I woke up to a sharp stab in my stomach and the fog of sleep took too long to clear. Before I could make sense of what was happening, I felt the same stabbing pain again and again before I could will my legs to kick out in front of me. Oksana was thrown to the ground from the force of my kick, and I could hear the opaque sound of her head hitting the concrete floor.
I hurled myself on top of her and pounded my fist into her face without regard for her life. ”Voy a matarte como debí haber matado a tu hermana la puta.” I said, my brain half stuck in the Spanish memories my mind had been using as a crutch to avoid complete insanity. In between fists slamming down her face, I could hear the loud clamoring of the guys rushing to the kennels. It was Fletcher who got in first pulling Oksana out from under me as he dragged her into the opposite kennel, and I heard Ronan telling him to cuff her to the wall.
Santo caught me from behind as I stumbled backward and he sat on the bed, legs wide as he lowered me down in between them. “Shit,” he said, “This is gonna hurt a bit,” he warned me as he pulled the fork out of my stomach, and I yelled at the unexpected sting of the pain.
I looked down to see the blood dripping down to the mattress from the twelve small puncture holes, but Santo already had his shirt off and folded into a neat bundle that he pressed into the wound.
I groaned a few curses in both languages and laid back into his chest as I breathed heavily through the pain in my stomach and the burning ache in my hands. I turned my head to the other kennel to see Fletcher hosing down Oksana again like they did the first couple of weeks when we first came down here. I turned my head back and looked up at Santo’s face, it was filled with worry and anxiety, and I shifted a bit so that I could get on my side to look at him and moaned from the pain.
He was looking at his hand pressed to my stomach and the blood staining through his shirt.
I reached up and touched the Los Muertos tattoo on his chest, my fingers outlining the image of the masked skull inked onto him forever. It made me sad to see this image burned into him forever, marking him as one of theirs. He spent his entire life fighting against becoming a part of it and in the end, he still became their property.
Were we all destined from the beginning?
Did none of our choices matter?
Would we always end up in the path that was laid out for us?
If so, that thought alone scared the fuck out of me. I’d long strayed from my path, and I wasn’t sure I could even find my way back to it if I wanted to.
The skull was a taunting reminder of how weak we all truly were. None of us had any choice in how we ended up here, not really. I continued to trace the image softly, letting my mind wander to Cézar and how easy it was for him to stray from his path. He was supposed to have protected me, to have put me on my throne. Now he was free of every burden my Papá had placed on his shoulders as he guilted him into becoming his right hand as a payment for the debt of raising him as his own.
Santo took his hand off the wadded shirt pressing into my bleeding stomach and gently grabbed my fingers, almost like a warning that I shouldn’t be touching him. But as I looked up at the only person who didn’t try to break my spirit day in this hell, I found fear and uncertainty staring back at me.
I brushed his chestnut curls away from his hazel eyes and allowed the corner of my lip to curl up awkwardly into a half smile and to my surprise he returned it. The unfamiliar feeling of fluttering in my belly lasted only a second as my injury throbbed from the rush of liquid dumped on my stomach. I looked down to see Mateo pouring tequila over it and he casually offered me the bottle. I took as many gulps as I could before the burn of the alcohol dried my throat and I had to pull the bottle back to cough.
“Easy there, tiger,” Mateo said, as he took the bottle back and poured it over me again.
I grit my teeth through it then he pressed the makeshift gauze to my belly with a bit more pressure than Santo used. Santo stared into my eyes, but he didn’t say anything, he just sat there holding me, calming me as I used his heart beat and synchronizing breath to find stillness.
“Lock her in the box when you’re done,” Ronan shouted over to Fletcher and I tensed up, my body going completely rigid in Santo’s hands.
“For how long?” I heard him asking.
“I don’t care if you forget her in there,” he said, my heart dropping with those words but before he could fully turn away from him, he looked back and added more. “Actually, don’t let her stink up the box, it’s not hers. Take her down to five when you’re done.” Ronan instructed Fletcher and relief washed over as I realized he wasn’t talking about me.
I could see a look of worry etched into Santo’s face though and I had to wonder what they were doing on the fifth floor.
