New Chat
Shiloh
Okay, about Cree and Jordan…
Lucas’s stomach churned. Every time a sharp breeze cut across the space, it carried the copper tang of blood, sucker-punching him. A portable floodlight buzzed faintly, cutting harsh light across the gravel path where Beverly sat tied to a wrought-iron chair dragged from the patio. Her ballgown hung in tatters around her knees, streaked with mud and the darker stain of her own blood. The pearls at her throat had broken, beads scattered like tiny teeth in the dirt. The knife she’d been waving like a badge of courage was now somewhere behind the hydrangeas, kicked there by Jericho when she’d lunged for him.
Now that Atticus had checked her pulse, ensuring this likely wouldn’t kill her, he stood off to one side, gloved hands folded behind his back, studying the woman as if she were a new species of parasite under a microscope. Jericho paced a circle around her, but Lucas didn’t know if it was nervous energy or intimidation. Maybe both.
August had his kit unrolled, laid out on a nearby bench, fingers dancing over the various instruments, seemingly vacillating between the scalpel and another wicked-looking tool, the metal glinting like a promise under the white light. Maybethis was an intimidation tactic too. If so, it was working. Though she’d never admit it, Beverly Scott was terrified.
Lucas didn’t need to touch her to know that. The ragged rattle of her panicked breathing drowned out the night noises of crickets and trilling frogs. He had to give her credit, she wasn’t fainting. She was terrified, yes, but there was something obstinate in it, too. That brittle pride clung to her. He wondered, distantly, if Zane had inherited that same stubborn defiance before it was beaten out of him.
Atticus stepped forward, crouching down to check the knots around her wrists, making sure to stay out of kicking range.
“Chair’s stable,” he said, voice brisk.
His Captain America costume looked ridiculous under the floodlights, but somehow the surgical precision in his movements canceled out any hint of humor. He pulled a disinfectant wipe from his kit and began cleaning her hands, not for mercy, but for efficiency. The smell of antiseptic cut through the floral sweetness, sharp and sterile. “If she goes into shock, she’ll crash fast. Keep her talking.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” August said, crouching in front of Bev with the slow, predatory smile of a man who enjoyed his work. His Batman cape fanned out behind him in the breeze. “She doesn’t strike me as the quiet type.”
Bev flinched when he said it. It spoke to his husband’s menace that it didn’t even occur to Beverly to attempt to lash out with her feet. Maybe she sensed that it would only expedite the start of the game. She’d gone silent for the first time since they caught her, but the silence was deceptive, her eyes darted between the four men, searching for one who might still see her as human.
“Please,” she rasped finally. “You don’t have to do this.”
“We don’t have to. We get to,” Jericho said, stepping into the light beside his husband. The contrast between them was almostmythic, August all sleek menace and theatrical cruelty; Jericho cold with righteous inevitability.
August cocked his head, studying her like he was trying to determine the right dosage of poison. “We’ve never been the type to pass up a teachable moment.”
Bev blinked, confusion flickering before realization set in. “You can’t?—”
“Oh, but we can,” Jericho interrupted smoothly. “And we will.”
Lucas couldn’t stop himself from smiling at her disgruntled expression. “Oh, Bev. Why so serious?” he taunted. “You love games, don’t you? Or is it only the public kind? Interviews, talk shows, crocodile tears for the cameras?”
“You don’t know anything about me,” she snapped.
“But this one’s private. A little family fun,” Atticus added as if she hadn’t said a thing. His tone was conversational, but his eyes were cold steel. “Is that why you look so disappointed? No audience to manipulate? No one to let you play the victim?”
She lunged forward before getting jerked back like a dog running out of leash. “I am a victim!”
August’s slow smile would have had lava freezing in its tracks. “You are now.”
This time Lucas’s stomach clenched for a whole different reason. The quiet malice in his husband’s voice shouldn’t turn him on, but it always did. It made him feel…safe. August always made him feel safe. Whether he was killing the man who had made Lucas’s life hell or jerking him off in a tunnel to distract from his situational claustrophobia. August’s violence was never random, it was precision, protection, worship. He was the perfect man…so what if he killed people. They deserved what they got. Lucas had made peace with that long ago.
August pulled the sleek black knife from its sheath once more, the blade curved in a menacing smile. The light crawledalong its edge. Atticus readied a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a stack of clean rags.
Lucas didn’t move. He didn’t have to. His gift did all the moving for him. The closer he was to Bev, the heavier the air felt, like static before a storm. Every heartbeat around them seemed to stutter in response. When he did touch her, her guilt tasted metallic at the back of his throat.
“Here are the rules,” August said, gesturing elegantly toward Lucas. “He asks you a question. You answer truthfully. If you lie…” He nodded toward the knife. “You lose a finger. Simple, really. Like a parlor game, except the stakes are higher than your pride.”
Bev’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
“Don’t look so frightened,” Atticus said mildly, as he finished taping gauze around her palm. “We’re medical professionals, technically. We’ll keep you alive.”
That drew a bark of laughter from Jericho, dark and humorless. “Alive enough.”
Bev’s composure cracked. “You’re monsters,” she hissed.
