Chapter 8 #3
Jenna crouches down in front of me, her face so close I can smell her perfume—something expensive and cloying that makes my stomach turn. Her eyes behind the mask are bright, feverish, like she's enjoying this.
"Let's not forget," she says softly, her voice dripping with false sweetness, "that Izzy saved your life once upon a time."
I blink at her, my head still spinning, blood pooling in my mouth.
"Before you started dating him, you were mediocre at best," she continues, her tone sharpening. "You were wet behind the ears. Nobody. And then Izzy became that light that shined on you. He made you somebody."
She leans in closer, her breath hot against my face.
"How dare you disrespect him."
Her hand rises, fingers curled into a fist, and I brace myself for the blow—
The door slams open.
Jenna freezes mid-swing.
"Jenna!" Lionetti's voice cuts through the room like a whip. "What the hell are you doing?"
He strides in, his face a mask of cold fury. He's not yelling—he doesn't need to. The quiet rage in his voice is worse.
Jenna straightens immediately, her hand dropping to her side. "Daddy, I—"
"I told you to keep your anger in check!" he snaps, stopping in front of her. "No hits. Now look at her face!"
He gestures toward me, and I feel his eyes rake over me like I'm livestock being inspected.
"I need her bruise and blood-free in the face until the buyers take her," he says coldly. "Damaged bodies don't get me my money."
Jenna's shoulders slump. She pouts like a scolded child, her head dropping.
"I'm sorry, Daddy," she murmurs. "We were just talking and I got a little carried away."
I laugh.
It's bitter, hoarse, and it hurts like hell, but I can't stop myself.
"Carried away?" I rasp, spitting blood onto the floor. "That's what you call carried away?"
I look up at Jenna, my vision swimming, and force a smirk.
"Good luck to Izzy. That piece of shit."
Jenna's face twists with rage. Her hand flies up again, but this time Lionetti catches her wrist mid-air.
"Enough," he says quietly.
She glares at me, her chest heaving, but she doesn't pull away from him.
Lionetti releases her wrist and jerks his head toward the door. "Go get yourself together. Have a drink, for Christ's sake. Go downstairs and wait with Izzy."
Jenna hesitates, her eyes still locked on mine, burning with hatred. But then she turns on her heel and storms out, the door slamming shut behind her.
And then it's just me and him.
Lionetti stands there for a moment, adjusting his cuffs, his expression unreadable. Then he crouches down in front of me, his movements slow and deliberate.
I force myself to meet his eyes.
"Where's Inez?" I whisper, my voice cracking. "Please. She has nothing to do with this. Please let her go. Take me. Just—just let her go."
For a moment, he doesn't respond. He just studies me, his gaze cold and clinical, like he's calculating something.
Then he reaches out and grips my jaw, tilting my face up toward the light.
"Everyone has a price, sweetheart," he says softly. "Fortunately for me, those prices are high."
His words hit me like ice water.
I yank my jaw out of his hand, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
And then I spit.
Right on his shoe.
The room goes silent.
Lionetti looks down at his shoe. Then back at me.
His expression doesn't change.
But his hand does.
The backhand comes fast and hard, snapping my head to the side. Pain explodes across my cheek, white-hot and blinding. I taste blood again, thick and metallic, and the room tilts violently.
I don't fall. I grip the bedpost, refusing to go down.
Lionetti stands slowly, brushing off his hands like he's just finished a minor inconvenience. He snaps his fingers once, sharp and commanding.
"Pick her up," he says to someone behind me. "Get her cleaned up. The buyers are downstairs and ready."
I hear footsteps. Heavy. Multiple.
Hands grab me—rough, impersonal—and haul me upright. My legs buckle, but they don't let me fall. They drag me forward, my bare feet scraping against the floor.
"Wait—" I try to say, but my voice is barely a whisper. "Inez—where—"
No one answers.
The room spins. My vision blurs at the edges, darkness creeping in.
And then I feel it.
A sharp sting at the back of my neck.
Cold spreads through my veins like ice, fast and overwhelming. My limbs go heavy. My head lolls forward.
"No—" I try to say, but the word comes out slurred, barely audible.
The hands holding me tighten as my knees give out completely.
The last thing I see is the floor rushing up to meet me.
And then—
Nothing.
Everything goes black again.
I'm dreaming.
I know I am, because everything feels soft. Warm. Safe.
I'm small again. Maybe six, maybe seven.
