There were some nights, though rare, when she didn’t experience nausea, abdominal cramps, or any pain at all.
Tonight, she felt a different kind of pain. A deep, emotional torment that festered and cramped in every part of her.
Tate was probably in a prison cell like this one, alone, unable to stand or defend himself. Were prisoners stepping on him? Was he bleeding out on the filthy floor? Would he take his last breath while prisoners stood on him unaware and unconcerned? She couldn’t stop imagining it, and it was slowly killing her from the inside out.
Beside her, a man leaned his back against the wall, sobbing as he pulled on his hair and scolded himself for robbing a merchant to feed his starving family.
“I can’t believe places like this exist,” Van muttered, staring at the man. “That’s saying something, considering I grew up in the shittiest shit hole on Earth.”
Her chest pinched. “I’m sorry you got pulled into this. This wasn’t your fight.”
“I volunteered.” He bent his knees, bringing his scarred, bruised face into her line of sight. “I’ve committed so many crimes, and this is the first time I’ve been behind bars. This is justice, don’t you think?”
She shook her head. “You’re a good man.”
He laughed and returned to his full height, looking away.
“No.” She gripped his bicep and pulled him back down. “What you did for Tate last night, especially knowing you have a wife—”
“How the fuck do you know about her?”
She yanked her arm back and swallowed. “Tiago knows. I’m sorry. I don’t know if he’ll go after her or—”
“She’s safe.” His entire body turned to stone, and he dragged a hand over his face, breathing through his nose as if trying to rein in his temper. “Matias has her. He’s protecting everyone connected to Tate.”
Oh, thank God.
She closed her eyes and inhaled. Then she looked up into his silver-bladed gaze. “I probably won’t make it through the morning—”
“Lucia,” he growled.
“I just want to thank you for what you’ve done for him. You didn’t have to come to Caracas. You didn’t have to participate in Tiago’s demands last night. If you hadn’t done those things, I wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“This far? To a prison?”
“I had five days with him.” Her voice quivered. “I got to experience love. Do you know that feeling?”
“Yeah.” His eyes closed briefly, and when they opened, they glimmered.
Jesus, this mean-looking ex-kidnapper was head over heels in love. Who would’ve thought? She certainly wouldn’t have recognized it before, but now… Now that she knew what it felt like, she sensed this man’s love for his wife all the way down to her toes.
Neither of them was in a position of hope, and maybe that was why she felt the need to say, “Promise me you’ll see her again.”
“Easy.” His expression hardened with conviction. “I’m counting every breath until I see her again. I promise.” He cupped the back of her head and held her face against his chest. “Your turn.”
“I’ll see him again.” In my memories. His face will be the last thing I see before I die. “I promise.”
CHAPTER 29
Four nights. Three days. One room.
Tate marked the loss of time by the ebb and flow of sunlight through the cracks in the wood walls. He lay face down on a thin blanket, his muscles trembling and his back a throbbing, burning, spasmodic ripple of pain.
His prison was a windowless shack with a dirt floor, a bucket to shit in, and a door that locked on the outside.
After Lucia had been taken from him in Caracas, the police put him in the trunk of a car. He’d traveled about a day in that dark cramped space. When he arrived here, he was blindfolded and carried into the shack by two men he couldn’t see.
During those few seconds outside, he’d felt the warmth of the sun on his skin and the dry heat in the air. It smelled like a desert—dusty, hot, barren.
Maybe he was near the coastline, but he didn’t hear the tide or the sea birds or any insects. He didn’t hear anything at all through the walls of the shack.
Except when the doctor came.
Twice a day, a car rolled up outside. The bar slid from the door on the shack, and an old man shuffled in to tend to his wounds.
Always escorted by two armed guards, the black-skinned doctor spread a numbing cream into the cuts on his back, cleaned the stitches on his arm, and bathed him from head to toe. Then he was fed broth and tea.
One guard emptied the shit bucket while the other patrolled the door. Tate could barely crawl, let alone stand. But they weren’t taking chances.
No one spoke. In those first couple of days, Tate couldn’t, either. He wasn’t sure any of them knew English. The guards resembled the thugs in Badell’s compound, and the doctor matched the descriptions Lucia had given him of Badell’s medical team, down to the scarification welts on his arms.
My back will look like that someday.
If I live.
Though he’d heard Lucia say she’d killed Badell, he knew the gang leader was the reason he was here. Either someone had taken over the operation or Badell was still alive.
When Tate could finally manage raspy words, he badgered his visitors with questions about his location, Badell’s whereabouts, and Van and Lucia.
Where’s Lucia? was the question he demanded most, and during the visit this morning, one of the guards had given him a single English answer.
Went to prison.
He’d blown a gasket when he heard the response, seething and thrashing and reopening wounds in his fit of rage. The guards had to restrain and gag him while the doctor patched him back up.
If he counted the day it took him to travel here, it’d been four days since he’d been separated from her. If she was imprisoned, she would be dead now.
His brain struggled to process that. His heart flat out refused.
He ran through a range of conflicting emotions in his isolation, from fury and guilt to determination and hope, and chief of all was helplessness. He’d failed her. Failed to protect her. Failed to rescue her. Failed to make her smile.
His shame and self-pity made him resent the healing of his injuries. He resented every fucking breath he took. Why bother?
But what if she lived?
He wore himself out trying to stand. Felt the wounds on his back tearing when he tried to stretch. He was imprisoned in a horizontal position, lost in the destructive fabric of his thoughts.
In hopeless conditions, the mind deteriorated. He knew that was happening, knew he needed to shut down parts of it to survive.
So he did.
CHAPTER 30
I’m still alive.
Lucia didn’t know how or why her illness up and fucking va
nished, but she hadn’t experienced a single symptom since the night Tate was tortured. Tiago must’ve given her a cure in the last injection. It was the only logical answer.
She and Van spent a week in that overcrowded jail, living in a cesspool of feces, disease, and despair. Now they were on a prison bus, being transported to a permanent penitentiary. There were no phone call allowances, no lawyers, no judicial process. No human rights. This was the underworld, and corruption pulled the strings.
She wasn’t sure if their case had even made it to the courts. She still didn’t know what they were being held for. Tiago was behind this. He was powerful enough. Vindictive enough. She expected nothing less after bashing him over the head with a dumbbell. Killing her would’ve been too merciful for his brand of revenge.
Did she regret attacking him?
Maybe he’d truly meant to give her freedom.
Freedom from him.
Freedom from her illness.
But without Tate, she would’ve never been free.
The only thing she regretted was not bashing him again and again until his brains spilled onto the floor.
She sat beside Van on the bus, hands and legs shackled with a chain between the restraints to limit movement. Dozens of prisoners crowded in around them, all traveling to the same horrific fate.
Sadness hung like a fog in the humid air. The entire bus smelled like defeat. But she refused to subscribe to it. Her feelings had been all over the place for the past seven days, but she hadn’t let herself break. She hadn’t given up. Eleven years ago, she’d entered Tiago’s world much like this and worked her way to the top. She would do it again.
But could she do it with a broken heart?
Thinking about Tate, missing him, craving him, loving him—her need for him didn’t come and go like her illness. It was a building, growing, continuous escalation, and she couldn’t break away from it. She didn’t want to. She’d never experienced such deep-seeded torment in her life. But it was her torment, and she would endure it for as long as she was separated from him.