavy and sore, my head hangs forward, chin resting against my chest.
Prying my eyes open, the concrete floor beneath my boots shifts in and out of focus. I blink, the entire room spinning.
The scent hits me first. Rotting fucking fish and brine. I swallow the need to empty my stomach all over the stained concrete floor. Saliva fills my mouth, and I gag anyway.
The fluorescent lights flickers, and a migraine blooms behind my eyes. The room glows green, before plunging into darkness. Revealing fragmented pieces of wherever the fuck I am.
I already know.
If I had one guess, it’d be the freezer. The old seafood port and the Kavanagh safe house.
Couldn’t they have picked literally anywhere else? Somewhere that doesn’t stink like old fish. Fuck, the fucking smell...
Forcing my heavy eyes to look around again, it’s the perfect place. A drain in the centre of the room. Stained concrete walls, boxing whatever nightmares happen here. Middle of nowhere. It’s perfect.
Almost as perfect as me and Kai’s version.
Ash is waking up next to me, slumped against the wall with his arms bent painfully behind his back, like the rest of us. My hands have gone numb from the ties, fingers uselessly hanging.
Xavier groans, cursing under his breath as he looks around. Leon is still knocked out, body slumped in an unnatural position, a bruise blooming around his eye.
If it weren’t for the soft rise and fall of his chest, I’d think he was dead.
“Someone tell me how the fuck that just happened,” Ash murmurs.
When I turn my heavy head to face him, murder gleams in his blue eyes. He’s probably thinking what I’m thinking. About the people back home and whether they’ve been hurt. Or worse.
We left Roxy upstairs, thinking it was the safest place for her to rest. Just left her, vulnerable and defenceless to whoever might find her. The thought makes me sick.
She has Kai, though. At least there is that.
Because if my senses are right, and this room is for the art of pain, then I’m fucking grateful Kai isn’t here. For once in my life, I’m thankful that my brother isn’t beside me.
I can take whatever they decide to do to me. They can kill me for all they want.
But having to watch Kai get tortured again is something I wouldn’t survive. I’d rather they gut me like a pig in this forsaken place then fail my brother.
Again.
“How the fuck did they get in?” Xavier growls.
They came through the back door. That I remember. I remember being dragged out of it before I was drugged.
My head falls against the grimy wall, and I will the hazy fog out of my mind. If we are in the freezer, then this is my Black Cat’s brothers. They had dozens of men attack us, so it’s also the leftover Wraiths.
Which confirms our suspicions of the brothers making a play for president.
Fucking idiots.
The door to this concrete box creaks open, grinding metal echoing in my head. Men, I don’t recognise advance on us.
Six of them. Wraiths, confirmed by the patches stitched across their cuts, but none that I recognise. That doesn’t mean much. We’ve spent years keeping tabs on the Wraiths and Zeke’s movements, not every bottom-feeding fuck who wears his patch and thinks it means something.
Two of them advance on Ash. He snarls, preparing for a no-handed fight. His shoulder slams into the first man, sending him stumbling sideways, while his boot connects with the other man’s knee.
He crumples, falling to the ground and clutching his broken leg. Ash uses the moment to drive his boot into the man’s head, and it connects with a sickening crack. Blood and teeth fly. Ash roars as he stomps again and kills the man. A bloody breath leaves him. His last.
The first man snarls, pulling out a gun and shoving it against his temple.
“Fucking try me,” the Wraith spits.
Ash’s eyes narrow. “I know you’ve been ordered to keep me alive, you stupid fuck, otherwise I’d already be dead.”
With a smirk, Ash cocks his head back and smashes it into the man. His nose crunches and he screams an anguished cry.
More men advance, and one of them carries a cow prod, driving it into Ash’s ribs. Sizzling electricity arcs. Ash groans through his teeth, slumping over the bloody dead man beside him.
It takes three men to haul him out of the room. Xavier isn’t any more cooperative, but more men join the mess, dragging him behind Ash.
A hand closes around my upper arm, and my eyes shoot to the connection. Then at him. The Wraith can’t be older than twenty-five. Whatever he sees on my face makes uncertainty flash in his eyes.
I throw my weight sideways and drive my shoulder into his stomach. He grunts, folding just enough for me to bring my knee up into his face.
Pain shoots through my head at the sudden movement, black dots flickering across my vision. But the sound of teeth landing on the concrete makes it worthwhile.
“Motherfucker!” he roars.
Another set of hands grab me. And two more. My boots scrape against the concrete floor as they pull me upright. My legs struggle to remember how the fuck they are supposed to work.
