The memories of Garin were gone. The air…gone.
I couldn’t keep the screams in. They shot up my throat and shouted from my lips, spit pooling in the corners, tears falling in my open mouth.
“I knew it would feel good.” He stopped and looked down at my lap. “You’re bleeding. But you’re not bleeding enough. I want more of your blood. I want to know you’ll never feel pleasure again. And anytime something touches you down there, I want it to hurt. I want it to
always
hurt.”
“Do-don’t do this to me-me.”
“Why? Because you’ve been such a good girl? Because you’ve given me everything I’ve wanted? Because you’ve answered every question I’ve asked?” His hand disappeared behind his back and returned with a knife. “You haven’t done any of those things. So,
puta
, I’m going to make you my own personal coloring book.” The tip of the knife stabbed into my breast. “I’m going to try real hard to stay inside the rope.”
As the knife pierced the skin at the top of my breast, blood squirted from the small hole and sprayed him in the face.
“Stop,” I begged. “Please…stop.”
He stuck his tongue out and caught the drops as they fell from his lip. “I’m just getting started.” His eyes were demonic as he dragged the blade across my skin. Sick and beyond demented.
“I can’t…” It hurt so badly. My tongue didn’t want to work. My voice was gone. My courage and my hope were slipping with each drop of blood that poured out.
When he reached the bottom of my breast, half of it now cut, he smiled from his handiwork. “I’m headed for your pussy next. Do you want to know what I’m going to do to it?” He moved to the side, so I could finally see what was across from my chair. “I’m going to make your pussy look like this,” he said.
When I realized what I was looking at—
who
I was looking at—I screamed with every bit of strength that was left in my body.
Twenty-Three
Garin
Fifteen Days Ago
I was stepping into my private elevator when my cell phone rang. I knew it was Billy. He usually called around this time, right before I was about to get my dick wet. Tonight was no different. The slut on my arm was some chick who worked at the club downstairs. I wasn’t sure if I’d fucked her before, but she met all the requirements—thick ass, decent rack, eyes that told me she’d take whatever I gave her.
What I was about to give would tear her the hell apart. I wanted her screaming as loud as she was moaning. And when she walked out of my condo, I wanted it to hurt.
I reached into my pocket and put the phone up to my ear. “Billy, I’m going to have to—”
“It’s Mario. Not Billy.”
I looked at the slut next to me. “Hold on a second,” I said into the phone.
I hit Mute on the screen and held the phone against my chest while the elevator climbed to the penthouse. When the door slid open to the entryway of my condo, I walked her inside and pointed at the living room. “Sit there. Don’t move. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I headed toward my office without waiting for her to respond. I knew she’d sit there and wait for me. She’d wait until morning if that was how long it took me to get back. The girls I brought up here obeyed all of my commands. When they were anywhere inside this building, even on the top floor where I lived, I was their boss. And, if they didn’t comply, they knew there were consequences.
When the door to my office was shut, I brought the phone up to my ear. “Sorry. I wasn’t alone.”
“Pour yourself something stiff to drink, and sit down.”
I pushed my back against the door and looked around the room. There was plenty of booze in here. None of it appealed to me. Whatever Mario had to tell me, I needed to hear it sober. Because the sound of his voice and the sharpness of his demand told me his news was personal.
“Spit it out, Mario.”
He sighed into the phone.
A sound I fucking hated.
“Billy was found about an hour ago in an alley not far from the boardwalk.”
I gritted my teeth together and slammed my fist against the back of the door. “Say it.”
“He’s dead, Garin.”
My heart was beating so goddamn hard that I felt it in my stomach. I reached my fist forward and slammed it back into the door. The wood splintered under my knuckles; pieces of it stuck into my flesh. I didn’t care. I didn’t give a fuck about anything besides Mario’s words that repeated in my head.
“He’s dead, Garin.”
“He’s dead, Garin.”
“He’s dead, Garin.”
Billy Ashe. My best friend.
Dead.
I pulled my hand out of the door and walked to the other side of the room. “How?”
“The needle was still in him.”
“HOW?” I yelled.
