Chapter 34
Jolie—present day
Inodded. A tranquil feeling spread over my body, overpowering the goosebumps that constantly resided on my skin. I watched Olivier’s black shiny shoes bend at the toes as they brought him closer.
He lowered to his haunches and gently lifted the sack from my face, placing it at my side, where the scratchy material tickled my fingertips. I tried to scratch them on the concrete, making them bleed within a second.
“Are you ready?” he asked, his tone gentle as he pulled me near.
I nodded again, titling my head, ready for the sharp prick to pierce my neck.
“You know what you’re doing?” I asked, pulling my hair to one side, with no fear of how I looked with it off my face. Ollie was never one of the guy’s who’d dish out hateful sneers.
“I do,” he replied, sounding confident.
And I trusted him; he’d been a friend to me when I needed one most. He disciplined those that hurt me, and sat with me, keeping me company and talking while my imaginary friends slept.
I closed my eyes, losing myself to another daydream. Of Woodrow, waiting for me at pearly gates, our baby in his arms and Nessie at his side. My parents stood in the background. My grandmother, who had passed only a year after my mother, with them. Everyone I ever loved, all together.
I jumped, feeling the stabbing of the needle blade, and then I felt a tingling surrounding the area.
“Sleep well, angel. Never a victim, always a survivor.” Ollie’s comforting touch rubbed my arm, and that was the last thing I felt as the world zoned out.
Olivier stopped me from slumping down to the floor, scooping my limp body up into his powerful arms.
He moved through the rundown building, giving no one a second glance as a few newer guys questioned with their stare what I’d done to deserve such a final punishment.
No one asked with their mouths; they didn’t really care. And they knew if the rumors floating through the walls—that the monster with gold teeth was dead—were true, then, for now, Olivier held the power in this shithole.
His eyes squinted as he reached the back door and someone pulled it open from the outside, blasting sunlight into the monotonous halls.
The face kissed by sunlight didn’t look surprised to see me, all limp and lifeless. He stepped aside for Olivier to pass, saying nothing.
“Keep an eye on things; I have a body to dispose of.” Ollie regarded the man with a nod, keeping me tucked in close.
“I can take her if it’s easier.”
“I got it,” was all Ollie said as he rolled me into the back seat of a black jeep, the windows only one shade lighter than the bodywork.
The doors slammed as he got in behind me, and drove me on my way to a new life.
My eyes peeled open, still feeling heavy after numerous blinks. They drifted from left, where everything was hazy, to the right, where my vision was clear. I lay in a bed in a room I'd never seen before.
I expected clouds, loved ones, heaven.
Where the fuck was I?
I sat up on a soft mattress. The blankets over me fell to my waist, the foreign feeling of warmth going with them. I patted my skin, material still covering me.
I looked down to see I was in a t-shirt, long and black, with a band's logo on the front. It took me a while to think of one of their hits, but then their playlist came to me, and the eighties rockers’ most iconic song started playing in my head, or from some other room in this house.
I swung my weak legs to the edge of the bed and tested whether or not, they'd hold my weight. I crept to the door, slowly moving over the carpet as my knees threatened me with a face-to-face introduction with the soft fibers.
Wrapping my hand around the doorknob, I twisted it. I didn’t push myself straight out into the hallway and into the view of someone who was talking nearby. I only opened the door slightly, pressing my ear to the open space and listening.
The conversation was one-sided and coming from the kitchen. Clunking cups rattled my bones, each little noise feeling scarier in this new and strange environment.
Why was I here?
How was I alive?
Another question came, but it wasn't locked inside my head—it was a voiced question by a man I'd guess to be in his early thirties. He wasn't Olivier, who was a little older than that. It wasn't his voice or his walk I heard moving around the kitchen down the hall.
“How are you doing today? Any tantrums?” He asked another person, mockingly, with amusement in his tone.
Whoever was with him, making noise as he opened and closed the refrigerator, getting on with his morning routine, didn't answer him.
The kettle screamed, and I wanted to scream, too, wondering what the hell I was doing here.
I crept into the long hallway, moving sheepishly towards the voices of could-be wolves. The wooden floor didn't creak, alerting them to my presence.
“Don’t put that back,” the man said, as his friend was about to put away some milk.
“I need it for my first coffee.” There was the shortest pause, where maybe his friend nodded.
