36
Isa
The drive back to his uncle's house felt like a dream, like a nightmare made real. The reality of what I'd done settled over me with the heaviness of everything I knew I should have been.
I'd watched him abduct a man off the street, and instead of being outraged or trying to stop it, I'd put the witness in a cab and sent her home. I'd been far more concerned for her than for the man that Rafael was sure to kill shortly.
I should have felt appalled by my actions. There should have been that moment of realization when I came to understand just how far I'd fallen from the girl who did as she was told and who did what she had to do to keep her parents content.
What would they think of me now?
"You're quiet," Rafe observed as he turned up the driveway. We followed behind the van with Maxim in it, watching the back doors to be certain that nothing had gone wrong.
"What would you like me to say?" I asked, fiddling with my hands as I tried to find the words to explain the mess of emotions swirling inside me. "I just don't understand how this is my life right now. I should be getting ready to go to college and study my ass off, not sitting in a car with you while we drive to a murder site."
"This is your life, because you fell in love with the devil," he said with a casual tone as he passed the house and continued further up the hill. The van pulled over to a stop beside a shed as we followed, watching as his men wrestled Maxim out of the back of the van. With the sack still placed over his head, they guided him into the shed. Rafael climbed out of the car, moving around to open my door and pull me out. He kept my hand in his, and I glanced back to the safety of the house.
His cousin said their mother didn't like to know the details, but it seemed Rafe had a different opinion of how our marriage would proceed.
I didn't know how I felt about that.
"You know, the books always say that kidnappers only cover your head if they intend to let you go. That it's when they don’t blindfold you or wear a mask that you have to worry they'll kill you. We both know you plan to kill him, so why the sack over his head?" I asked, tilting my head to the side. I was struck with the sudden and harsh reality of the question. With the kind of detached carelessness that came from discussing the methods behind a man's death rather than the fact that it shouldn't happen at all.
"It's disorienting, but it will also make him think I plan to release him alive. If he thinks there's a chance, he'll be much more likely to offer me valuable information in exchange for his life," Rafe murmured, pulling a hair tie from his pocket and securing my hair into a low ponytail at the back of my head. "But I don't expect him to have much of value to give me that I do not already know from my Russian contact."
He took my hand, guiding me into the shed as I swallowed back my fear of what I might see. Could I really watch him kill a man and accept that? My stomach churned with nausea, my breathing coming in ragged breaths that felt like they pulled from my soul rather than my lungs.
The shed door was open as we approached, Maxim hung from a hook in the ceiling in the center of the shed. With his arms extended up over his head, he was shirtless with only his pants hanging around his hips. I immediately had the distinct impression that he might have been nude if not for my presence, but Rafael wouldn't want me to look at another man's cock.
That was just fine for me. It would have been like seeing a four-year-old's stick figures after aVan Gogh.I'd already seen the pinnacle of beauty.
Nothing else could ever compare.
Racks hung from the walls, all sorts of tools I didn't recognize covering them and hanging along the edges. The hood had been pulled off Maxim's face before they strung him up, and his pale blue gaze landed on me as he struggled against the rope wrapped around his wrists. With a groan for the tension in his shoulders, he snarled at me and turned his attention to Rafael just as he released my hand and moved to the wall. He studied the various tools in thought as I watched.
"How nice of you to bring me a snack, Devil," Maxim said, his voice strained despite the bravado. His stare fell back on me, and I suddenly wished I had more clothes on. The yellow wrap dress felt too feminine to be in a shed filled with torture devices. It felt too revealing to have a murder victim leering at me.
Rafe chose a bat off the wall, turning suddenly and swinging it with all his might until it connected with Maxim's stomach with a loud crack of bone. Maxim groaned as he swung back and forth in the room, the chains clanking above his head. Rafe swung the bat again, striking the back of Maxim's shoulder. I watched as it dislocated, the arm slipping out of the shoulder joint as he screamed.
"That'smyfucking snack," Rafael warned, his voice deeper and more menacing. The devil played at the surface of his face, his multicolored eyes gleaming joyfully as he tortured his enemy. I swallowed back the bile in my throat, trying to remind myself that I didn't know what the other man was capable of. He could have been a murderer for all I knew.
But so was Rafael.
The lines of right and wrong were so blurred for him that all I could do was imaginehimbeing the one hanging from the rafters while an enemy tortured him. "I can't do this," I whispered, drawing Rafe's eyes to me.
He closed the distance between us, reaching up a hand to cup the back of my neck gently. He traced soothing circles against the skin there, working to calm me as his forehead touched mine and those glowing eyes danced right before my face. "You can," he said, reassuring me. "Do you want to be a pawn in the games of men?" He paused, his hand moving to wrap around the front of my throat. "Or do you want to bemi reina?"
Staring up at him, I swallowed as I bit my lip. Indecision warred within me. For all his pushing, this was the moment where Rafael gave me the choice. He let me decide this one thing about my future, and I was so tired of being a pawn in the games other people played.
I wanted to be a fucking Queen.
I shoved down the impulse to run, nodding against his face slightly. When he was certain I was stable enough, he tossed the bat to the table at the edge of the shed and grabbed a loop of barbed wire off the wall. My heart stuttered as he unwound it, wrapping the length around Maxim's stomach three times. "Grab the wire cutters," he ordered, drawing me into his game. I nodded, moving to the wall and grabbing them off the hook where they hung. I paused just before I reached him, hesitating for only a moment and then cutting the wire in the place Rafe indicated. He grabbed the tail of the wire in his hands, ignoring the way the barbs tore the skin of his palms open and pulled it tight until they dug into the skin of Maxim's stomach.
My hand involuntarily drifted down to the scar on my thigh, feeling more vulnerable with the reminder of the pain that had torn my leg open as a girl. Broken ribs and dislocated shoulder were a pain I didn't know. They were a pain I would hopefully never understand. The barbed wire was something I understood.
Rafael picked up the bat again, slamming it into the wire wrapped around Maxim’s stomach until the barbs sunk deep and his skin turned an angry red as blood trickled out from the wounds. His eyes met mine as I forced back my horror and then he disappeared around the back of Maxim's body. "Usually I don't like my victims to be this subdued. It's much more entertaining when theyfight," he grunted, the sound of the bat striking against bone resonated through the shed. "But I don't think my Isa is quite ready for that."
"Fuck you," Maxim groaned, jerking against the restraints with his good arm when Rafael dropped the bat onto the table. He pulled a long hunting knife off the table slowly, gripping it so the blade itself faced out. He walked around Maxim's body, dragging the edge of the knife through his flesh and leaving a bloody trail in a line around his stomach. As he stepped around to the front of Maxim, he glared up at the man who slumped forward.