“My boys are looking into it right now. I got the call and wanted to tell you before you heard it from anyone else.”
I knew the procedure. When one of us died, Mario’s boys got to the scene first. They’d take what they needed and leave what evidence they wanted the police to find. Billy wasn’t one of us, but Paulie was. Because no one had been blamed for Paulie’s murder, I was sure Mario wanted to see if the deaths were somehow related.
“Send me the pictures,” I said.
I knew he had them. Snapshots of the body, the weapon, the scene, the evidence—it all was part of the procedure. They were immediately sent to Mario along with a detailed report. He usually had it in his inbox before the police even arrived.
There was that sigh again. “I’ll send them over in the morning.”
“Send. Them. Now.”
“He was family to you. You should wait until the morning to look at them. You need a second. Trust me on this, Garin. I’ve lost enough people to know.”
“Send them.”
“Fine…but I warned you.”
I grabbed the picture frame off the back wall and walked it over to my desk. It now sat on top of a stack of folders and stared at me while I took a seat. It was of the three of us—Billy, Kyle, and me. We were in Mario’s basement. We were laughing. We were high.
We were so fucking happy.
“Have the cops filed anything yet?” I asked.
“I hear they’re going to rule it an overdose because of where he was found and since the needle was still in him.”
So, the police weren’t going to look into it. I wasn’t surprised. It was less work for them that way than pulling together an investigation. One less junkie on the street, they thought.
Billy wasn’t just some junkie. He was my goddamn family. But having the police investigate wouldn’t help me. If there was something to be found, I’d find it on my own.
“Who sold him the junk? Was it us?”
“I’ll have that answer tomorrow. If it wasn’t us—”
“I’ll want his name, Mario, and I’ll want to know who he works for.”
“You’ll have everything you need.”
I flipped the picture over. I couldn’t look at it for another second.
Billy should have been in rehab, sober living, or clean and living with me in Vegas. But dead? Fuck no. My best friend shouldn’t be dead.
He should have been saved.
And I should have been the one who saved him.
“You know we’ll take care of everything—the funeral, any other costs,” Mario said. “Whatever you need, you just tell me.”
“Thanks.”
I wasn’t looking forward to the call I needed to make. Billy’s ma rarely answered her phone. Hell, she wouldn’t have one if I didn’t pay the bill. I just hoped I could reach her before she heard the news from someone in The Heart. She needed to hear it from me.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be in Atlantic City by the morning.”
“I’m sorry, brother.”
“Me, too.”
Seconds after I hung up, Mario’s texts came across my screen.
Leaving my phone on the desk, I went to the other side of the room and poured myself a few fingers of whiskey. I’d heard the news. Now, I needed to numb it. I swallowed down the dark liquid and poured more.
I knew where Billy should have been right now, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about this moment. I’d told myself plenty of times that the day I saw my best friend sober would be the day he was lying in his casket. Still, that didn’t mean it didn’t fucking hurt.
I carried my third glass of whiskey over to the desk and picked up my phone, finally pulling up the snapshots. The first picture showed his face. The shot was zoomed in, his lips dull blue.
The color,
that
blue, I couldn’t get it out of my fucking head.
The second shot showed his whole body, his back slumped against a brick wall. His feet were out in front of him. His shirt was pulled up to his neck, and there was an empty needle sticking into his heart.
His goddamn heart.
I shook my head, my fist balling again. The only thing close enough to hit was the desk. The desk was going to get hit. So were the walls and the door and someone’s fucking face once I got my hands on them.
Mario knew.
I guaranteed that was one of the reasons he didn’t want to send me the pictures. He didn’t say anything because he probably figured I couldn’t handle it right now.
Anyone who had been around drugs as much as we had would know.
Billy had OD’d. There was no question about that. The heroin had been too potent, the dose too lethal for his body. That had ultimately caused his death.
But Billy wasn’t the one who had stuck in the needle.
A junkie hit up a vein. They shot straight into their bloodstream. They sure as hell didn’t stick a needle into their fucking heart.
