The color leached from her face. I realized how I sounded but being tortured at Dante’s hands had opened up something inside of me, and it was leaking vitriol. It wasn’t just that he had broken my hand and no doubt taken away my surgical career.
No. He’d found the place deep inside me—my soul, my psyche, my very essence—and he’d peeled away the layers to reveal it. And then he’d bathed in the blood of its gruesome end, relishing in the destruction of who I used to be.
I wasn’t the same person who’d fallen in love with Boxer. I would never be her again.
There was nothing left of me.
My feelings didn’t belong to me. They belonged to the other. They belonged to the stripped-down version of me that no longer cared about platitudes or niceties.
If I had any hope of surviving this, I had to become something else. Something ruthless, feral, and angry.
Something powerful.
Someone in control.
Anger would be my fuel, like coal powering a steam engine. Anger would keep me going. Without it, I would just be a pathetic, broken toy to be discarded when others were done with me. If I stayed pathetic and broken, then what the hell was the point of living?
My eyes strayed to the dark TV.
“Do you want to watch something?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She grabbed the remote off the bedside table and pointed it at the television. Cartoons. Game show. Animal kingdom.
She flipped through the stations, one by one.
“Go back,” I commanded. “I want to watch that.”
A lion ripping into the meaty flesh of an antelope filled the screen.
“You sure you want to watch this?”
“Why not?” The lion’s golden muzzle was stained red as it gorged on the organs of the still living antelope as it was pinned down by massive paws, struggling to escape. “Nature is cruel. Especially if you’re weak.”
The morphine was wearing off, and lucidity was returning. I hit the call button, and Peyton came almost immediately. She greeted Mia with a smile and then turned her attention to me. “Can I get you something?”
“Morphine’s crapping out on me,” I said. “I’d like more.”
“Linden, you’re on as much as we can give you right now…”
We stared at each other, and then she sighed. “Let me get Chief Nelson, and I’ll see what we can do.”
I turned my head back to the TV, dismissing her. She caught her breath, like I’d hurt her feelings. I didn’t have it in me to apologize.
If I didn’t get another dose of morphine soon, the numbness would fade completely. And I wanted to stay there as long as I could. There would be plenty of time for rage. I’d embrace it when the time was right.
And when I embraced it, I’d unleash it on the person who deserved it the most.
Myself.
This was my fault.
Sure, I could blame Boxer. I thought he’d been strong enough to protect me. I thought the club was, too. But this was all on me, because I’d not only left Shelly’s by myself, but I hadn’t even thought to pull out my can of mace. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I wasn’t safe because I’d been at a biker bar.
Never again. Never again would I put my safety into other people’s hands. Never again would I be so damn foolish.
Mia’s phone chimed softly. She reached into her bag and extracted her cell, reading the text. “Colt’s asking if he can come talk to you.”