“And I need the coffee to deal with you.” The man laughed.
“Don’t worry, I won't tell Ollie about your meltdown yesterday.
He's got a lot going on right now, trying to shut that place down. But try to behave today, huh? Take your meds and shit, and try to keep Hell in his box.”
“Hell. . .” I whispered, my lip and knees shaking. My heart pounding wildly. My Hell.
Before I knew it, my feet moved quicker, not caring about any threats my body made or any noise I made.
And then, I stopped dead. My feet turned to stone, cementing me to the ground as a twenty-seven-year-old—real and not some fantasy version—Woodrow stepped around the corner from the kitchen.
He stood directly in my view, wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants that hung low around his Adonis belt. He had me staring in awe and shock.
He didn't look exactly as I pictured him; he wasn't covered in prison tattoos. From the neck down, he was scarred by flames. His marred frame wasn't skinny. He looked so much better, so much healthier, slender yet muscly.
He took his first and last spoonful of cereal, crunching and swallowing them without an issue as he held the cold bowl to his chest.
His square jaw lifted and his pretty silver eyes landed on me.
The bowl fell from his hands, the spoon, too. Pieces of china and hundreds of sugared hoops flew across the floor.
A “What the fuck?” came from the kitchen, along with some rustling in a nearby bedroom.
“Woodrow. . .” I didn't wait for him to answer. His stare alone had broken the binding spell on my feet.
I raced forward, diving on him as I lurched into his waiting arms. He'd stepped over the broken shards of the bowl to prevent any pain to my feet.
His long fingers moved over me, feeling every inch before settling on my back.
He squeezed me tightly, no doubt feeling my protruding spine.
I touched him, too, my hands gently moving over all his scars.
The man from the kitchen rushed to see us, but he didn't invade our space.
Olivier pulled open his bedroom door and froze in the doorway.
We ignored them both, focusing solely on each other. On the moment when nothing around us existed.
I sloped backwards in Woodrow's arms, getting a better look at the details of his older face. His lips lifted, perfect teeth appearing in the opening of his mouth.
“You’re real.” I felt over the dark stubble on his face, my other hand weaving through his bedhead hair. “You’re alive. I can’t believe you’re alive.”
He leaned into my touch—something he’d never been able to do, and as a result, my eyes scanned down his face to his throat, watching as he swallowed without the pain of his swelling.
The mass pushing out his Adam's Apple was gone, replaced by a permanent hole.
My fingers left his stubbled cheek, trailing down to the new feature embedded in his scars.
Tears welled in my eyes, distorting my view of him. I blinked and they fell, rolling down my face onto his naked chest. Another droplet clawed from my eyes, and he wiped it away with a delicate thumbpad.
I was careful not to hurt him as my fingers brushed his throat.
“I don't understand how you're here. I don’t even know where here is,” I said, but I didn't wait for an answer. He looked at me like he wondered how I was here, too. “Are you okay?” I asked, and he blinked twice in response, squeezing me lovingly again.
“Can you talk?” I quizzed, my eyes showing compassion to him because I already knew the answer.
His non-dominant hand left my body, tapping at his empty pocket in search of something. . .
“He has an electrolarynx,” Olivier finally chirped. “It's a small device he can put to his neck and sound words.”
“Does it sound like him?” I wondered.
“Fuck, no,” the other man said between sips of coffee and insensitive chuckles. “It's much less irritating.”
Olivier gave him a pointed glare, and he shut up, aside from slurping the last of his too-hot drink. The man licked away his liquid moustache, then disappeared to refill his cup, feeding his coffee addiction.
“It doesn't sound like him. In time, we'll get one that does. We’ve found some recordings of his voice from past audio messages that can be used to replicate it. As soon as I’m out of the sales, it’ll be the first thing I take care of.”
I knew exactly what Olivier meant by sales, without asking. He meant human sales. . . and he was getting out.
“He'll have his voice back.” Ollie's eyes moved to Woodrow, and he breathed in his silent question. “You're wondering where I found her?”
Woodrow blinked twice, and Ollie, like me and the other man here, who had returned with his second cup of coffee, understood.
“I found her around three months ago—”
“Oh, boy. Here we go,” Mr. Nameless quipped again.
Woodrow took a step forward, frustration and anger twisting his handsome facial features.