Chapter 1
THE REDEEMABLE
HELL’S REDEMPTION SERIES
Today was a brittle day. My body felt like it would fall to pieces at any second, leaving me a gory mess of plasma and regrets on the pavement.
Almost home now, just hold your shit together, Ace said.
Ace was complicated. Complicated in that she was merely a voice in my head.
My calm voice of reason crossed with the attitude of the angst-ridden preteen I'd been when I'd first heard her.
Like an imaginary friend who bitched a lot, but had my back.
The psychs said I'd developed her to cope with the traumas of my childhood and the combined blows of my parents’ deaths.
But despite the cocktails of drugs and therapy, she persisted, and deep down I was glad.
I pushed my way through the turnstiles and shuffled down the stairs to my subway platform.
Groaning, I pressed my hands to my temples as I took in the scene.
A fight had broken out, and the crowd had formed a circle around the dueling businessmen.
This was New York, so fighting stockbrokers wasn't the weirdest thing I'd ever seen, but it was unusual enough to draw an audience.
I pushed my way around the crowd, desperate to make my train.
The musty smell of the tunnel was gusting from the darkness, the silent harbinger of my train’s imminent arrival.
I edged way too close to the safety line, but there was no other way around the ring of spectators.
People behind me jostled and shoved, and I plowed into the back of a man standing in front of me.
Despite the force of my meagre weight pushing into his back, the man didn't shift an inch. He didn't even turn, so I couldn’t politely ask him to move. Dammit.
He was huge and muscular, not someone I wanted to annoy, but he was in my way.
“Excuse me,” I yelled over the shouts of the fight.
This time the man turned, and I took an unconscious step back.
I took in his tense jaw, not-so-straight nose, and his flinty grey eyes.
Small scars littered his face. His hair was shaved so close it may as well have been a five o’clock shadow to match his beard.
It all added together to make him look rough and cruel.
Plus, he was a behemoth, must have easily been six and a half feet.
Those grey eyes stared down at me with an intensity that made my sluggish heart beat faster.
“What?” he said, the words soft, at odds with his hard expression. I pulled together the shreds of my dignity and tried to stop staring.
“Excuse me. This is my train and I can't get past you. Could you please move?” I gave him a polite smile as my headache began to thump.
“You have to be fucking kidding me. You?” He looked over my head, towards the crowd watching the fight. “Ri, get the hell over here.”
He still hadn't moved, and his eyes were back on my face.
“I'm sorry? Do I know you?” I was very sure I didn't. He wasn't someone you'd forget.
An equally large man joined him, but this one had caramel colored skin inked in black patterns from his neck down. Dark brown curls were cut close to his head and his eyes were the color of whiskey.
“Lux, what's up man? The fight was just getting good. One guy just hit the other with his briefcase.” His voice was smooth and deep, and his grin was guaranteed to melt the panties off any straight woman under a hundred yards.
“It's her,” the behemoth said, and the new guy's face lost every trace of mirth as he looked down at me with the same intense expression as his friend.
“Are you sure?”
The behemoth placed a warm, gentle hand on my cheek, and I found it oddly comforting.
“Holy shit,” the new guy muttered.
Snap the hell out of it, Arcadia. Random strangers are touching you in the subway. Do you not remember any of those after-school specials we had to watch as a kid? This is not normal. Ace was beginning to sound very un-calm.
I moved my face away from the behemoth’s outstretched hand as the whistle of the train echoed down the tunnel.
“That's my train. I really gotta go.” I edged around the behemoth, but that just put me in front of the new guy, the one called Ri.
The train blasted its horn again and I could see its lights coming out of the tunnel over his shoulder as he moved to do the same thing as his friend.
He reached up and put a hand on my cheek, his full pink lips parted as he just stared down at me, mute.
From what I could piece together, several things then happened at once.
My heart began to thunder in my chest until the edges of my vision began to blur, and I could hear Ace yelling in my head to stay upright until I was on the train, but her yelling only made my head thump more.
Simultaneously, the fight shifted closer to me, and I turned at the last moment to see a briefcase connect with a face in a spray of blood, and the overly soft body of an office worker lurched toward me.
As the office worker connected with me and my body toppled sideways towards the track, I remember thinking only one thing as darkness replaced the bright lights of the train. There were worse ways to die.