Someone found out that Billy had been looking into Paulie’s death. Someone wanted that secret to be kept buried. Someone thought that killing Billy would ensure that. So, someone filled that syringe with a dose strong enough to take Billy’s life and had tried to make it look like an accidental overdose. That someone had stuck the needle into Billy’s heart.
They had murdered Billy.
Whoever that motherfucker was…I was going to murder him for it.
Twenty-Four
Kyle
“No!”
I shouted as I stared at what was left of Garin, slamming my back into the chair, trying to thrash my arms and legs, even though they were bound. “How could you do this? How could you take him from me?” I dragged my gaze over to the man who was responsible for this. “I hope you die. I hope your babies come out here and eat your flesh and chew off your fucking face and—”
Breath grabbed my lips and twisted them. “And what,
puta
? If I’m gone, there’s no one here to take care of you. And do you know what would happen then?”
He may have been holding on to my lips, but I kept on screaming. I screamed because they had put us in this prison and had done horrible, sadistic things to us. I screamed because we were still in here, and I knew I was never getting out. I screamed because Breath had tortured Garin to death and taken away the one man I loved.
And I screamed, “
Garin
,” again and again because I just wanted him to lift his head and look at me, but I knew he wouldn’t. “Open your eyes, Garin.” My words were so muffled, but that didn’t stop me. “Come back to me. You can’t leave me, not after all this. Garin…”
“Do you see his flesh?” Breath spoke close to my ear and held me so tightly I couldn’t move. “That’s what your pussy is going to look like. Torn up and bloody in a way that can’t be fixed.”
His flesh…or what was left of it.
Breath had placed Garin in a chair, two ropes crisscrossed over his chest and tied around the metal spine of the chair. His hands and ankles were shackled. His skin had been chopped, as though a butcher had been sharpening his knife across Garin’s entire body. All of him dripped blood. I couldn’t see a piece that hadn’t been slashed. His wounds were spread open; some so deep, there was raw muscle sticking out. The blood dripped, dripped, dripped down his body, forming a pool beneath him.
A pool like the one that had gathered around Paulie.
“Why did you do this?” I seethed, glaring at the man I hated more than anything in this world. “Why did you kill him?” Killing Garin killed me. Emptied me. Destroyed me. There was no reason for me to be here anymore. “Garin didn’t know about Paulie’s murderer. Only I did. You should have killed me, not him.” I looked down at the knife that was in Breath’s hand. “Slit my throat. Do it. Get it over with. I can’t live another second.”
“I’m getting real tired of your screams,
puta
.” Two of his fingers slipped inside my mouth and clamped around my tongue. “If you look close enough, you’ll see his chest rising and falling.” He turned my head, so I faced Garin, and then he squeezed my tongue even harder. “Your boyfriend isn’t dead…yet,” he snarled.
He’s alive?
The tears, the screams, the anxiety, the guilt, the dread, the weight—it all lightened.
Garin…was really alive?
The sobs I wept were out of happiness as I finally saw the movement in Garin’s chest. His inhales were shallow, but he was breathing. And, suddenly, I was breathing, too. I was breathing for the both of us. I was breathing because, despite how terribly mangled he looked, my Garin was still with me.
“
Levanta la cara del prisionero
,” Breath barked at Beard, who I now noticed was standing in the front of the room.
Beard moved over to Garin and grabbed his hair, lifting Garin’s head so that I could finally see his face. There were slashes across his cheeks, his forehead, his nose. His lips were so beaten; they looked like hamburger meat.
“Kyle,” Garin moaned.
His voice was so soft. I almost didn’t hear him.
“I’m here, Garin.”
I tasted the tears on my lips. I tasted bile. I tasted plastic.
I tasted guilt.
Garin opened his eyes, stopping when they were just tiny slits of white. “Kyle,” he groaned. “Kyle…Kyle.”
It sounded like when he was being beaten, when Breath had made me listen to Garin whispering my name over and over. I had thought those were going to be his last words. Now, I feared they truly would be.
“He needs to go to the hospital,” I snapped at Breath. “He needs surgery and blood. He needs to be fixed.”
“He’ll have all that,” Breath spit in my ear.