I liked to think I was skilled at adaptation. I hadn’t always been that way—I’d started off naïve and passive, my life unopen to challenge and change.
But now…I had no such qualms.
I gave up trying to predict or control.
There was no predicting or controlling when you were someone’s prisoner.
Either by a man who bought your life and ended up stealing your heart, or by his brother who threatened your existence and wielded sadism as a personal skill.
I had no say in how I would be treated, no way to stop men from thinking they could own me, and even if I did, Drake wasn’t predictable because he operated outside the usual parameters of human psyche. He had no switch inside to prevent him from doing terrible things, no empathy to stop him from hurting others, and no rationale to reason with.
He was just evil.
Simple and stupidly evil.
I stayed silent as he flew me away from Sully’s archipelago and into the heart of Jakarta. He returned me to a city that’d done its best at blocking me from Sully. He dragged me from one winged machine to another one, stuffing me onboard a private plane where another two mercenaries waited on the tarmac to greet us.
The helicopter pilots didn’t say goodbye, both their faces relieved to no longer be employed by a madman.
The boxes of elixir were stowed in the back of the plane, the engines kicked into life, the new captain and first officer prepared to fly us to who knew where, and Drake sat heavily in the luxurious cream seat across the aisle from me.
His outburst on Monyet and his success at stealing Sully’s elixir had drained him of his reserves, and the moment the plane switched from taxiing to soaring into the star-dusted sky, he pressed a button on his chair, reclined to horizontal, draped a blanket over his body, and growled at his three mercenaries, “She moves, you shoot her.”
The click of three safeties being flicked off echoed even louder than a Boeing engine.
I stiffened in my seat, my heart chugging, my mind skipping between past, present, and future, and Drake completely discounted me.
He fell asleep with a smug grin on his face, revealing yet another side to his nature.
This asshole needed to get his way in all things. He was a vindictive, nasty boy who’d never been disciplined, yet he could let down his guard and sleep beside a girl who couldn’t stop plotting ways to kill him.
Of stabbing him with a fork.
Of strangling him with my seatbelt.
Of kicking him in the balls so hard they ruptured and bled out.
I needed him to die.
It was a visceral longing.
Something I chewed and choked on.
His every breath stole one from Sully. Two brothers genetically linked and bound—a symbolic bind that said one couldn’t survive while the other existed. It was either Drake or Sully.
Yin and yang.
Light and dark.
And if I can just kill this bastard, Sully will be okay.
I still couldn’t sense if Sully was alive or not.
And the farther I travelled from him, the more that panic grew.
Why can’t I feel him?
Had I ever been able to sense him, or had I been romanticizing that in Jakarta when Sully had sent me away?
Sully…you better be okay.
I’m begging you.
My eyelids drooped as time ticked onward, and the monotonous sound of flying deadened the outside world.
I’d somehow stayed awake after suffering elixir through sheer willpower and then necessity. I’d fought my every need and walked beside Sully while he’d carried Jess to Dr Campbell’s.
It’d been the hardest thing.
But I did it because I’d been such a hindrance to Sully when he’d tried to rescue me. I’d been dangerous and reckless, and my insides were still covered in slimy shame for what I’d made him do.
Having sex in front of those men.
Making him share me with strangers and their greedy gazes.
Ugh.
I wished I could delete my actions and get on my knees with atonement.
Walking beside him—staying awake despite elixir’s toll—had been my apology to him. My oath that I would be strong for him after he’d been so damn strong for me.
And I would continue being strong because regardless if Sully was alive or not…I didn’t have any other choice.
I wouldn’t lay down and take this.
I wouldn’t permit a man like Drake to steal my damn life.
It didn’t matter that my heart still skipped unnervingly or sometimes tripped into ribs, keeping it trapped. It didn’t matter that my dealings with Drake kept adrenaline coasting through my veins when I was wrung out, strung out, and afraid I wouldn’t have the capacity to remain brave.
Elixir had left my body a wasteland of bruises and truant heartbeats, but I would never complain of my ills because…Sully.
Before he’d been pushed out of a damn helicopter, he’d already had more cuts, scars, contusions, and stitches than I’d ever endured in my entire life. He’d staggered beneath torture and marched against his enemies without ever bemoaning or giving in.