“I don’t fucking believe it. You raped me. You destroyed mylife. You were following Coltello, who wants me dead.”
“WekilledColtello,” replies Liam. “We’re on your side.”
“Stop lying!”
I’m shivering frantically, unable to resist as Dane grabs my leg again, takes off his scarf, and rolls it around it firmly, like a tourniquet, to stop the bleeding. The pressure against the wound does feel good, and I breathe out a shuddering sigh, the pain ebbing.
“We’re here to save you,” repeats Liam. “I know you don’t believe us. But maybe you’ll believe the fact that we don’t give a shit about you.”
Yes. Infinitely more believable. I allow myself to relax just a tiny bit, latching onto the first sensible thing he’s said. They don’t care about me. But they do want to save me. It doesn’t make sense, but I begin to accept that they’re not lying.
“Then why are you helping me?” I sob out.
“Because we need to figure out a way to not die ourselves,” says Liam.
“Right. You just killed a fucking crime boss. Not sure how that translates to you not dying.”
“We killed a guy who’s trying tobecomea crime boss,” corrects Dane. “Not that there couldn’t be repercussions. But those repercussions don’t scare us as much as—”
“He might not be a crime boss yet,” I argue, wondering why the hell I’m trying to convince them that killing the guy who was about to end me was a bad idea, “but he’s got an army behind him. They told me so the first time those assholes took me.”
Liam sniggers. “Yeah. And do you know what that army is?”
I shake my head.
“The Devil soldiers.”
“He’s got maybe a few dozen loyal men from the mafia days,” clarifies Dane. “Everyone else are soldiers. How do you think we’re walking free, despite the way Quill left us to die in hisapartment? Some of the Coltello men came and saved us while we were locked up at Devil Tower. And they gathered a number of other soldiers, too.”
“So all the Devil soldiers are on his side?” I ask in disbelief.
“Not all. Some of them went with Tragen and sided with the Moretti group. Others stayed loyal to Devil. Well, loyal is a big word.”
“Right. Contracts. For you, it’s all about contracts. All about money.” I shake my head in disbelief. “So who’s paying you now?”
“No,” answers Dane, “you’ve got it all wrong. Contracts are how we function, but at the end of the day, that’s not what matters. No one really understands the soldiers. Not even Tragen. He’s our commanding officer, but he was convinced we think the same way as him. We don’t. He’s got the power. We’re nothing but his soldiers. That changes everything.”
I frown in confusion. “So…”
“So, the Devil soldiers follow whoever we’re told to follow,” explains Liam. “At least, on face value. When push comes to shove, like it did in this case, something else matters far more to us.”
I suddenly remember one of the rare times Quill shared something about his soldier training. He told me it wasn’t just about learning to kill. It was deeper than that. It was about learning to be brothers. Blood brothers.
“You’re loyal to each other,” I guess. “Brothers. The three sides are trying to pit you against each other, but you’d never betray a fellow soldier.”
Liam can’t quite suppress a grin, as if I’ve just told him the funniest thing ever. “Wrong again. None of us gives a shit about anyone else. We’d betray each other in a heartbeat. No. The one thing that matters to us, the one thing that motivates us… is fear.”
“Fear,” I echo, back to feeling perplexed. “But you’ve got guns. You’re strong. You’re—”
“That’s the thing Tragen and the other leaders never understood,” cuts in Dane. “Every single second of every day, the threat of death looms over us. Fuck up a contract, you’re dead. Answer back, you’re dead. Another soldier fucks up, and he’s standing beside you, you’re dead. Death is the punishment for everything, big or small. It’s turned us into killing machines. Robots. All because we’re trained by fear. And the paradox is that when we end up facing death, we’ve become such machines we accept it without even thinking. Despite being terrified.”
“You don’t look like you’re accepting it now,” I point out.
“That’s because what faces us now isn’t death,” says Liam. “It’s much worse.”
I stare at him. “So what is it?”
“Quill Nelson.”
