We spend the rest of the plane ride in silence, my gaze never leaving hers even though through most of it, her eyes are blank. A part of me is glad that she’s been able to retreat into a place that feels safe. Another part of me fills with such self-loathing that I want to take a cheese grater to my skin at the thought that I’ve done this to her, the lost part of my soul.
I will get us out of this, or at least her. She’s been through too much to die in some dungeon on foreign soil. I just need her to hold out until I can get to him, the one I know who killed my family.
What I didn’t tell her was the years that I’ve been researching, even as a child I asked around, I always was observant. I discovered my family’s killer before Adam picked me up, knowing that one day I would be strong enough to take him down and make him pay. It was part of the reason I was willing to go with a complete stranger to a new land. I knew that the great Adam Taylor would help me become the man I needed to be in order to avenge them.
The line of new stitches along my forearm twinges, but I can’t scratch it even if I wanted to. There’ll be time later, all is going to plan so far. Well, except for them taking my beautiful bird. I watch as Lark whimpers in her sleep; she closed her eyes some time ago, her body twitching as her nightmares tighten their grip on her, and my jaw clenches so tightly that I think I might end up cracking a tooth.
I take a deep inhale, counting to seven, then exhale for the same amount of time, trying to calm and center myself, my mind whirling. How the fuck am I going to stop them from hurting her? I can’t act too soon, or all these years of planning will goto waste, and we may end up dead regardless. The chances of us escaping are slim to none as it is, but there must be a way.
Lark jerks awake as we touch down, a gasp falling from her beautiful lips as her frantic eyes search the surrounding area.
“We’re just touching down,Aziz-e delam,” I whisper, and her gaze snaps to mine, fire in the blue depths that I welcome with open arms. I deserve her rage. Crave it.
“Never thought I’d get to ride in a plane, so I suppose there’s that shitshow of a silver lining,” she says, and my brows drop as I realize I’ve stolen a first for her. She should have been bouncing with excitement as we whisked her off to faraway lands, not secured to the chair, about to be tortured for the third time in her life.Fuck!
We jerk as the plane judders, and I stare as her hands, once again, clasp the armrests tightly.
“I will get us out of this,Eshgham. I swear it, just trust me,” I plead in a low hiss, begging her with my soul to believe me. Her brows dip, and her hesitation isn’t a surprise, given all that she’s been through in her brief life, but it carves me like a knife to the stomach anyway.
“O–okay,” she stutters back, her mask of numbness gone as terror bleeds into her eyes.
“You need to go back to the cold place,Eshgham. Don’t let them get to you.” Tears fill her gaze, making the blue sparkle as her entire body trembles. “You just have to hold on, you are so fucking strong, so brave,Koshgelam, I know you can do it.” My heart is beating so hard I think it’s going to burst from my chest, but they’ll likely separate us soon, and I need to help her to just hold on until I can get us out of here.
“I–I’m scared,” she admits, and the small broken tone she uses sinks that knife in my gut deeper. Even though my mind knows it is futile, I find myself straining against my bonds toget to her. “I–I don’t think I can survive more,JigarTalâ,” she confesses, barely above a whisper.
“You must,Azizam,” I tell her, the need to rage and carve my way off this plane with her slung over my shoulder like King Kong making my blood boil and my fists clench. “You must do what you have to in order to survive. Find that numbness I saw when you were in the cage with Dean.”
“T–Tarl!” she gasps, her face paling, and I fucking hate myself more for my next words, but I need her to survive whatever they throw at her, and if pushing her into her own mind is the way to do that, then I will.
“Remember what it felt like when he forced himself inside you, when they all forced their disgusting dicks inside your pussy, making it hurt and you bleed.” I want to vomit, my stomach clenching with the bile falling from my lips, but I can see her shutting down, the blank numbness falling over her features once more, and a small amount of tension releases from my shoulders. I know the place she goes to in her mind has saved her before, so I’m just praying that it does so again.
She barely flinches as the masked men come into the cabin, holding guns to our heads as they release us from our seats, only to cuff our hands behind our backs and drag us out of the plane.
The heat of my home country hits me like a slap in the face, my body having grown unused to it over the years. Sweat instantly prickles along my spine, although that could also be because we’re in an abandoned, private airfield, having just been smuggled into the country. The bright sunlight makes me squint, the cabin was low-lit, and it was dark when I was captured, having orchestrated a split from the guys at our job. Another thing that I’d planned after my little chat the other day at the stables with one of Afshin’s men.
Even the thought of that man’s name, the murderer of my family, is enough to make my teeth ache with the need forrevenge. His time will come, and as I watch one man hustle Lark into the back of a van, I add his face to my list too. They will all fucking pay, I’ll make sure of it.
I vowed that anyone who ever hurt her would bleed, and I will uphold that promise as I’m upholding the one I made while holding my mother’s dead body all those years ago.
I just wonder if I need to add my name to that list too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“:( (SAD FACE)” BY BAHARI
LARK
I’m aware of being taken from the plane, the heat and brightness of Iran slamming into me like a sledgehammer as we disembark. I’m aware of being pushed into the back of a van, of Tarl’s body landing next to mine, and of him using his body to try to lessen the blows as we’re left to fall about, feeling every bump in the road.
Both our hands are tied, so staying upright and unscathed is an impossibility, but each hit feels like it’s softened somehow, my mind drowning in my dark, sordid past as the memories that I’ve tried so hard to lock away crowd around me, like monsters eager to drag my soul to Hell. Or maybe it’s already there.
The drive passes quickly, or maybe it doesn’t, my mind seems to have finally broken and everything is like I’m underwater, the sounds not quite as loud as I think they should be and the surrounding colors dulled. Although that’s not difficult given I’m in a van with the only light filtering through several cracks in themetal. I watch the motes of dust with a fascination and longing to be just dust in the air, swirling and completely without worry.
“It’ll be okay,Azizam,” Tarl whispers in my ear, his warm body curled around mine, cushioning yet another fall that would have sent me sprawling and with more bruising. “I’ll get us out, and I’m sure the others will find us too.”
His words drift around us, like the dust, and I wonder if maybe this time I can become dust and just end it all. My lungs expand as I inhale, the smell of spices and something that I can’t place filling my nose, and I briefly wonder if this is what Iran smells like. I want to cry that I’m finally away from the Soldiers and that I’ve finally escaped the country, only to be heading to God knows what kind of torture and pain.
I may have been trapped on my back for the past decade, but I’ve seen the reports of the kinds of people Tarl is messed up in. I’ve heard the horrible details of the kinds of things they do to Westerners. I know that neither of us is making it out of here, it’s just a matter of how much pain we survive before our inevitable end.
