He radiates the kind of strength I wish I still had for myself.
Tingles travel along my veins, leaving behind an awareness that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with a terrifying fascination.
“Get out.” His voice is a contained rumble, but I see the muscle in his jaw twitch, a tiny, frantic pulse beneath the stony calm. His eyes, the color of a winter storm, lock onto mine. “You’re free.”
Free.The word is a mockery, a hook baited with rot.
I have to remind myself that this man is no different than the ones who stole me away from my perfectly simple, boring life. Even if the symbols on their backs don’t match, they’re one in the same. As far as I’m concerned, his goal is to fill me with hope, just so he can crush it to gain control.
My lips peel back from my teeth. It’s not a smile. It’s a snarl. I am exhausted, I am broken, but I am not fooled. And I am not moving. Not on my own.
His hand snaps out when I refuse to budge, a band of iron around my bicep. With an effortless lift, he hauls me to my feet. My body betrays me—weak, dizzy, my legs buckling. I stumble forward, crashing into the solid wall of his chest. The impact jars my teeth. He is immovable, all hardened muscle and leather. For a terrifying second, my starved body seeks his heat, leaning in.
This man truly is a force to be reckoned with. All I can do is blame these delusions on all of these strange feelings bubbling up.
I jerk my head up, expecting to see cruelty, disgust. Instead, I see… nothing. A flat, empty calm. Even the scar cutting beneath his heavy stare seems passive.
His hand is still a manacle around my arm. We are locked in a silent battle, bodies unmoved. I am the first to break the stare, but only to aim.
With every ounce of hatred left in my hollowed-out frame, I drive the nail into the meat of his shoulder as my final attack, one last taste of revenge.
A hellish roar tears from him, and the emptiness in his eyes is instantly incinerated by pure, unadulterated fury. Finally. A real reaction.
“Hammer!” The other biker appears, gun raised and pointed in my direction.
The brute jerks his head. He bleeds instantly, but his pained noise is gone with his next swallow.
“I’m fine.” The words are gritted out, his jaw tight. He doesn’t release me. Instead, he drags me out of the container. I try to dig in my heels, to claw at his hand, but my strength is nonexistent. When I fumble for the nail, still buried in his shoulder, my legs give way completely.
“I’ll kill you,” I rasp. The threat is weak, airy. “I’ll kill you both.”
He snorts. A short, harsh sound. He can laugh right now?
Then I see them. Bodies. Littering the ground like discarded trash. One is the leering man who shoved me inside. He’s staring at the sky from a pool of his own blood. If these men died, then what chance do I have to make my threat a reality?
My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic, confused rhythm.
“That’s the last of them?” The one with the gun asks, shoving a hand through his hair. “Crimson Road is going to be pissed. Judge is going to kill us. This is bad.”
Hammer isn’t listening. His gaze is back on me, a storm of anger and something else I can’t name. He finally pries his fingers from my arm.
The ache is immediate and deep, a constellation of bruises already forming.
Finally released, my arm throbs where his fingers dug in. The space is hardly enough between us.
Is he waiting for me to run? Or perhaps a simpering apology for his injury? He’ll choke on the silence before he gets one.
I don’t run. My feet are cemented to this filthy ground, less from defiance now and more from the leaden exhaustion that has become my bones. When I don’t scatter, the other biker flicks a hand, a dismissive gesture that snaps the last frayed thread keeping me together.
The rage I’ve been swallowing for days, for a lifetime, surges up my throat, acidic and overwhelming. It tears out of me in a voice I don’t recognize, ragged and stripped bare.
“I have nowhere to go!” The admission is a defeat in itself, and that only makes me angrier. “You—your kind—you took everything!”
Somehow, my body finds water for tears. They don’t fall, just burn my eyes, blurring the man in front of me. Hammer doesn’t flinch. He frowns, his eyes boring a hole through me, reading the ruin etched in my veins.
Somehow, this leather-clad biker makes it feel like he can see right through me. See my emotions, hear my thoughts. Can he feel my pain, too?
There’s no fixing this. The hollowed-out truth of it hits me, and for a dizzying second, death feels less like a threat and more like a mercy I’d choose if I had the strength.