“You sure brother?” Kane questioned him but not in an undermining way.
“Yeah, something’s fucking off and I’m going to get to the bottom of it,” he slammed the other kennel’s metal door so loudly it made me flinch.
“Call Emory and see if she can come by to check out Cecilia,” I heard Mateo ordering someone but the pounding in my heart was dulling out all of the voices.
“Down here?” Santo asked in a hushed voice.
“Better take her back up,” someone answered and in less than a heartbeat, Ronan was scooping me up in his arms and carrying me out of the kennel as if I was completely weightless.
When we were back up in the penthouse, we made our way past Mateo and Santo’s doors that stood opposite of each other, into the door at the end of the hall. He nudged it open with his shoe and the room opened up, it was just as large as Mateo’s room, but it wasn’t as bare. He had a TV hanging on one side with a loveseat in front of it and a wet bar in another corner.
The bed was the biggest bed I’d seen in my life and completely unnecessary even if he was eighty feet tall now. Red silk sheets covered it like a fine fitted gown and I ached to feel the cool of it as he sat me down onto the bed. My hands were hot from the pain of my torn knuckles, and I didn’t care that I was dirtying up his fancy sheets, but when he sat next to me my heart took off at a million miles an hour and my breathing began to skip.
The crease in between his eyebrows let me know he was angry, but there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that for once it wasn’t directed at me, but maybe at himself this time.
“Let me see,” he said, moving my hand off the wadded t-shirt. The blood was still coming out of the puncture wounds at a slow steady pace, but it didn’t look or feel like I was going to die. When his other hand met my waist as he examined my injuries, I let out a stuttered exhale and that line between his eyebrows finally dissolved. We sat like that for a while, just frozen in time while he softly stroked his thumb against my waist and his eyes burned into mine.
The rhythm of his breaths slowed like he was trying to lead mine in the same fashion and I allowed myself to match my breathing to his, heavy but stable and slow. There were so many things I wanted to say but nothing I could force out. In so many ways he reminded me of the love of my life. He was so much like the boy I had given all of myself to, but at the same time we were complete strangers, unknown to each other in every possible way. The heat of his touch was toxic and all consuming, and I was completely paralyzed by the infernal blaze of his light caress.
For the first time since I stepped into this high-rise I wanted to open up and let all the walls tumble down, I wanted him to beg me for the truth again so that I could finally let it all out. I wanted so badly to hope that he could be my knight in shining armor, that he could fight my demons for me and help me conquer them.
But for once he didn’t ask, and I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed.
This wasn’t a fairy tale, and I knew my uncle had the resources to bring the entire Black Crow Brotherhood to its knees with a snap of his fingers. It wasn’t just unfair for me to want him to shoulder my problems, it was cowardly. I wasn’t a damsel in distress, I was a queen whose crown was torn off her head and I refused to let anyone fight my battles for me.
My future held three possible scenarios: One where I escaped and hid for the rest of my life in hopes he would never find me. The second where he would no doubt find me and finally kill me, with that smug look on his fat bastard face. The third option was the one where I killed him, but it was currently the most unlikely option of the three for so many reasons, but number one being I had no army to go up against his with. Trying to kill my uncle was a suicide mission and as hopeless as I felt, I would die by my own hand before giving that hijo de puta the satisfaction.
“This better be good Zerkos, I was just about to go to sleep.” Her hot as hell Irish accent came tumbling into the room before I could see her. A gorgeous redhead with a small suitcase walked into his room unannounced. Her hair was long and full of waves, her lipstick almost the same copper color as her hair. She was wearing white high heels paired with a matching lab coat and a dress skirt that screamed a kind of put together I couldn’t even dream of being.
I was suddenly overwhelmed with insecurity at how haggard I must have looked in comparison. Leftover makeup from the party smeared down my face and my hair, a wild mess comparable to a rats nest. I couldn’t even remember the last time I brushed my teeth if I was being honest, but he didn’t look up at her or take his eyes off of me when he spoke to her.
“Just need to make sure she doesn’t need to go in for this,” he said, revealing the stab wounds and her eyebrow raised up at him.
“What the hell happened to her?” She asked him but I answered instead.