“I hear you, Boss. I’ll stay by her side and I’ll make certain you are the last one to speak to her.”
“If she’s not fucking alive, I will kill you myself, Nate.” The venom is my words is palpable.
“Yes, Boss.”
“I mean it. You stay by her, you watch them.”
“Watch them?”
“Make sure they don’t take it too far.” Even the thought of them hurting her makes me sick. It has to be done. I know it, and yet, every part of me screams not to allow it.
Blood drains from his face. “Is that too fucking difficult? Do I need to do it myself?” I question, my voice hard and my knuckles white from the skin stretched tight as I ball my hands into fists.
“No, Boss. I’ll take care of it,” he says, the words rushing out of him like he can’t say them fast enough.
“She betrayed me in a way no one ever has,” I confess to him against my best judgment. Conflicting emotions swarm through me as I accept the reality. “I will be the last person she sees before she dies. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” he answers weakly and then nods. His gaze drops and the nervousness falls from him in waves.
“You should go, then; don’t want to keep them waiting.”
I stand perfectly still, unable to move until the doors shut behind me. I’ve never felt so alone and so devoid of emotion.
The need for revenge, the desire to fight, the anger at being betrayed … it’s all lacking. There’s a hollowness in my chest and in the quiet, it feels like an agony I’ve never known. The back of my eyes itch and as tears brim, I punch the brick wall, over and over. Refusing to believe that she got to me. Refusing to believe I will cry for her. A woman who used me and betrayed me and my family.
What’s worse is that they know. I can’t hide her from them. They know what she’s done. They know what she did to me.
Every muscle in my body screams as my fists slam against the bricks. Getting it all out of me until my bones crunch leaves me how I should be, empty once again.
BRAELYNN
Waking up to an ice bath surrounding my lower half, I’m convinced I’m still sleeping even though I’m shaking. I’m convinced the restraints keeping my limbs in place and the thin bars of my iron cage are nothing but a nightmare.
My teeth chatter and it’s the only thing I can hear as I slowly come to.
As my heavy eyes open and shivers run up my body, I do everything I can to move away from the cold, to rip myself free. My heart should be racing but it’s struggling to get going. As if it’s in denial or perhaps unable to run. It’s trapped like me. The sound of noisy grinding behind me widens my eyes even further. As my body is lowered deeper into the ice bath, to my waist this time, it’s far too apparent this is my reality.
Shock is brutal, but then again, so are the memories as they filter back to me in a blur.
“Help!” I shriek out, thinking I’m very much alone. My voice echoes as my dress soaks up the water, lifting the iced water to my spine. The chill is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It seeps into the very depths of my bones.
I’ve never experienced such debilitating cold before. In a panic, I search the room.
Concrete walls without a single window in sight give the space an oppressive feeling. I’m trapped in an iron cage centered within a large steel tub that’s maybe ten by four feet, one that looks aged. Apart from the machine behind me that lifts and drops the contraption I’m in, there isn’t a sound in the room to suggest anyone else is here.
The machine groans and rumbles again, the telltale eerie whine indicating movement is imminent and my heart spasms, fearing I’ll be dropped farther. “Please help me!” I scream and my words are nearly cut off by the shock of my chilled skin hitting the air.
Thankfully, my body is lifted out of the tub almost entirely, although my ass and the bottom of my feet are still submerged.
Confusion wraps itself around me. I can barely think, waking up from a fog of bewilderment to the shock of the ice bath. All I know is that I’m truly terrified.
“Help me!” My teeth chatter and my shoulders beg me to hunch over, to collapse my body upon itself and try to get warm, but I can’t move. I’m trapped. “Please, somebody!” I cry out, and tears prick as the fear of dying consumes me. The words echo in the empty room and the realization sets in: I’m going to die here.
My lungs still from the freezing cold as the grinding gears signal movement once again. “Declan!” I cry out his name, tears streaming down my face as the glacial sensation travels past where I’ve been submerged and up to my shoulders, making them convulse.
“He’s not coming, Braelynn,” a deep, masculine voice from behind me says far too calmly. Shock, and yet somehow hope, beg me to find the source of the voice. I do my best to look behind me, but I can’t turn with the restraints at my neck, keeping me bound to the cage. Immobilizing me. The memoryreturns as clear as if it was happening right now in front of me. Nate killed Scarlet. I turned and he knew I saw.
My heart drops and races at once, and a sickness comes over me. “Declan,” I cry out again in a sob. He has to come. He has to know I won’t tell anyone.