Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next morning…
R ebel moved slightly on a hard surface, his head ached and his body felt sore.
The hardness beneath him turned out to be the floor. Slowly, he turned his head and found a blanket had been placed under him and a comforter on top of him.
Why was he on the fucking floor? Even through the comforter, the cold seeped into his bones and sent a chill through him.
Struggling to sit up, he clutched the blanket tightly.
Sunlight streamed from a nearby window, casting the room in a bright glow.
He lifted the blanket and peered beneath. They had stripped him of every piece of clothing.
The fuckers!
Something hard clanked around his ankle and he flipped the corner of the comforter aside to find a metal cuff around his leg attached to a thick chain anchored into the floor.
Great. Just fucking great.
Nothing was within reach of him except the blankets and the wall of windows that looked down over some type of courtyard.
The sun hadn’t moved all that much, so not much time had passed. Unless it was the next day, but he doubted it.
Rolling to his feet, Rebel wrapped the comforter around his shoulders and pulled it snug before he stepped over to gaze out at the world.
A world that was far out of his reach.
Crow. Fuck, he missed him. He glanced up toward the blue sky. If there really was a heaven, then Crow must surely be there, right?
If, and that was a big if, there was a God, then the guy better take care of Crow.
Tears welled up, and Rebel struggled to hold them back.
He hardened his heart. There was no use crying over a dead man. He had lost too many people through the years—young boys, just like him, who’d been taken by Tanis. Most of them died.
Rebel was feeling a loss he would feel forever.
He yanked at the chain. Jimmy thought he had attempted to kill himself, but Rebel would never do that.
He was a survivor by nature.
“But at what cost,” he mumbled.
He had lived his life alone until Crow. And while their encounter had been brief, it had been special.
To him, Crow’s friendship had been priceless.
Now, he was a man drifting without a soul in a vast universe of darkness.
And hell help anyone who came near him.
Murder became his mantra.
Jimmy entered Rebel’s room, his one good eye finding where he’d chained the boy to the floor.
He fingered the eye patch with his left hand and grimaced when it pulled at the bandage wrapped around his palm.
The patch was from Rebel, who had damaged his eye beyond repair, but the hand wrapped up was from punching a mirror in his study.
“What day is it?” Rebel asked.
“Why?”
“Is it the same day I poked out your eye or the next?”
“The next day,” Jimmy said.
“What do you think you’re going to get by keeping me here?”
The question caught Jimmy off guard and he gazed at the beautiful young man.
What did he want? He hoped to get Rebel to come around and become his lover. Perhaps that was too much to ask? No, he didn’t think so. He had a thousand ways to make Rebel do what he wanted.
“I want you with me, Rebel. You will be mine, whether it’s by your own choice or force.”
“You sick fuck!”
Rebel screamed at him, the words coming out hoarse and raspy. The boy’s throat had to be raw from all the screaming he’d done.
Rebel lunged at him, but the chain brought the boy up short of reaching him.
Jimmy stayed back.
Rebel threatened to kill him in every colorful way imaginable using some very graphic descriptions. All said with the words cutting in and out, but Jimmy got the gist of it.
The violent spew and upheaval bursting from the boy was upsetting.
Above all things, he must have order in his home.
Peace and order.
“Be good,” Jimmy said, causing Rebel’s words to sputter to a stop.
“And if I don’t!” Rebel gripped the blanket, his knuckles white.
“I’ll bring Angel in here and rape her in front of you.”
The boy’s pupils exploded with shock and his eyes widened in his pale face.
“She’s with the Marshals,” Rebel spat the words to cover his horror.
“Hmm, you think so?”
The smile on Jimmy’s lips sent a cold shiver of dread up his spine.
Think. Think. Rebel wracked his brain, trying to think of a way out.
Something from his past niggled at him. Tanis used to do the same fucking thing—use others to threaten him into compliance.
It was another form of mental torture.