The park near my building, the one with the rusted swings and the cracked pavement where dandelions pushed through like they refused to give up.
I'm running with the neighborhood kids—Marco, Destiny, that kid with the gap in his teeth whose name I can never remember.
We're playing tag, and I'm fast. Faster than all of them.
My lungs burn in that good way, the way that means I'm alive and free and nothing can catch me.
The scene shifts.
Now I'm at Coney Island. The sand is hot under my feet, gritty and rough, and I'm digging with my hands, building something that doesn't need to make sense.
A castle. A fortress. A place where no one can reach me.
The ocean roars in the distance, and I can taste salt on my lips.
My cousin is next to me, laughing at something I said, and for a moment, everything is perfect.
Then the dream pulls me somewhere else.
The Bronx Zoo.
I'm older now. Maybe ten. Standing in front of the tiger enclosure, my hands pressed against the glass. The tiger paces back and forth, back and forth, its massive paws silent on the concrete. Its eyes are golden and distant, like it's looking at something far beyond the walls that hold it.
I remember thinking: It wants out.
Not in a violent way. Not in a desperate way. Just... out. To run. To hunt. To be what it was meant to be instead of something people stare at through glass.
I understood that.
Even then, I understood.
The dream shifts again, faster now, like I'm being pulled forward through time.
Suddenly I'm older. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. My hair is longer, darker. I'm standing outside a club I have no business being in, fake ID burning a hole in my pocket. My friends are with me—Inez, my cousin, a few others whose faces blur at the edges of the memory. We're laughing, nervous, excited.
The bouncer barely glances at my ID before waving us through.
The door opens.
And the music hits me like a wave.
"Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence pours through the speakers, loud and haunting and perfect. The bass vibrates through my chest, and I feel it in my bones.
The club is dark. Black chandeliers hang from the ceiling like something out of a gothic cathedral.
Black sconces line the walls, casting flickering shadows that make everything feel alive.
Skulls grin from shelves behind the bar.
The whole place looks like it crawled out of a Tim Burton film and decided to throw a party.
And the people.
God, the people.
Fake fangs. Tattoos crawling up arms, necks, disappearing under clothes. Hair dyed every color imaginable—purple, green, blood red. Clothes that look like they came straight out of Dracula's closet. Corsets and leather and lace and chains.
We grab a table in the middle of the floor, and the adults—the ones who are twenty-one—go to the bar. They come back with drinks that look like something out of a horror film. Bloody Marys with celery sticking out like severed fingers. Long Island Iced Teas so dark they could be poison.
I laugh.
I can't help it.
Because I get it now.
I'm in an emo club.
And I love it.
That's when I see them. The tattoos. Not just random ink, but art. Real art. Stories written on skin. Dragons coiling around forearms. Roses blooming across shoulders. Words etched into ribs, hidden and sacred.
And I think: That's it.
That's what I want to do.
Not just create art that hangs on a wall. But art that moves. Art that breathes. Art that lives on bodies, walking through the world, telling stories no one else can see unless you get close enough.
That night changed everything.
That night, I found myself.
But the dream is fading now.
The music distorts, slowing down, warping into something unrecognizable. The faces around me blur and melt like wax. The black chandeliers flicker and die.
And then the pain starts.
My head.
God, my head.
It's pounding, a relentless drumbeat that makes my skull feel like it's splitting open. My stomach churns, nausea rising in waves, and I can feel my heart hammering in my throat, too fast, too hard.
The dream is gone.
I'm not at Coney Island. I'm not at the zoo. I'm not in that club with the music and the ink and the freedom.
I'm somewhere else.
Somewhere dark.
Somewhere wrong.
I try to open my eyes, but they're so heavy. My eyelids flutter, and I catch glimpses—blurred shapes, dim light, movement.
My mouth tastes like copper and chemicals.
My body feels like it's made of lead.
I'm coming to.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
And I don't want to.
Because I know—somewhere deep in the fog of my mind—that whatever's waiting for me on the other side of this darkness is worse than any nightmare I could dream.
SILAS
Five hours.
Five fucking hours since Lionetti snatched them, and we've got nothing.
I'm standing in the middle of Becca's basement, surrounded by screens and files and maps, and every single one of them is useless. Jace is at his station, fingers flying across the keyboard, pulling up property records, surveillance feeds, anything that might give us a lead. But it's all dead ends.
"There's no fucking way they just disappeared," I snap, slamming my hand on the desk. "Search every property under the Lionetti name. Every single one."