Just as we were stepping inside, Leo and Dom were lifting Grant’s limp corpse and dumping it into a metal bin. It made a heavythunkas it fell to the bottle of the barrel.
The duo placed a lid over the top, Leo using her elbow to slam the metal top into place. Despite myself, the two of them were glistening in sweat, their exposed arms flexed and tensed from lifting an entire body.
It must be the adrenaline. Surely this isn’t hot.
Shaking the thought away, I followed Spencer’s lead inside. But looking at the barrel wasn’t any comfort to my fears.
“What is that supposed to do? Play hide and seek with it? We aresogetting caught. I’m so screwed. This was such a bad idea…” My feet started to pace my body around the dark warehouse.
Spencer tried to intercept me but she was easy to dodge.
Until I hit a wall of meat, who’d managed to corner me against another metal pillar.
Dom’s eyes were calm, an ocean of blue stillness, but her voice was a low rumble of threats. Lifting her hands to my face, I caught sight of the blood on her hands and face. I couldn’t remember if it was from the torture or lifting the body.
My heart raced at the visual. Something about the splatter, her intense face, the way her jaw tensed… I couldn’t shake how familiar it all felt.
Pointing in my face, Dom towered over me. “Calm down.”
Scoffing, I pushed myself off the pole to get past her.
Before I could, she brought her blood soaked, bruised hand to my throat — pressing me back into the cold metal pillar.
My eyes stayed on her knuckles, bright red and cut open. Even through the fear, I could feel the blood on her hands soaking into the skin of my neck.
“Viper. You need to calm thefuckdown. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Dom hissed in my face, tightening her grip to keep me quiet.
Once my shoulders dropped, forced into submitting to my captor, Dom loosened her grip and let a rush of air flow back to my head. “I don’t take out the trash.”
My forehead wrinkled.
As I was about to get myself back into Dom’s hot water, she continued, “The Oracle handles body disposal. But we need to make this place look brand fucking new, like they just polished the concrete. Understood?”
Nodding, I realized how out of my depth I was. I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with my captors. But the truth was, they stood heads above me. At least in this department.
If I wanted to get out of this, to get back to whatever life waited for me after Gabriel gave up on finding me, I needed to survive Dom’s wrath.
And right now, that meant complying. That meant cleaning up the pool of blood spreading on the floor.
The bloodIhad spilled.
Dom peered deep into my green eyes, testing me. Once she was satisfied she dropped her hand and headed back to the closet at the corner of the room. There, she grabbed a few jugs of liquid and tossed them to the floor. “Get to work.”
Leo and Spencer got to work, grabbing rags, brooms, and mops. I hadn’t even seen the grate off to the side of the metal chair until Leo was using a squeegee to direct the crimson liquid down the drain.
Lingering at the edge of the circle of light, I watched my two protectors clean. They were a well-oiled machine. And that’s when it hit me again that they’d done this before. All of it was so methodical, the way they’d grabbed Grant, how ready the warehouse was. How easy the cleanup was going.
I should have been afraid, should have been regretting ever getting on those bikes all those weeks ago. And something inside of me should have told me they would do the same to me.
But watching them work, I knew what this was. This wasn’t random violence, it was vengeance. And maybe true Justice.
Leo and Spencer were methodical, each of them with their part to play and executing perfectly.
A shiver ran down my spine at the word.Execute.
From behind me, a firm hand gripped my shoulder and nudged me forward. “Don’t be a fucking leech, get to work.” Dom growled in my ear. “Or is getting dirty ‘beneath your station’?”
Rolling my eyes, I turned on my heels to fight back.