Whatever is in my system makes everything move in slow motion. My knees don’t want to cooperate, but I force them to lock.
I refuse to let these cunts carry me.
The Wraith with now missing teeth snarls.
“Nice smile,” I murmur to him.
He cocks his fist back before pain explodes across my cheekbone. My head jolts back, and the world turns into a spinning top. Yeah, I probably deserved that.
I’m dragged out of the small room, two men wrenching my restrained arms high enough that pain burns through my shoulders.
A wet popping sound hits me before I feel it. Fucking pricks. My now dislocated shoulder sits funny in my shirt, the Wraith behind me chuckling.
Oh, fuck, I’m going to enjoy killing that asshole.
I’m thrown roughly on the ground, near Ash and Xavier, before I can focus on the room around me. There are men, lots of them. But with my blurred vision, I can’t focus on any of them.
Leon is thrown next to me, and I squint my eyes at the youngest Devil. He’s dead weight on the ground, blood trickling from a gash in his forehead.
Fuck. He doesn’t look good.
Taking a steadying breath, I force myself to look around. This space is huge. It must be the main loading bay, with roller doors lining one side of the wall, big enough for. Rust coats everything.
Dozens of men surround us. They line the loading bay; Wraith cuts over their shirts and machine guns in their hands. Every barrel is pointed at us.
Ash’s breathing next to me is ragged from the cow prod, but I watch him from the corner of my eye straighten himself on his knees. Facing the men head-on.
The two men standing in front of us.
With their black hair and blue eyes.
Blue eyes that make my chest ache for another pair.
The older one, Isaac scans us with what can only be described as glee in his eyes. He must be proud of himself. Winning a fight against ten times our number.
Ethan stands beside him, eyes flicking rapidly. His fingers scratch at his arm, and he can’t seem to stay still. Using the supply he’s meant to be selling, now that Zeke isn’t around to kill him for it.
Great.
Zeke is the worst of the worst, but he’s more predictable than a junkie wielding a machine gun.
“Where’s my sister?” Isaac turns to another Wraith, his eyes narrowing.
“She wasn’t there, sir,” the Wraith ducks his eyes.
The relief that floods my system nearly has me melting to the floor. My girl is safe.
“What do you mean she wasn’t there?” Isaac’s eye begins to twitch as his glee turns into annoyance. “She opened the Goddamn door. How far could she have gotten in that time?”
I feel my brows draw.
Beside me, Ash goes still. Even Xavier stops fighting against the men holding him upright.
Isaac turns to us, his frustration melting off his face as a slow smile replaces it. He laughs, as if our confusion is the funniest thing he’s ever seen.
“Oh, yeah,” he croons, eyes landing on mine. “You don’t know.”
Glaring at him, I wait for the words to come out.
“Know what?” Ash barks.
Isaac spares him a quick glance, but his eyes slide back to me. Aiming the words at the person he knows they will hurt the most.
“Without my dear sister, Roxanne, none of this would have been possible.”
I feel my eyes shutter, but I force a blank expression, not giving him anything. Even though inside I feel everything. Confusion and betrayal, and thick fucking hatred for the asshole in front of me.
My mind refuses to settle on his words. Rejecting the truth.
No. Roxy was upstairs asleep. Kai went to check on her right before these fuckers came through the back entrance.
“Turns out she’s still a Wraith after all,” he grins. “Getting into that clubhouse was going to be our biggest problem. Too many fucking Devils crawling around to do anything too crazy. But my sweet little sister made it easy. We stepped right in, and you fuckers didn’t even notice.”
“You’re lying,” I say, deadly quiet.
Isaac’s eyes gleam; his sickening smile makes me doubt everything. It makes sense, the way they were able to spring on us before we were even aware that they were inside the building.
But she... she’s ours. Not theirs.
The drawing... The look in her eyes.
Fuck.
Is she with Kai? Is my brother safe?
Just like me, he’s too smitten to see any sort of betrayal she was concocting right under our noses. For the first time, I let my guard down. For a fucking Wraith.
Beside me, Leon groans but doesn’t wake. He has a few hours, tops, before he dies. I can spot death better than I can spot traitors, it seems.
All of this because of her. Because I trusted her. It’s all my fault.
His eyes find Ash. “All I had to do was threaten that silly little blonde whore, and my sister was putty in my hands.”
I feel Ash’s rage, though I don’t see it. It’s a palpable thing, wafting through the air.
Isaac claps his hands. “Okay, let’s get to it. No time to waste.”
He continues as if he didn’t just tear down the foundation on which my life sits. Her.