Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
Ayda
Even with Drew’s hand wrapped around mine, holding the gun to his head, I wasn’t sure I could do it.
There was conviction and confidence behind his eyes as his hand squeezed mine, but all I could do was cry.
The unbroken sobs that were thick in my throat and chest made every bone in my body ache, but my heart…
My heart was in my eyes, begging Drew not to ask me to do this.
I couldn’t live with myself if he died at my hand. I couldn’t live knowing that his blood was spilled because of something I’d done, even if I’d been forced into it. The truth was, I couldn’t survive this without him. I needed him more than I could ever have admitted, even to myself.
As I met his eyes, I realized that the moniker Cortez had given the two of us, was absolutely fitting.
Romeo and Juliet.
She’d sacrificed herself when she realized he was gone. The thought of living without him had been too much to bear.
For the first time in my twenty-five years of life, I finally understood. I knew in that moment that if mine was the gun that killed Drew, I would go through every single one of them at my own head until I found the next loaded chamber, because death was surely better than living without him.
Swallowing almost compulsively, I pushed my forehead against Drew’s with the last ounce of strength I possessed. It was a silent promise that I would be strong for him if I had to be.
Then I squeezed the trigger.
The empty click had my breath leaving me in one swift stream, the sob I’d been clinging to breaking free as I threw the gun away and brought my hand to his cheek.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Drew’s palm covered mine quickly, his cheek leaning into our touch as he closed his eyes and exhaled. “That’s my girl. You did good. You always do good.” When he looked back up at me, his breathing became more erratic.
The hand still left around my waist tried to pull me closer, but there wasn’t anywhere for us to go. We were a tangled mess of arms and legs, dirt and blood, heavy breaths and falling tears.
“I love you,” he whispered again.
Cortez’s boot hit the side of Drew’s body, forcing us both to flinch in surprise. “Get on with it, doggy. Play your part properly. Kiss her dirty tears away before you kill her.”
I could feel the tension in Drew’s jaw under my hand.
Cortez was pressing every button he had and he knew it.
I was a mess. My face was sore from being pushed into the dirt and glass on the floor, and my skull ached from being knocked out, dragged around by my hair, and the crushing weight of the fat bastard who had been made my warden.
Drew wasn’t faring much better. The cut on his head was still bleeding.
I could feel the thick liquid pooling against my hand.
His eye was swelling and his lips were cut up and split.
That should probably have been the single kiss we’d had that would be less than passionate due to the circumstances… and yet, it wasn’t.
I was the one who instigated it, knowing he would never want to put me in a position like that, and the moment our lips touched, I had sanctuary.
For one blissful moment in time, it was just the two of us again.
Not even the pain bothered me. I clung to him with everything I had, the familiarity of his lips giving me the last push of strength I needed.
Pulling away, my eyes met his, and though my voice was shaky, it was filled with just as much conviction as his had been. “Do it.”
Cortez leaned closer in to us again, his eyes switching from me to Drew and back again over and over, but Drew refused to look away or let me go.
“You heard her, Tucker. You’re up.”
Drew’s hands tightened around me before he unwound them from my wrist and reached blindly into the box.
His fingers drifted through the weapons, shifting them along the base until he found the one he wanted.
When he eventually pulled it out, he readjusted it in his grip, catching it into a tighter hold and feeling the weight of it in his hand.
“Cortez?” he said quietly.
“I don’t do requests,” Cortez answered sharply. “Put the gun to her head and pull the trigger.”
“I’ll pull the trigger when that dirty rat of yours pulls his dick away from my fucking back.”
Just like that, Cortez’s attention snapped away from us to look at the two men behind Drew, and the second his focus was on trying to figure out who the rat in their club was, Drew raised his elbow up high and smashed the end of the gun square into Cortez’s jaw.
All hell broke loose. Cortez didn’t take kindly to being hit, and neither did his minions. I felt the grip on my hair almost instantly and the cold barrel of the very obviously loaded weapon at my temple as Drew was punched and kicked mere feet away.
It probably wasn’t my smartest move, but I couldn’t sit there and do nothing.
The moment one of the men stepped around to get in a better punch, I kicked out my leg, the heel of my shoe digging into the back of his knee forcing him to fall.
