There wasn’t even a speck of blood on the man. Nor an injury.
It was strange.
And it was strange that that’s what I considered out of place. Not the drug dealer my boyfriend had kidnapped and tied up in the warehouse he reserved for making bombs. No, the fact that he hadn’t killed him, or at least tortured him.
How I could’ve changed so much in such a short amount of time should’ve scared me. But maybe I wasn’t changing. Maybe I’d always been that way, stifled underneath everything I thought I should’ve been.
His eyes were alert, panicked, but he didn’t struggle. He wasn’t gagged, but he didn’t speak. Sweat drenched his clothes, and the putrid scent of vomit and human filth assaulted me now that my initial shock was taken care of.
“He’s going through withdrawal,” Gage said, his voice blunt and flat.
I jerked my head to Gage, who wasn’t looking at the man in front of us but at me.
“Smart dealers don’t get addicted to their product. Eats into the profit.” He nodded to the man. “Not a smart dealer.”
I looked back at the man I’d built up in my mind as this villain. As a monster. But he was just a man. And not even much of one. Drugs had whittled the flesh from his bones, the soul from his eyes.
How had I not seen it with David? This hopeless, hollowed-out look?
Because David was the best at everything.
That included being a drug addict.
Or more accurately, hiding that he was a drug addict.
“You haven’t touched him,” I said, my statement somewhat of a question.
“Couldn’t,” Gage grunted. “Intended on taking care of him the second I realized your intentions that night. And I know what I said about fightin’ battles, but you’ll agree that I wasn’t exactly seein’ straight at the start of things.”
I raised my brow in response.
He met my look. “Yeah, well I was gonna. But I couldn’t. Didn’t trust myself to. I wasn’t in Hope that night for club business.”
All teasing expression left my face.
Gage’s eyes roved over me. “Don’t know what would’ve happened had you not been there. Could lie to the both of us and say nothin’, but I don’t lie to myself anymore. And I’m not gonna lie to you. So I didn’t trust myself to do shit to him after that night. Then it didn’t seem like you were pushin’ it. And you distracted me, babe. You distracted me from both the desire for a kill and the desire for a fix.” He paused. “No, you fuckin’ saved me.”
He glanced to the man, as if he were part of the chair rather than a living, breathing human being who was listening to us. Though his eyes were faraway and it didn’t seem he was listening to anything but the screams inside his head.
My eyes went back to Gage because it was too hard to look at that man, to see what my brother might’ve been on the inside.
“And that night, the night after you saved me from one of many arrests on a long rap sheet, saved me from my own demons, I decided it was about time to save you. Or myself. Regardless, that’s how he ended up here.”
“Are you going to kill him?” I whispered.
His eyes were unyielding. “That’s up to you.”
“Me?”
He nodded once. “This isn’t just my battle. Not just my decision. Not my fuckin’ life anymore. And this is your dragon, though he doesn’t look so big and mean up close. He’s pathetic, in fact. You go either way. I’ll let him go, or we bury him.” He shrugged as if he were asking if I wanted Chinese or pizza for dinner. “I’m good with both.”
I let out a hysterical giggle.
Gage didn’t look at me strangely for such a weird reaction. There was no such thing as a weird reaction with Gage.
He just waited.
And then I stopped laughing.
Because it was real.
The man who’d killed my brother—or at the very least was some sort of accessory—was sitting there, immobile, at my mercy.
A very small and dark part of me itched to snatch Gage’s knife and plunge it into the man’s heart. But looking at him, at how utterly pathetic he seemed, I knew it wouldn’t be doing much. Or anything at all. He didn’t even much look like a human anymore.
I forced myself to pull out of Gage’s arms, and he let me with a hard jaw because I knew that’s what I needed. To confront my dragon.
My palms were damp as I came to a stop in front of him.
The stench was closer. There was vomit and human excrement surrounding him. I held my breath.
“Are you sorry?” I choked. “For what you do to people? Are you sorry?”
He blinked at me as I spoke, eyes clearing slightly, his face covered with a grimy layer of sweat.