He stepped back, releasing me from his grip with a shove, forcing my body into a back and forth swinging motion again. As I hunched over, it gave me time to pull some much needed oxygen into my lungs. No matter how much pain slashed through all my organs, I sucked that shit in as carefully as I could while my eyes roamed the floor.
“Where—?” I choked on my own word, swallowing as bile rose in my throat. I cleared it as quickly and as roughly as I could before trying again. “Where… is… she?”
“I’m fine,” Ayda said from somewhere in the room, followed by the sound of a slap and a grunted whimper that she was obviously trying, and failing, to hide.
Fine. I remembered that word. I knew what it meant and I was grateful for it in that moment. It meant she was anything but fine and it forced me to dig deep and pull some magic from somewhere dark inside.
Stretching until my feet found some kind of half-assed balance on the tips of their toes, my face set to stone as I used all my strength to ignore the torture going on throughout mybody. I glanced up enough to see the other people in the room, and when their blurred outlines came into view, I knew where she was, and I hated it with every fiber of my fucking soul.
“Cortez,” I ground out.
His boots skimmed over the rubble as he pushed both hands into his pockets and came to me again.
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
“What…” I inhaled sharply, my head rolling forward as I tensed my jaw and glared at him. “What do you want?”
“What do I want? You’re asking me whatIwant?” Cortez rocked back on his heels, the heavy shrug of his shoulders only serving to remind me of the weight his punches could carry. “What do I want? Hmm. Let me think. I want a lot of things, Drew. I want a life filled with motorcycles and women. I want a life filled with riches and gold. I want good fucking sex, served up from the finest pussy around. I want peace in my home and I want safety for my children.” He stopped to take a step closer, the tone of his voice becoming as serious as the new look on his face. “I want safety for my club. I want revenge for the ones who have fallen. I want my enemies dead, the same way you do. I want enough of their blood to spill so that I can bathe in it for weeks. I want to rip those apart who have tried to rip me apart. I want to watch them cry out in pain and beg for mercy. I want them to see I hold no mercy in my heart at all. I want them to realize that they played with the devil and the devil fought back, and he took no prisoners. He showed nothing but rage when he ripped out the hearts of those that even dared to breathe in his direction.”
The muscles in my face twitched as my body swayed back and forth, but I never looked away from him. I never broke his stare.
“I want to win, and I will win,” he whispered. “But first…” Stepping to the side, Cortez swept an arm out and shouted to his men. “First, I want to play. Isn’t that right, boys?”
The cheers of The Emps filled the room, and it was only when I heard the different tones and the different accents that I began to realize just how fucked we were. There was no hope of getting out alive. They were never going to set me free as long as they had me as their torture toy.
I allowed myself to look over his shoulder and down at the figure behind him. When Ayda’s face came into focus and the fear cried out to me, I became numb. For a second, it was just the two of us, each one kept away from the other in their captor’s grip, but we were together and we were there, and we were going to look at each other until we were forced to look away, because right then, we both knew what was happening, and neither one of us could be certain we would ever have that chance to be us again.
“Bring out the girl,” Cortez commanded.
Just like that, our connection was broken and I was forced to look into the shadows, until another female figure stepped out into the dim, murky light.
The swollen eyes of the woman from the forest glared back at me with both fear and anger shining outwards. She looked at me with uncertainty, the memories of that night washing over her face and the images of her dead boyfriend forcing her to shake her head as she tried to stay calm.
She was present in body, but not in mind. The girl was back on the battlefield again.
Only she was the one with the tools in her hand and the wolves at her back, while all I was left to do was stare at herlike she was a ghost.
A ghost I should have killed when I’d had the chance.
As we stood there staring at each other, the real war began. It was time to play the game. Ghosts versus demons. Savages versus the weak and the woeful. Two wrongs fighting to be right while death hovered over us with a smirk on his face and a one-way ticket to Hell in his hand. He was watching and waiting with baited breath as each one of us stood silently and prepared ourselves for that inevitable, eternal fire.
Our souls were damned. Now it was only a question of time.
Chapter Forty-One
Ayda
Ididn’t look at the new addition in the room. I couldn’t. It was my only opportunity to take Drew in and memorize every pained line on his face. The look in his eyes told me he’d accepted our fate and even though, to a certain extent, I had, too, there was still some fight left in me. I wasn’t going to give up that easily, but the outcome was bleak.
As I knelt watching Drew, there was no doubt in my mind that I would do anything it took to get him out of there alive. If only one of us could survive, it had to be him. He had so many people depending on him, and I knew in the deepest parts of my heart that he would look after Tate if I asked him to.
It was only when the frown marred his face that I followed his line of sight to the woman that stepped out of the shadows. She was pissed off, that much was obvious in the balling of her hands, but she was scared, too. I could see the fear as her eyes met Drew’s. Not even him being bound and her having the whole MC at her back seemed to take that away. There was a frailty inthe way she held herself. For a moment, I even entertained the thought that I could, at the very least, takeherdown.
While all eyes in the room were on the mousy woman,I tested the plastic holding my wrists together. There wasn’t a lot I could do in a warehouse full of the enemy, but I had to believe I could cause enough of a stir to give us a fighting chance.
“Is this the guy, Sofia?” Cortez asked, lifting the hand with the knife and pointing it at Drew.
The girl’s head darted around the room, her eyes bouncing off the few men that were hiding in the shadows. I wasn’t sure how many of them were out there, and I didn’t want to know. My ignorance meant I had the opportunity to cling to hope, and for now, that was the only thing keeping me going. That, and Drew.
