Unshackle (Deliver 7)

An omen.

He saw it now. Watching as an outsider, he saw his silhouette hanging in a cage without sunlight. Except the dangling dark shape wasn’t him. Not this time. It was something else. Someone was there, only a few feet away. It moved.

And cried.

“Please.” The pale whisper dissolved into mewling murmurs too weak to vibrate vocal cords.

He blinked, the thud of his heart hot and viscid. Urgency moved him toward the wall, his fingers sliding over gritty concrete, searching. “Where’s the fucking light?”

“Here.” Tomas bumped his hand, locating a switch.

An overhead bulb buzzed to life, casting the room in filmy yellow. He squinted through the glow, and his eyes came into focus.

He stopped breathing.

A young blonde girl hung from the rafters by one leg.

By a fucking meat hook.

“Sweet mother of God,” Tomas whispered behind him.

The S-shaped hook went through her thigh and suspended her several feet above the floor. Her other leg had been broken in multiple places, the skin flayed, exposing white splintered bones.

His fist flew to his mouth as he cataloged countless stab wounds, purple contusions, and missing appendages. Fucking Christ, this girl was missing fingers, parts of her ears, and a goddamn foot.

The leg impaled by the hook had been sawed off at the ankle. Not a clean amputation. No tourniquet. Nothing to slow the flow of blood except gravity.

“Please.” Her mouth moved, coughing on a dry gasp. “Kill me.”

No.

Fuck no.

He couldn’t.

But he couldn’t leave her like this, either. She wouldn’t survive the wounds unless she saw the inside of an emergency room soon. That wouldn’t happen. Not in the next few minutes. Not ever.

She didn’t even try to move, her body too weak and wracked with pain. She could barely cry, and even then, it wasn’t enough to produce tears.

“Sir.” Tomas touched his elbow, guiding his attention to the wall where they entered.

Another girl.

She sat on the floor, legs stretched out before her. No crying from this one. No tears of anguish. But she wasn’t without injuries.

Tangled black hair framed her bloodied, bruised face. More blood soaked her shirt and denim cutoffs.

Lifting her head, dark brown eyes collided with his.

Ferocious, familiar eyes.

The fighter.CHAPTER 7“You.” Luke opened his mouth to say more, but all that came out was a scathing exhale.

His first thought? She did this. The vicious scrapper tortured this young girl and hung her by a hook.

But no, that didn’t make sense at all.

The blood on Marco’s shirt, the shackles on the fighter’s arms and legs, and the fact that she couldn’t stand after the fight… She was as much a victim as the others. Perhaps more so. She’d been thrown into the dark with a dying girl, forced to listen to her shallow cries for help.

“End this.” The blonde’s fractured voice pulled him back. “Kill…me.”

His blood shivered, and denial banged in his skull. Again, he took inventory of her injuries, searching for a sign of hope, anything that might save her.

Rust and dirt coated the hook through her leg. Infection would set in soon. The amount of blood on the floor beneath her was more than a human could lose. She wouldn’t survive this, and every minute she lived was a cruelty she didn’t deserve.

“Why is she in here with you?” He glanced at the fighter.

She glared back, a hostile, rancorous glare that promised death to him and everyone if she broke free.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She slowly raised a hand, dragging the chain across her lap, and extended her middle finger.

The blonde moaned, choking out another plea for death. Her cries thickened with distress, producing a change in the fighter’s expression.

For a fleeting moment, those savage eyes softened. Grief, compassion, whatever it was sank into the grooves of her battered, swollen face, blurring her gaze in a sheen of moisture.

Then she blinked, and the tenderness vanished, replaced with red-hot fury.

Do it. Her eyes demanded.

A camera hung in the doorway. Would they try to stop him? Shoot him for interfering?

Fuck it.

Fuck the cartel. Fuck his dead parents. Fuck Van Quiso. Fuck every injustice he’d ever gone up against. None of it owned him.

But this? This he couldn’t walk away from.

As the blonde continued to cry, he blocked everything out—Tomas, the fighter, the mission. He put one foot before the other and did the only thing he could do.

He stood behind her inverted body, wrapped a large hand over her nose and mouth, and smothered her air.

She struggled, an involuntary reaction as her mutilated body fought to breathe. His other hand held the crown of her head, his fingers hidden by her crusty hair, discreetly massaging, stroking her scalp. The only comfort he could offer.

As interminable seconds passed, he felt chunks of his soul rip away. He was breaking inside. Battling hardwired convictions. Roaring on his knees. Dying with this girl.

Dying.

Dying.

Make it end. God almighty, I can’t do this.