“What are you doing?” Laken asked, the last of his burger hanging from his fingers. He sucked in his cheeks, making his narrow face painfully thin.
“I got business. Stay here with Rolánd. Don’t fucking follow me.”
“But—”
“Listen to him,” Rolánd said. He stared after Tatum, then at me with a twisted scowl. I ignored his unhappy squint as I turned to follow Tatum. He was in the yard well before I made it outside, and even though it was goddamned cold, the sun was struggling to warm the air up a bit. Goose bumps rose on my body, but I was starting to sweat from walking so far. I didn’t plan to be outside long, so I didn’t care. If I got frostbite on my nuts from this excursion, it probably wouldn’t matter much.
Tatum sat on a stone table rather than at it. Sunshine hit the prickly new growth of his buzzed short hair, and it was still thick and dark, maybe one of the only nice things about him. Nearby one of the guards stood shivering in his winter coat with his back against the building, but I ignored him, and he seemed to be staring up at the sky rather than at anything here on the ground.
Drew had gone to a lot of trouble to keep me safe, but he wasn’t here. He’d gotten hurt in the process. Maybe if I’d been braver all along, hadn’t hidden so many things and hadn’t let fear stop me… he would be fine. Maybe Angel would still be talking to me, and my ex, Angela, would be alive. The more I studied Tatum, the more I was sure she was dead. I’d thought about it a lot, and she wouldn’t have dropped completely out of Angel’s life. Footsteps on the cement had me flinching as someone rushed up beside me, but then Laken came up huffing and puffing and I groaned and stopped.
“You want to get hurt again because of me? What are you doing?”
“You didn’t do this.” He held up his arm to flash his injury in my direction. “Why are you out here?”
That bandage reminded me so fucking much of Angel’s cast that I wanted to argue with him. My stomach churned. That first night I met Tatum popped to the front of my mind, the way bad memories did sometimes when I wasn’t paying attention. The faces of dead people paraded across my vision in a distorting way—ghosts that weren’t really here. They were buried in unmarked graves where no one would ever find them.
Unless they knew where to look.
And I did.
There had been so much death in such a short amount of time while I was in the AS, and Tatum’s reign of terror probably hadn’t stopped when Casey Uhlig hurt me. Many of the disappearances, when they’d happened, had been blamed on the growing motorcycle-club problem in New Gothenburg, and they’d gone unsolved. For years I’d kept an eye on the papers, and never once had I seen anything that looked like it might have been someone Tatum had killed. Fuck, I should probably thank Uhlig if I ever saw him. I might be rotting in a shallow grave right now if it wasn’t for him and his friends putting me in the hospital.
Tatum would have gotten sick of my ass eventually. Hell, he might have killed me by accident some night. The horrible possibilities of a path I’d never taken stretched away from me as I sifted through and tried to ignore them.
“You don’t look so good.” Laken laid a kind hand on my shoulder. “You wanna go see the med—”
“Go inside. Go somewhere people are. Maybe the library. Or find Brandon.”
“Why?”
With the first burst of clear determination I’d had in years, I pushed the walker toward Tatum. Laken dithered, but then cut me a betrayed look and headed off to do as I’d told him—I hoped.
I came to a stop in front of Tatum. An odd calm settled over me and all the worry and shit and frustration and fear I’d had in the moments leading up to this evaporated like smoke in the wind, the way my nerves used to when I stepped into a ring. It was liberating.
“You give up?” He ran his gaze down my body, and I was glad I hadn’t tried to eat lunch. “Good call. You’ll be a cute bitch. Always were. I won’t let anyone else fuck you while I want you. You still have a nice mouth. Let’s go find a place and you can suck me dry.” His smile had me holding down a stomach heave.
Fury swirled in me, and for a few horrific moments, all I could think about was Trev, and how much his betrayal had hurt. He’d lured me in, and Tatum had taken me. I sucked in a pained breath. For a few hopeful seconds I considered ambushing Tatum, inviting him to my cell and then sticking the knife Drew had given me into his heart. That was a fucking pipedream. Even in peak condition, it would have been hard for me to do something like that because he was so fucking big. There were weight classes in the ring for a reason.
None of that physical shit mattered. There was one thing I could do. I didn’t want to, and it scared the fuck out of me, but rather than use my fists and hide, I could open up. I could talk about what had happened to me during my time in the AS. Once the thought crossed my mind, I relaxed more and smiled. Tatum cocked his head at me, and more of my panic ebbed away now that I’d come to a firm decision.
“Yes, I am giving up, but not how you think.”
His confused scowl had my heart hammering as his thick brow furrowed. “What does that mean?” Again, I was struck by how this wasn’t really the same man I’d known. The Tatum Black I’d known had been faster, brighter, more on the uptake. This was a sad shell of that horrific, terrifying man who’d abused me, and I wasn’t sure which was worse—the original, or the mangled, sinister remains.
“Why did you leave me alive all those years ago? After you were finished, I mean.”
He tilted his head back, and I saw real thought spark to life behind his eyes. “I never finished. You were injured. I thought I’d get you again, and I was right. You were a good cockwarmer.” He smirked. “I’m coming for you tonight. You either make yourself ready or you deal with it when I tear you apart.” He leaned forward and some of my calm vanished. My knees quivered.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance.”
He snorted. “You think you’re going to hurt me?”
Laughing, I straightened and shoved aside my walker. It would probably be a mistake, but I didn’t want to look weak right now. “That’s always been your problem. You think everything comes down to fists. I’m talking.” I tapped my lips the same way I might have once tapped one fist into the other when I was taunting someone.
Turning around, I straightened my shoulders. My back hurt, but I put one foot in front of the other and stared at the doorway that led inside, using it as a focal point. Laken peeked around the corner, and I wanted to slap the shit out of him, but at least he’d stayed out of the thing with Tatum. I smiled at him, but his eyes widened, and he held out a hand.
The body that slammed into me was huge, and I knew who it was without guessing as I was carried to the ground and my face smacked off the concrete. My cheek ached as my head was lifted and slammed down. I gasped and closed my eyes, almost euphoric that this moment was finally here. He was going to kill me and it would all be done. I’d have no more worries. And no one else would need to worry, either, because a murder would put him away somewhere far from here.
