4
Pain thumps through my skull and my throat feels as if I’ve swallowed a thousand razor blades. Groggily, I force my eyes to open, my lashes are stuck together, only when I lift my hand to rub them I can’t. I pull my arm again, the sound of metal on metal scraping against my eardrums. What the fuck?
My ankles are in much the same state. Shackled.
Okay, don’t panic. This could be a dream, a sleep paralysis perhaps but I know I need to figure it out. The feel of the metal against my skin seems too real to be just a dream and even as I will it not to come, the dread of what this means settles into the pit of my stomach. I know already that this is not a dream.
It all comes back in a reel of images.
Alexander Silver.
His gun pointed at my head, my own at his.
The fight.
His hands around my throat, the press of his weight against my own as he attempted to steal away the breath in my lungs.
Shit. What the fuck have I gotten myself into and how do I get out of it?
I try to peer around the room but there’s no light and no windows at all. It’s cold, the air tinged with damp and dust but there’s something else, something old and rotten that makes me choke. Pushing down the need to gag I breathe through my mouth and settle my head back. The pain is a constant pulse, both inside my head and in various points in my body. The fucker hit me.
I don’t know how long I lay there in the dark but eventually a door opens, allowing light to spill into the room. Instinctively, I narrow my eyes to stop the sting and allow them to adjust. A huge figure fills the door frame, so large it almost blocks out the light, the shoulder width alone almost touching each side of the frame.
“She’s awake,” his voice is rough, husky in a way that suggests he’s a smoker or a man who doesn’t use his voice all that often.
He steps to the side to allow another man in, with the light at his back I can’t see his features, shrouded in shadow but he’s big too, probably the same size as the first man but this one has an air of violence that surrounds him. An aura of menace that rings as a warning to anyone who bears witness to his presence. There’s something in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands dangle loosely at his sides, so very relaxed in a sea of chaos and violence.
I immediately know who I’m staring at, even if I can’t see his face.
When he came up to me in the club my hackles instantly went up. My instincts were very rarely wrong, and they certainly didn’t fail me on this occasion.
This man was dangerous.
No, he was more than dangerous, he’s the monster under your bed, the villain in your stories. He’s the motherfucking devil in the flesh.
I grit my teeth, was he here to finish the job? I uselessly pull at the shackles restraining me, feeling the metal biting into my skin, grazing and cutting away at my flesh.
I had no idea what they even wanted with me, the only connection I can think of is my father. I knew he was dodgy, but this… fuck, what even is this?
“Hello, Wren,” his bourbon smooth baritone rolls over me, both a caress and a slap.
“Let me go, you asshole!”
He chuckles, “I like the fire in you.”
“Come here,” I hiss, “let me show you just how much fire I have.”
“We’ve already danced this dance, little bird,” he steps closer, an edge of steel to his tone, “it didn’t work out so well for you.”
I avert my eyes, allowing a smirk to tilt up my lips, pushing as much condescending snide into my voice as I say, “how’s the arm? Or was it the leg?” My eyes flick back to where he stands above me, allowing them to roll over his tall, muscular frame.
He growls, a noise neither belonging to man or beast.
A tinkle of laughter leaves my throat but a wince cuts it off short as the pain there radiates through my neck, stifling me.
“Once we’re done here,” he steps forward and I notice the limp, how he holds himself and favors his left leg. Good, I hope it fucking hurts, “there won’t be even an ember of life left in you. You can keep your fire now, Wren, but just know, I’ll snuff those flames out quicker than you can even blink.”
I had no doubt about it. I won’t be leaving here alive. It was a given consideringwhoI was dealing with.