“All clear, Dove?” he breathes against my ear, his voice barely a whisper. I give a sharp nod, not trusting my voice.
Taking his hand, I step toward the door and then kneel down, releasing him so I can pull out some lock-picking tools that Knox gave me.
With a quiet snick, the lock disengages and I get up again, Aeron leaning close as his fingers trail down my neck.
“Not just a pretty bird,” he murmurs in my ear, and I have to swallow past the lump in my throat. I don’t trust myself to speak, so I just turn my face and place a soft kiss on his cheek before reaching for the doorknob. His hand covers mine. “Sorry to break the rules of a gentleman, but I’ll go first. Just in case.”
Letting go, I step away as he opens the door a crack and peers out and I want to scream at him to run. For all of them to leave, that it’s a trap.
My sperm donor’s threat to my brother flits through my mind, so I don’t say a thing. I keep my fucking traitor mouth shut and let them cautiously walk out, Jude placing me between him and Knox.
“What the fuck?” I hear Knox whisper behind me as we walk through the next room.
“The cages,” I reply softly, my gaze raking over the two cages either side of us. They’re huge, thick metal bars that run floor to ceiling that make them more like cells than animal cages. There are doors also made of bars, and I’m not sure if they were always here, or whether my sperm donor put them in, but I know that a stay in them is not pleasant. My father gave me that education several times throughout my teenage years when I would try to run away.
A shiver makes my skin pebble as we make our way silently past them, their outlines barely visible in the almost pitch-black, but it’s the feeling of despair that rolls off of them in waves that makes the hair on the nape of your neck stand on end. You know bad things happen here. The kind of things that no one walks away from.
Another locked door is at the end of the narrow walkway, and I go forward to open it, once again standing back when the sound of the lock disengaging fills the silent space.
“You make a good member of the team, Nightingale,” Jude says as I’m passed back to him, and it’s as if a knife is lodged in my gut. Sweat breaks out all over my skin, my breaths coming faster as I watch Aeron open the door, peering through the gap and then opening it wider.
This time he lets Earl go first, then the other Tailors, and finally the rest of us. I can feel the tension, thick like molasses, as we enter the dark space. The main room where I assured them all that the usual Friday night party would be in full swing.
“What the—?” I hear just as I’m ripped from between the guys, a scream tearing from my throat as we’re blinded by the lights suddenly being flung on.
“Boys!” The familiar voice of Rufus Jackson, leader of the Dead Soldiers and my fucking cunt of a father calls. Bile fills the back of my mouth as a knife is pressed against my throat. “Nice of you to join us.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“ARCADE” BY DUNCAN LAURENCE
AERON
Iblink furiously, willing my vision to clear as Dove’s scream rips my heart in two. The picture comes into focus slowly, the old speakeasy a complete shithole with Soldiers surrounding us, weapons drawn.
I ignore them all, searching for her, my whole body going ice-cold when I finally lay my eyes on her. Some Soldier scum has her pulled so close to him that I have to clench my fists hard to stop from storming over there and ripping his fucking hands off, but what makes terror fill my veins is the long, sharp blade against her beautiful throat. The blade that we gave her earlier.
I fucking knew we should have left her behind. Fuck, I should have tied her to the bed to keep her there.
“Boys!” The sound of that scum Rufus Jackson makes my jaw ache. “Nice of you to join us.” Shit. He knew we were coming. I can see it by the delighted gleam in his fucking bright blue eyes, the same color as hers, our bird. I just wonder which of my menset us up. I’ll rip their innards out myself when I discover who it was. No one fucking betrays the Tailors and lives. “You took so long, I thought that you’d never get here,” Rufus continues, strolling over in our direction as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. He looks like shit, like some wannabe MC president, in his leather cutoff and dirty jeans. Fucking disgusting, and I let the expression show on my face, curling my lip at him as he gets closer. His face tightens. “Always so fucking high and mighty, aren’t you, little cunts? Always think you’re better than the rest of us.”
“That’s because we are,” Jude says, and I have to hold back a laugh as Rufus turns an ugly shade of purple.
“Bob,” Rufus growls out, not looking away from me.
A feminine gasp has me darting my gaze behind him, seeing another Soldier step up to Dove, his arm moving in a flash. The sound of tearing fabric fills the room, and he steps away to reveal our girl, naked and now bleeding where the knife cut her as that dead scum cut off her clothes.
“You fucking piece of shit!” Knox roars, stepping forward, then grunting as two massive beasts of men smack him around the head with a baseball bat, forcing him to his knees.
In seconds, we're all being given similar treatment, pain lancing across my skull as a bat connects. My legs buckle as my knees are kicked out from under me, and I fight with all that I have, desperate to get to her, my rage lending me strength. A scream stops us all short. Her scream.
“No…” I whisper as I watch the knife pierce her side.
“Any more of that shit and I’ll push it all the way in,” Rufus snarls, holding the handle of the blade that is partway into our girl’s porcelain skin. Red drips from the wound, and all I can hear is the thrash of my heartbeat in my ears as I see the pain in her beautiful, crystal eyes. “Better.” She gasps as he pulls the knife out, her breasts heaving with her panting breaths. “Nowthat I have your full fucking attention, here’s what’s going to happen.” He pauses for dramatic effect, and I want to spit at him, but I can’t stop seeing the knife that’s so close to my Dove. To our girl. Our soul. “Take their weapons.”
All of us are roughly manhandled, Knox prostrated on the ground as four Soldiers divest him of his weapons. I don’t move, just allow them to take mine, my eyes never leaving hers as two Soldiers hold my arms behind my back while another takes everything I have on me. Tears stream down her cheeks, and she’s so fucking beautiful when she cries, but only if we’re the ones making her do it.
My jaw clenches as a swift kick lands on my gut, my head snapping to the side as a brutal punch lands on my jaw.
