Chapter22
If I thought Black Thorn would take it easy on me because I surrendered, I was wrong. But I wasn’t a moron, so when I entered the black van and the zip tie went around my wrists tight enough to cut off circulation, it wasn’t a surprise.
Getting out of zip tie binds would have been easy, so the first blow to the head wasn’t a shock. However, the next ten minutes or so of beatings were fucking pointless.
It wasn’t even Artem doing it. Just two Black Thorn thugs. No anger. No passion. Mindless kicking as I huddled on the floor of the van, tensing as much as possible to brace for the blows.
They stopped before consciousness swam out of reach. Time had become a blur at that point. It felt like it had been for fucking ever, but probably only five or ten minutes.
The minutes stretched on when you were being punched in broken ribs, I can attest to that.
“Sorry for the rough greeting,” said Aretem in his thick accent, as the thugs stepped back and he moved forward, jamming a needle into my neck.
That prick felt like nothing compared to everything else, but the effects were immediate.
And pretty damn nice, actually. My head started to swim, and even though I knew I was still on the ground, my body felt like it was floating away. Absolutely nothing good was going to come out of this, but damn if I wasn’t going to enjoy the ride.
From there, time got extra loopy. Between the pain and the floating, nothing made much sense.
By the time the van stopped, it was light outside. Was it a new day?
I was dragged out of the van by my ankle and hit the dirt with a thud. The sun was so hot that the sand burned. The fall shook something in me, causing me to throw up.
The thugs hurled insults at me in Russian, calling me a dirty pig or some shit. I was still high as a fucking kite, and could care less about grossing them out. At this point, I didn’t care about much. When they picked me up, my arm jerked so hard, it nearly came out of the socket. I squeezed my eyes shut, picturing Becks’ face.
“What the fuck are you smiling about?” asked the guy closest to me.
Was it my puke I was smelling or his breath? Shit, that was his breath. That was unfortunate for him.
Becks’ breath smelled good. Everything about her smelled good. If I was going to die for her, it was worth it. I wished I could get to smell her one more time, though.
I was dragged through a doorway. A doorway? We were in a house. An empty house. New construction, from the looks of it.
Always figured I’d die in an old warehouse.
This was a step up.
Would Becks ever find my body? Hopefully not. Alek would take care of her, though. See that she had a good life.
Yeah, now that I was with Black Thorn, they wouldn’t care about Becks. She was safe and I’d done my job.
That was the thought in my head as blackness took over once more.
Becks was the first thing on my mind when consciousness came back to me. Not because I was thinking about her, but because she was staring at me through the fucking window.