I nodded again despite the warning bells that were blaring in my head.
My eyes fluttered, and I tried to focus as a burning scent filled the room. McGreggor was approaching, and he was holding a long stick again.
Was that the cattle prodder? It looked different…
Damian circled around the tub and put me in a loose headlock, pressing his mouth against my ear.
Instinct had me tensing. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but I knew it was going to fucking hurt.
“Take a deep breath for me, Callum,” Damian whispered.
“What are you—”
“Right here, on his chest,” Damian said, stroking his fingers directly over my heart.
My eyes widened as McGreggor lifted the long stick, and I saw that the end was bright red.
It was a brand.
The letters DR were so red hot they were smoking, and I could barely get a scream out before McGreggor pressed it into my chest, right where Damian had ordered him to brand me.
My screams competed with the dubstep, and I thrashed briefly as my nose filled with the scent of burnt flesh.
My burnt flesh.
That was the last thought I had before everything went black.
Iwas surrounded by fuckingidiots.
Keeping Ryan and Cal’s sisters all in one place was a full-time fucking job. So much so that I barely had a chance to get to myrealwork… which was figuring out how I was going to take down Apex the second I had Cal back by my side.
However, Cassandra, Naomi, and Ryan thought they knew better than me and were constantly trying to convince me to break into Apex to save Cal. When they weren’t up my ass demanding why I wasn’t doing anything to get him back, they were attempting to sneak out to do it on their own.
Which was fucking ridiculous.
Cassandra, predictably, was the worst for this. She was constantly trying to rebel against my one rule, which really wasn’t fucking complicated.
The rule was: no one left Fairview without me. I thought it was pretty obvious that this rule was in place for their own goddamn safety.
Apparently not.
The only person who appeared to truly be on my side was Theo, but it definitely wasn’t due to some misguided sense of loyalty to me. She just seemed to be enjoying her self-assigned role as Cassandra’s bodyguard. Throughout the course of a week, the two of them had gotten into multiple screaming matches over Cass trying to escape to go hunt down her brother.
Well, Cass was the only one screaming. Theo was usually just quietly manhandling her back into the guest house with an amused smirk on her face.
Naomi was just as bad, if not worse.
Worse,because, unlike Cass, she wasn’t trying to go on a rescue mission alone. She was trying to recruit Ryan to help her.
I was constantly catching the two of them conspiring to escape my watchful eye, which was impossible considering the fact that Cal had installed cameras in the entire house, and I knew where they were and what they were doing at all times.
Neither of them knew about the cameras; thank fuck. It gave me a much-needed edge since keeping the three of them under control was a non-stop pain in my ass.
Ryan had shut down his business temporarily, which was both a blessing and a curse.
It was a blessing because it made it possible for me to booby-trap the entire perimeter of his house without worrying about accidentally icing random civilians.
It was a curse because now he had nothing better to do than plot misguided rescue attempts with a nineteen-year-old who had zero combat training.
