His legs kick at me, but I barely feel it. I watch as his eyeball divots while the tip pierces the layers. His screams make me smile, and the slower I go, the more strangled they become. His nails scrape against my arm, and his voice becomes hoarse. It’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
I push it further and further and further until . . . nothing. It’s buried to my fingers, and silence takes over the room as he goes still in my hand that’s around his throat.
Adrenaline courses through my muscles when I drophis dead body to the floor. And then I give him a kick, and another, and many more, until the rage is all I feel.
Crying stops me, and I look toward the sound of it. The young man is still on the bed, his face tipped in my direction and his expression full of fear.
Reality smacks back to me. “I have to get to Charlie,” I tell him, myself, the world. My tone is devoid of emotions, but that’s how it’ll have to be until she’s back by my side.
No emotions. There’s no place for them here.
I head to the man and untie him. For a second, he just lies there and cries, sobbing gratitude in Russian. “Lock the door when I leave,” I tell him in his language as I stride toward the door.
I can hear the mattress squeak as I start to shut the door, and when I turn, the young man is on the floor, yanking the letter opener from Andre’s eye. I stand there for a moment, watching as he straddles the dead fucker’s body and starts stabbing him over and over again.
Blood sprays in every direction, painting the walls in a beautiful artful piece of death and justice.
And then I shut the door.
My first stop? To the office I found. Pieces are starting to come together for me, and there’s only one man I trust at this point.
Noll.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Charlotte Mitchell
“Step inside, Charlie. Find out who you are.” I can almost hear Nix say those words, but as I come to consciousness, I realize that he’s actually not here. They’re just a whisper in my thoughts.
The buzzing in my ears is all I can fully hear, and my heartbeat hammers in my neck. Then, as I try to roll my neck with difficulty, I come to one conclusion: I’m hanging upside down.
Slowly, I open my eyes. I blink a few painful times and find nothing but a pitch-black cloth that rubs against the bridge of my nose. A soft moan escapes me from the blood pooled in my throbbing head, for my ankles that are chained above me, and for my wrists that are secured at an odd angle below my body.
Find out who you are. Who I am got me here, and I can only imagine what’s coming next. No. Not imagine.
Iknowwhat’s coming next.
I try to keep my breathing calm as I dangle there. I try like hell not to hyperventilate even though every ounce of me wants to. The buzzing in my ears slowly subsides, and I can hear waves push against whatever building I’m in, which tells me one thing: I’m still at the boathouses. And since there’s no chill, I’m inside one.
I do a quick mental survey of my body. Based on how my skin feels, I’m wearing no clothes. Someone stripped me while I was unconscious. My head hurts from where I’d been hit by . . . The flash of hair comes to mind, the scent of the man who had hit me. I hope it’s not true; I pray it was just my mind playing tricks on me in the heat of the moment because what it thinks it knows has to be a lie. It can’t be possible for this person to harm me in such a way, to wish me ill that they’d suspend me from a chain and strip me naked.
While I replay this in my head, I hear soft murmurs coming from outside whatever room I’m forced to be in. I try to concentrate on them, but I can’t make out a word. There are definitely two people, however: one man and one woman.
And then hinges squeal as a door is opened, and two sets of footfalls quickly follow. I can tell that one of them is a pair of heels, and my mind reels. A woman? Doing this to another woman? What kind of sick, twisted bitch does that?
I turn my head in the direction of their approach, feel the air shift as someone bends in front of me, and then a woman’s all-too-familiar Russian accent says, “She’s awake.”
The bag is ripped off my head, snagging several strands of hair in the process. I cry out as they’re torn from my scalp and then blink a few times to focus on the face that’s looking directly into mine.
Anya.
“What the actual fuck,” I groan out because the fresh light causes more pain than I could imagine.
She sighs contentedly. “Sorry to disappoint, Charlie.”
“What the hell is going on, Anya? Why are you doing this to me?”
Dropping the bag near my head, she shrugs too simply for someone who should have at least an ounce of remorse. “You assumed that I was someone you needed to save. I’ve never been that woman. I just let you believe it. It was fun for a while, but now . . .”
