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The air diminishes.

A sharp pain strikes my groin, and I arch on the bed, crying out. A burning snap, like a spark on my most sensitive flesh.

More fluids trickle around my face, and I shake my head back and forth on another gasp. A second zap lashes at my balls, like an electric current running over me. “Fuck!” Teeth clenched against the pain, I arch as much as the binds will allow.

The pressure at my throat loosens, and the towel is pulled way. Blurred figures stand over me, while I blink away the water dripping from my eyelashes and draw in long, agonizing breaths, my chest pounding with the need for air. Dr. Voigt stands beside a woman I’ve never seen before. Dark hair and almond-shaped brown eyes. Maybe Asian.

“I understand you have a fascination with water. Do you remember drowning, Lucian?”

Still trying to catch my breath, I don’t bother to answer them.

Another jolt of electricity strikes my groin, and my eyes screw shut as my stomach clenches over a cramping ache. “No. I … I remember taking a bath. And I fell asleep.”

Another snap, like the strike of a whip across my nuts.

“Ah, fuck!”

“I don’t think you fell asleep. There was evidence that you had ejaculated. Semen found on the tiles.”

“Since when is … jerking off … considered a fucking crime?” The pain vibrates in my thighs and lower stomach, stirring cold nausea in my chest.

“It’s not the jerking off that concerns me, Lucian.” He removes his gloves, revealing the signet ring. The moth etched into steel. “It’s finding out just how far you’re willing to go.”

“No.” I shake my head, but the room disappears, blurred to a stark white behind the wet towel they place back over my face.

“No!”

Chapter 22

Lucian

Present day …

It’s not often that I venture out of the manor, but one thing I’ve learned from doing business with a crook: never let him see where you live. The ferry ride, plus hour and a half drive to Boston, is worth not having a scumbag like Franco Scarpinato step foot in the place where I sleep.

I sit on a bench at the end of McCorkle fishing pier, elbow kicked over the back, as I watch a young kid eyeing me. Beside him, an older guy, I’m guessing his father, hooks a worm on a fishing pole, holding it up in as if instruction, but the kid seems too focused on me to care.

The scars on my face tend to scare the younger ones, but the unwavering stare of this kid has me wondering what he’s seen, so much worse that he can look a monster square in the eyes without flinching.

I tug my cigarettes from my pocket, and that’s when his father grabs him by the jaw, giving a hard jerk toward the hook. The kid keeps his head cocked where his dad put it, only sliding his eyes toward me when the asshole goes back to baiting the line.

I light my smoke, thinking back to the one time my father took me on a chartered fishing trip, miles out from shore. The idea of floating out on the open sea with him was unsettling enough, but when I saw the liquor he packed away for the excursion, I wondered if it was worth the risk of him calling me a pansy for backing out. At no point was any part of the trip what I’d consider to be a happy memory, but there was a single moment, before he got too drunk, when he set his hand on my shoulder. He was introducing me to the captain of the boat, and for a fleeting second, I felt like any other son accompanying his father.

An hour later, the same hand that’d rested on my shoulder pushed me with enough force to knock me over the edge, into the water. He’d gotten trashed and belligerent, and it took three crew members to pull me aboard, while my father sobbed in the galley of the boat.

As I bobbed in the ice-cold waters with whatever the hell swam below the surface, my lifejacket tight around my throat, all I could think about was how good it felt to scare the shit out of him for once.

“You had to pick the last fucking bench on this pier, didn’t you?” Franco’s voice reminds me of something out of Goodfellas, a wanna-be mafioso who just didn’t make the cut. Our family lines go way back to the days when my great-grandfather bootlegged liquor for his great-grandfather. Not that we grew up together. My father never trusted the Scarpinatos enough for family barbecues and other recreations. He kept everything business. Smart, considering they were affiliated with the Boston faction of the New England Mafia.

At five-foot-five, Franco doesn’t seem like much of a threat, but considering his connections, he isn’t someone to piss off, either.

Unfortunately for him, I never really had what I’d call a healthy appreciation for the line that separates life from death, so I anticipate this meeting to go over like a porno mag at a Catholic school. Makaio waits within shooting distance, and Rand sits alongside him, probably ready to respectfully chide my ass when he finds out what actually went down. I’m not stupid enough to come alone, despite sitting here by myself.

“Thought it’d be quiet out here,” I say.

Franco plops down at the other end of the bench, lights up his own cigarette, and looks around the pier, no doubt gauging the proximity of ears that might be listening. “Sorry I’m late. Got some shit going down with one of my distributors who skipped town with about fifty grand worth of product.”

“Sounds like a management issue.”