My hair was almost yanked from my skull in a fistful, but everything came to a screaming halt when I felt the cold, biting edge of Cortez’s knife against my throat.
“Enough,” he shouted in a growl, while all I could feel was the pressure on my skin.
“Let’s just fucking end him. This is going on too long. Let’s blow this place like we planned,” one of the Emps shouted, the frustrations in his voice clear as his head snapped from side to side and he began to breathe like a bull.
Cortez looked up, raising both his brows high. “In a rush to leave, Bones?”
“Bones,” Drew coughed and spluttered out as he tried to ingest air into his broken body. “There you are. Long time no see.”
Pressing the blade and twisting it onto its edge even more, Cortez’s train of thought practically bounced off the walls as he tried to figure out the same things I was. Was all this a bluff or not? Did the Emps really have a rat in their midst?
“Get Tucker back over here,” Cortez demanded quietly. “Remove his shirt. Let us see the patch on his skin.”
The scraps of Drew’s shirt were ripped almost violently from him as three men dragged him back to the position he’d been in before he fucked up Cortez’s nose.
He was in worse shape. There were more blossoming bruises, more cuts on his face, one particularly nasty one that was oozing blood just under his eye socket.
“Before we go on, why don’t we remind Tucker exactly what’s at stake when he pisses me off.
” Cortez removed the knife from my throat, but I wasn’t comforted by its new placement.
He’d pushed it below my sweater, the blade pointing out.
He seemed more fascinated by Drew’s reaction than mine, and with one snap of his wrist had cut through the top of my sweater.
His rank breath washed over me as he got closer, the nauseating odor making my own breath stick as he grabbed the two sides of the sweater and ripped them apart.
“Much better,” he purred, dragging the scraps of material down my arms and leaving me in my bra. My eyes met Drew’s and for just a second, I regretted the decision to wear a push up. It had been for his eyes only, and now all I felt was dirty and tainted.
I’d thought I’d seen all his faces before then, but not even murderous could describe the look in Drew’s eyes as he looked up at Cortez and violently pushed three words out through his teeth.
“Get. Off. Her.”
Sliding the flat surface of the knife over the exposed parts of my breasts, Cortez leaned over my shoulder and began to moan in appreciation.
“I can see why you chose her. I wonder…” He kept his hand moving in a slow pattern, and I knew he felt me flinch whenever the heel of his palm made contact with my naked skin.
“Did you worship these enough the last time you touched them? Did you always caress them like it was the first and last time? Or do you need another memory to take with you when you die?”
The touch of his hand made me shudder in disgust, but my concern was more for Drew than for myself.
Whatever this man was doing to me, I could burn my flesh later if we got out of this alive.
The only problem was, if Drew followed through with whatever was rolling around in his mind, we wouldn’t survive at all.
A living hell was rising behind his eyes as he watched Cortez’s hands. It wasn’t jealousy. It was protection.
“Drew.” It was one word, but I hoped he could hear everything I couldn’t say planted in the syllables.
He’d turned from man to beast as he watched his enemy like he was his prey, but the moment his name passed my lips, I saw that flicker of reality come back to him. His eyes were frantic as he looked between the two of us and the knife.
Then something changed.
“I want another memory,” he said quietly.
“Did you forget something?”
Drew swallowed. “Please.”
Cortez grinned beside me, that golden tooth of his shining like a target that needed to be knocked out. “And so it is love.”
He pushed me forward violently, and whoever was behind Drew did the same to him until the two of us were sitting pressed against one another again, only this time we were skin on skin.
The second Drew could pull me closer, he did, our legs scissoring again as he guided me into his arms and held me by the waist.
We were damp with sweat, tears and everything else we’d been thrown around in all mixed together, but when he pressed his cheek to mine and buried his nose in my hair to breathe me in, I let myself do the same with him.
“Do you trust me?” he whispered so only I could hear.
“Always,” I breathed back, my head pressing against his and my eyes closing.
“Do as he says, and when the chance arrives, please… run . Run as fast as you can. You’ll know when it’s here. Don’t ask questions, Ayda. Don’t wait for me. Don’t look ba—”