Dies.
What if he crashes when I’m not here?
“I give you my word that I’ll have you back within an hour.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Pulling me harder, he gritted his teeth. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Sixteen
I WAS AWARE OF being…aware.
Past that, I had no idea.
I knew I was a sentient being.
I hadn’t quite died, yet I hadn’t figured out how to live.
I was in limbo.
Suspension.
In bondage.
I had no way to shout.
No way to wake.
No way to force my fate to go one way or the other.
All I had was a tether.
A glowing, fragile string binding me to someone I couldn’t see.
A string that hummed with a voice I fell instantly in love with.
A thread that filled me with warmth and want.
While that thread connected me to my destiny, I was content.
I could rest, heal, accept.
But when the string snuffed out.
When there was no touch, no hum, no light.
I floundered.
I was lonely.
I was afraid.
I missed her.
Chapter Seventeen
“OH GOD, I’M GOING to be sick.”
I clamped both hands over my mouth.
The stench in the room.
Sewer and decay. Sourness and sweat.
All laced with the rancidness of rot—emitting from a man who’d almost raped me, tortured his brother, and did his best to steal everything I ever cared for.
Drake.
Not that the mumbling, bumbling mess before me could be Drake.
Can it?
I gagged as I studied him.
In three days, his body had sunken to a frail skeleton, his flesh almost mummified on his bones. He lay on his side on the same couch he’d tied my ankle to. Putrid tracks of shit and urine stained the embroidered silk and dripped upon the floor. A huge puddle of spit glued his cheek to the material while his eyes alternated between being wide open and in horrendous agony before squeezing shut and scrunching up his entire face in excruciation.
This wasn’t a man to be afraid of but a creature who yanked utmost pity from my heart.
Sully’s temper had finally overflowed. The volcano I’d sensed inside him—the rivers of unforgivable lava—had let loose, and I stood looking at the aftermath. The hardened magma, the cracked destruction, the decimation of cities and minds.
Drake’s mind.
Gagging again, I tore my gaze away from what was left of Drake and looked at the grim mercenary beside me.
He hadn’t forewarned or forearmed me. We hadn’t spoken a word since he’d escorted me from the hospital and driven me here in the resident BMW. He’d nodded to his colleagues as he led me through the house and bowed respectfully at Mrs. Bixel as she baked apple and spice in the kitchen.
And then he’d balled his hands and waited for the man posted outside the living room doors to step aside and let us enter.
The moment I’d entered, the smell hit me, followed by the diabolical scene of a demented, mind-broken individual whose nose had a steady trickle of blood along with his ears.
Blood covered him in various stages of congealed.
Crimson and maroon, dried and wet.
Pinching my nose, I asked, “What happened? What caused him to be like this?”
The mercenary shrugged, sipping breath through his lips so he didn’t have to smell the reek. “Sinclair happened. He did something to him within his virtual reality program. He commanded us not to let his brother fall asleep. We’ve been keeping him awake ever since.”
He grimaced. “I pride myself on following orders to the letter and have never shied away from any method of extermination my clients’ request, but this…” He flinched when he looked at Drake again. “His brain is slush. He’s wearing most of it from it trickling out of his ears. His screams have kept us awake for days. I’m running out of excuses to keep the housekeeper out of here, and the smell is starting to escape this room and infect the manor.”
He turned to face me, his body braced. “I’m done keeping this madman alive. Whatever Sinclair did to him was justified and deserved, I have no doubt about that, but…keeping him alive any longer goes past cruel. It’s fucking evil.”
Shutting down my natural instincts to gag again, I forced myself to step toward Drake.
He thrashed on the couch as if Euphoria had become unbearably brutal.
Was he still locked within a fantasy?
Without sleep, I didn’t think there was an escape. Had he been forced to spend the past interminable hours enduring whatever nightmare Sully had coded? No food, no water…nothing but horror.
What sort of punishment had Sully delivered once he’d knocked me out? What had he done to his brother to leave his body resembling a voodoo-hexed corpse?
Drake was a zombie.
A real-life, breathing zombie. No mind anymore, just a bag of flesh and bones, steadily cannibalizing itself the longer it was forced to stay alive.
For a moment, I cursed Sully for what he’d done.
My stomach roiled with a different sickness, wondering all over again if my love-coloured glasses had hidden far worse traits than I wanted to see. If Sully was capable of not only delivering pain but also trapping his victim in a perpetual cycle of reliving it…what did that say about him?