I woke up on a leather couch that wasn't my own, a set of light blue eyes staring down at me from a chair placed beside it. My brain was foggy, but Ace was loud and clear.
You've been abducted. How the hell did we end up here? She sounded worried, but I just couldn't summon the energy to care.
“I need my meds.” My voice was rough. The man beside me held up my pill bottle and a glass of water, helping me to ease into a sitting position. I realized there were more people in the room with us. Five more men to be exact.
Shit. You are about to become a late night repeat of America's Worst Crimes.
I scooted away from the man, and perched on the edge of the couch. I shook out a couple of pills from the bottle and dry swallowed them. They could've put anything in the water.
“What am I doing here? Where am I?”
“You passed out in the subway. If Lux hadn't grabbed you when he did, you'd probably be dead. When they realized you wouldn’t wake up, they brought you back here to me. I'm Dr Elias August. These guys call me Eli.”
I finally noticed the stethoscope around his neck as he pulled it on and placed the end on my back. I took a deep breath out of reflex.
Great, a doctor. At least the cops will be able to appreciate the mark of a professional when they find your dismembered body in a dumpster.
“I'm Arcadia. Everyone calls me Cady. Who are those guys?” My voice was barely a squeak. So far the other people in the space had just been standing quietly at the edges of the room, staring at me with an intensity that was both confusing and a little scary.
“We'll get to them in a second. Don't worry, they’re completely harmless.” He placed the stethoscope on my chest. “Any pain?”
“No more than normal.”
“Diagnosis?”
“Severe dilated cardiomyopathy.”
“You're on the transplant list?”
I shook my head sadly. No matter how many times I repeated this bit, it was never any less of a blow to my soul.
“I'm in remission for Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The transplant board said no.”
Eli placed his hands on his thighs, his fingers curling under and flexing hard. He had nice thighs.
A totally inappropriate thought to be having right now, in this situation, Ace groused.
“So you are dying?” Eli sounded stoic and professional, but someone else in the room sucked in a breath as if they'd been sucker punched.
“Essentially, yes. But hey, at least it wasn't today!”
“You can't be any more than eighteen.” Eli shook his head.
“Twenty actually. I have a baby face.” I gave him a tight smile and stood.
“I better be heading home. Thank you for doctoring me,” I said to Eli, and turned to find the behemoth, or Lux I guess his name was.
“Thanks for saving me.” He was even better looking in this moment, his face less harsh now he wasn't under the fluorescent lights of the subway.
I gave myself a few seconds to really drink him in.
“Didn't really save you though, did I?” His voice was still a scary low growl .
I shrugged. I knew the look he was giving me all too well. I'd seen it far too many times in my life. Frustrated hopelessness.
“You can't save them all, right?” I walked around Eli’s chair towards the door. “Can someone point me to the nearest bus stop?”
Lux said something to Eli in a language I didn't understand and had never even heard before. “What language is that?”
“Latin,” a voice said from somewhere in the room.
I peeked around the couch to find another guy lying on the ground behind the backrest, like a lost dollar.
He had a full red beard, long hair that was tied in a messy bun on top of his head, and a red checkered shirt.
He looked like a sexy lumberjack. His hands were linked behind his head and he was grinning at me without the intensity of the rest of the room’s occupants.
I raised an eyebrow. “Who speaks Latin, anyway?”
“Rich private school kids and those two. Definitely not me. I barely speak English with any kind of fluency. I'm Oz, by the way.”
“Cady.”
“You're cute. Kinda like a pixie.”
“Uh, thanks?”
Eli and Lux finished arguing in Latin, and Eli turned toward me. “Lux will drive you home. Is there someone there to take care of you? Parents? A boyfriend? A roommate?”
“Uh, no. My parents are both dead. But my friend calls me every day to check on me. She'll know if I'm missing.”
Great save, Arcadia. Smooth. Let's not tell them that she's actually working in Somalia right now, nursing orphans or some shit.
Lux smothered a smirk, and Oz openly laughed from his spot on the floor.
“I understand, but I'm worried that if you have another episode like the last one, you may fall and hurt yourself. Would you perhaps think of staying here until you are well? We have a big house and I promise you'll be completely safe. We would be overjoyed to have you.”
Fuck no.