“Pick up the cane.”
Drake shook his head. “In your fucking dreams, psycho.”
Apollo stood up. “I said, pick up the cane. You killed the man, so you have to finish his job now, Drake.”
Drake studied Clover, ignoring Apollo’s voice. “I’ll search them for keys,” he whispered before stepping toward the two corpses.
“If you don’t do as I say, I’ll tie him up naked and let all my staff do whatever they want to him. Or I could give him to Mr. Arnie,” Apollo said, and Drake stumbled over his own foot, instantly tense. “Ah, so you do know him. You wouldn’t want that, Drake, would you? Is he your boyfriend? Or the other one?”
The mention of Boar made Clover look up, but was he to ask this monster if Boar was okay? He surely wasn’t. If Boar was lucky, he’d have been ‘just’ beaten up. Clover dreaded to imagine what else could’ve been happening to him this very second.
Apollo spread his arms. “I’m confused, boys. Is this a thruple situation I’m dealing with here? Doesn’t matter. The cane, Drake. You will hit the boy, or see worse done to him, knowing it’s your fault.”
A visible shudder went through Drake before he glanced Clover’s way, his face a mixture of fury and grief. There was no way out. The door was locked, the glass wouldn’t break, and Drake’s proficiency at killing couldn’t help them without an opening.
Clover’s lips were parched, but he gave Drake a gentle nod despite hating even the concept of that cane. “It’s okay,” he whispered, even though Drake looked as if he might cry any second. None of the people watching would have noticed, but the raw emotion in Drake’s black eyes didn’t escape Clover.
They would get through this somehow. Together.
Drake swallowed, drifting off to the fallen body and the cane that stuck out of it like a leafless palm tree. He stepped on the goon’s face and yanked out the tool with the same swish that had Clover’s insides shrinking in fear.
His footsteps were slow, as if he wanted to put off the inevitable, but there was no escaping their fate.
“What were you used for, Drake? Was it sex or something else?” Apollo asked, watching them while someone filled up his empty wine glass. “You seem very capable. Such a riddle. I’m loving it. All this time I thought the attack was revenge for the albino, but I see there’s so much more at play.”
The faceless people observed it all without a word, soaking up the brutality in front of them. Clover imagined they regretted that they couldn’t smell the blood the room reeked of. A few red droplets fell to the white tiles from the cane Drake held.
“Go on, Drake,” Apollo said. “Hit him. Twice. For the two men you took from me. But I want to see blood.”
“Don’t you have enough of it already?” Drake asked, and Clover shut his eyes when he met Apollo’s piercing gaze through the glass, powerless to flee, to argue, to do anything at all.
“It’s either you or Mr. Arnie. Your choice.”
Silence lay on Clover’s back, until it became too much, and he could hardly breathe. The swish of the cane was almost a relief. Almost, because then it descended on his abused flesh and tore a scream out of his lips.
He promised himself that he wouldn’t stab Drake with his agony and keep silent, but even as he bit his tongue, preparing for the next strike that split his skin, he still cried out when the cane hit him. When Drake hit him.
He sobbed even as Drake dropped the bloodied implement to the tiles. Clover’s whole body throbbed with an intense ache he’d never known before. His heart resonated with the wounds, creating pain both mental and physical. He should have stopped Drake from going after Apollo. Shouldn’t have pressured Boar into coming. Maybe he deserved this, but his men didn’t.
Apollo’s laugh was like the voice of an omnipotent being, and Clover hated just how accurate that was.
“See, you should have just enjoyed your freedom. You should have never laid a hand on my sister. What’s happening to you now is your own damn fault, Little Vampire.”
Drake stepped back, and through the haze of pain and numbness that replaced rational thoughts in Clover’s brain, he heard the first chords of a popular old song, followed by Julie Andrews’ voice. It was a happy song from a bittersweet musical, and the list of lovely things it presented clashed with the white walls, with the blood drops on the floor, with the corpses, and with the pain resonating throughout Clover as if his flesh might never mend.
But Drake howled.
He howled like a wounded animal, put his arms over his head and scooted, as if he wished to curl into a ball and hide from the world around him.