“Could you not drag me like a sack of shit?” I hiss, barely able to keep upright.
He doesn’t respond. Just keeps walking, yanking me behind him.
We reach the warehouse entrance, and he slams me against the rusted door without warning. My shoulder hits first, then my spine. The cold metal rattles, and the air punches out of my lungs.
“Fucking bastard.” I glare up at him.
He punches in the code and glances down. “You wanna walk or crawl? Keep mouthing off, I’ll choose for you.”
The door swings open, revealing a hallway that stinks of mildew and decay. Priest drags me forward, his grip so tight my fingers go numb. Every step is a nightmare. My thigh’s on fire, my entire leg pulsing in sync with my racing heartbeat.
I trip. My foot catches on uneven flooring. Before I can hit the ground, he hauls me up by the collar of my hoodie, nearly choking me in the process.
“Useless.”
“I can fucking walk.”
“Doesn’t seem like it.”
We keep moving—his pace brutal, my pain irrelevant. The farther we go, the more I want to collapse. The hallway opens into a room so sterile it feels like a different world. Bright lights, cold tile, and stainless steel. It’s a medical room.
He shoves me through the doorway. I stumble, barely catching myself before hitting the floor.
“Table. Now,” he orders.
“I’m not your fucking lab rat.”
Before I can react, my arm is wrenched behind my back, twisted until the pain shoots all the way up my spine. He slams me face-first onto the metal table. The impact rattling my bones. The steel is freezing against my cheek. I writhe, trying to twist free, but his weight pins me down.
“What the fuck is your problem?”
One hand pins my arm. The other jams into my pockets—ripping out my phones, my wallet, scattering everything across the counter like trash. Then he starts patting me down. His hand slides between my thighs, pressing on the wound.
“FUCK!”
“Quit squirming, bitch.”
My vision blurs with rage. “Get your damn hands off me!”
He applies deliberate pressure to the wound again, and another scream tears out of me before I can swallow it. He finally releases me, but the ghost of his touch burns like acid. My knees shake. My breath saws in and out. I want to claw his eyes out.
“I hope someone guts you like a pig.”
“They can try.”
I’m so focused on my rapidly escalating fantasy of stabbing him that I don’t notice the other Sovereigns slipping in—until Blondie from New Orleans starts rifling through my belongings.
“Jesus.” He holds up the burner. “This thing’s gotta be older than?—”
My stomach drops. That’s my father’s phone. The last piece of him I have.
“Get your filthy hands off my stuff, you soft-dick Sovereign parasite.”
The entire room freezes.
His smirk evaporates. His eyes go black.
“What the fuck did you just say?” he snarls, stepping forward. “Say that again, you little cunt?—”
