Chapter 22
Aurelia
Present
“If you lay a finger on my dog again, I will bite your dick off and shove it up your ass.”
They glance at each other before the skinnier one laughs—dark, cruel. “Look at that,” he snickers. “Our new toy’s a little psycho.”
Then he turns back to me, leaning in and tilting my chin up, lips curling into a nasty smile. “I can’t wait to have your mouth all over my dick, sweetheart.”
I stare back. No fear. No anger. Nothing. Just empty, cold defiance.
His smile falters, and he steps back, clearly not getting the reaction he wanted.
Before I can deliver another biting remark—telling them they’d have to kill me before touching me—a heavy bag slips over my head. The world spins, then black.
* * *
My senses come back slow, wading through thick fog.
The bag is still tight over my face, but light filters through the fabric—just enough to make out vague shapes.
My breathing is loud, ragged. My heart hammering against my ribs so hard it can almost escape.
I try to move, but my body feels heavy, chained in some way. Panic bubbles, but I choke it down. No point wasting energy on fear—not now.
My mind flashes to Hank. Is he safe? Is Elijah—where are they? The familiar fury that fuels me rises again, steady and hard as steel.
I’m not a girl who breaks easily. Not now. Not ever.
They drag me over uneven ground, and I feel the sting of loose gravel slicing into my calves.
My feet scrape against rock slopes, maybe a path cut into a hill.
The air smells of rot, cold iron, and damp earth.
I still can’t see anything. The rough canvas bag scrapes against my face, each breath hot and suffocating inside the sack.
I thrash. Hard. Kicking my heels down. Throwing my weight left, then right. Every twist fueled by pure survival. This is it. My only shot.
Once they get me inside—inside whatever prison they’ve prepared—I’ll have nothing but my mind. And while it’s sharp, even I know there are limits to what a chained girl can do with just her thoughts.
A flash of movement—my knee connects with one of their groins. I hear the breath knocked out of him, a sick grunt of surprise and pain. Perfect.
In the chaos, my fingers find the grip of a gun at his belt. Muscle memory kicks in. No hesitation. No mercy.
One shot.
I don’t even flinch as I pull the trigger. A spray. A collapse. A scream.
Still blind. But Dante’s training comes back like instinct.
Disoriented, dragged, blacked out—he made me train for all of it. Blindfolded drills down manor hallways. Firearms under pressure. Hit, stab, run, hide.
But there’s one thing I wasn’t ready for.
The sting of a syringe.
It’s so fast I don’t even hear the hiss until it’s too late.
A sudden warmth floods my thigh, and the world pulls away from me. I collapse, face-first into gravel. I fight it… God, I try. But the numbness creeps in, and everything disappears.
* * *
When I wake, it’s worse.
I ache. My body stiff, stretched unnaturally. Limbs parted, wrists pulled taut above me. Ankles bound wide. The bite of steel and leather cuffs against raw skin.
I peel my eyes open, vision blurry and light too bright. Everything sterile and cold. The buzzing of artificial light is making my skull feel like it’s cracking open, causing me to wince, but I force my eyes open to keep looking.
Two towering wooden pillars rise beside me, my wrists and ankles shackled to each.
My coat is gone. So are my shoes. But thankfully, my top and shorts are still on—at least, what’s left of them.
The floor is concrete. Cold and unforgiving. A cage surrounds me—metal bars, thick and rust-dotted. One way in. One way out.
I lift my head, barely, and my neck screams for me to stop, my muscles fire and fail. I try to turn toward the sound of footsteps. My eyes fight the weight of sedation, lids dragging.
“Now, who did you piss off?”
The voice is deep. Rough. Curious. Coming from someone close to me on my right side.
I try to speak, but my lips are stuck together. My tongue is sandpaper. My body slumps forward, breath shallow.
I try to remember it. Was he one of the men from before? Or is this someone new? Someone worse?
I can’t get my head to turn towards the sound, all I can see is just beyond the cage, making out the outline of boots—expensive ones—and a pair of dark eyes behind the bars.
Then everything fades.