CHAPTER FIVE
Bocca
With nothing but the sound of my own breathing, my mind started to unleash everything I’d been trying to keep at bay. All those girls. I couldn’t save them after all. I had completely botched this thing. It was all my fault. I couldn’t help but hate myself right now. Come on, you would have too.
But I didn’t have time to really go down that dark tunnel. I had to figure out how the fuck I was going to get out of this, whether it be dead or alive. I wouldn’t fucking break, I knew that much. Never. The club had been there for me. Took me in and had my back more times than I could say. Treated me like a family should. Basically, they were everything to me and I’d never betray them, even if it meant laying down my life for them.
How the hell did he know though?
It wasn’t like I was going to pull some answer out of thin air. I had nothing beyond what I knew and no way to dig into it. So really, I shouldn’t have been focusing on that right now.
There wasn’t a damn thing that would help me cut my bindings. Even if there were, it wasn’t like I could reach for it. I was smart enough to know that pulling and wiggling wasn’t going to help me even a little bit. Hell, I’d used zip ties and duct tape to tie people up before because they were some of the most effective ways to do so. Especially in a pinch.
Hours later, right when I was starting to think about taking a nap, the door flew open again.
“You done pissing me off?” he asked as he stalked closer to me.
“Nope. Having too much fun, buddy.”
“I think you know what I’m capable of.”
“Can’t say that I do,” I said with a cocky smile that hurt like a bitch to pull off. “I don’t even know who you are, and what you’ve done so far…” I gave him a dead, bored expression then looked away from his eyes as if nothing he had done to me already bothered me at all.
“You have a big fucking mouth.”
Yeah, no shit. Tell me something that I haven’t heard before.
“I bet it gets you in trouble a lot, no?” he asked as his meaty hand came up and closed around my neck. I coughed and choked as he pushed upward like he was trying to lift me. “You will tell me what I want to know.”
He was pissed, I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. I was getting to him, and I was going to keep on getting to him until he decided to give in.
“How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” I choked out.
I felt my face getting hot as he squeezed my throat tighter. With narrowed eyes, he released his grip. I couldn’t help but suck in a huge gulp of air. Which was all I managed before his hand was wrapped around my neck again, this time gripping so tightly that my throat felt raw and I was worried I might pass out. My eyes bulged and as I blinked, it felt like they were going to pop right out of my head.
“I won’t kill you yet. I will break every bone in your body. I will cut you until you have no flesh left that isn’t covered in red. I will make you wish for death. And then, when you’re begging for me to end it, I will leave you here, on the dirty floor, to suffer.”
I had no doubt that what he was saying could come true and I began to wonder how many people had suffered like that before. How many innocent girls had been beaten by him as a way to break them? How many of them hadn’t survived it?
He released me and my head dropped down as I coughed and tried to suck in some air. My throat felt like I’d swallowed sandpaper.
“Bring her in,” he said and my head snapped up.
I had no idea what her he was talking about but my eyes grew wide with fear. It could have been anyone. Sure, I didn’t have a particular special lady in my life. And I hadn’t ever really dated anyone. I couldn’t imagine that he had gotten a hold of any of my one night stands, or any of the clubwhores. So who the hell could he have been talking about?
Lucy?
Reagan?
Ellie?
I knew it wouldn’t have been Nadya, no fucking way. She’d have killed them all by now.
Something in my gut told me that it wasn’t any of them. That maybe, it was worse.
I had a feeling like they still didn’t know exactly who I was. Somehow they had an idea of who I was associated with, but how far would that really get them?
Allison?
Jessica?
Shit. Jessica had left the club. She was out there somewhere, unprotected. I could only hope that he didn’t know enough about the club to know that. If we’d never been on his radar then how would he? I believed that it couldn’t have been anyone that I really knew, that I had some kind of connection to.
Then it hit me like a thousand pound sledgehammer.
The girl.
Number fifteen.
And sure enough, being drug in by her hair kicking and snarling, was number fifteen.
It looked like he didn’t kill all the girls in that fire. And I had no doubt that she was saved specifically to torture me.
I knew how this would end, and it killed me that there was nothing I could do.
“You seemed quite taken with this one. Though, I would guess not for reasons like all the other men around you there.”
I swallowed down the thick saliva that had filled my mouth. The kind that tasted of acid and it was all I could do to keep it from coming back up.
It was excruciating to watch as they pushed her down to the ground and stepped on her. If I said anything or showed even a flicker of emotion I knew he would take that and run with it. He was the kind of sadistic fuck that thrived off of that. The kind of person that kicked a dog over and over just to get it to snap and then killed it for that very reaction. So no, I wasn’t going to give him what he wanted. No matter how much I felt it suffocating my soul to sit there and watch.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t give up the fight. Her body jerking and flailing, her dirty, mangled fingers clawing at anything within reach.
The guard’s boot pressed so hard on her back that I heard things start to pop and snap. Her snarling turned into a squeak and he continued to lean more weight on the leg that had her pinned down.
I wanted to yell at them to stop. I was going to kill them all.
“You wanted to save them?” he asked but wasn’t really looking for an answer. “And you failed.”
I clenched my jaw so that I wouldn’t open my mouth and make things worse.
“That must make you feel pathetic.”
Pathetic. Angry. Regretful. Sure, anything along those lines would work.
Without warning, the guard that had been crushing her let off only to grab a fist full of her hair and slam her face into the ground. I watched as it bounced from the force and when she looked up again, her forehead was split open and blood dripped down her face.
I could stop this.
Only, I knew I wouldn’t.
“This is your chance to save one of them. The only one left. You should take it.” His voice was cold and menacing.
I knew that no matter what I did, there was no saving her. I turned my head away and I felt like a coward.
“Look at her,” he demanded and grabbed my hair, forcing me to watch.
Again and again, the guard beat her head into the ground, the sounds of her skull hitting the hard floor started to echo with the wet splatter of her blood.
He pulled her head back, a river ran down her entire face and dripped onto the floor, mingling with the spot that was already there. She was still alive, I could tell. Her body still moved with each breath, but only faintly, and her eyes were still open and moving around wildly. But it was clear that she wouldn’t live through this, and it probably wouldn’t be much longer.
“Anything?” he asked right beside my ear.
“You’re a piece of shit,” I ground out through gritted teeth.
“Maybe you and I are not so different.”
I was nothing like him. Never would I be. I was going to kill him slowly.
“I think she deserves one last ride.”
No. No. I could not watch this. What the fuck was wrong with these people? Really, I knew better than to ask that question. But I couldn’t help but wonder where it all went wrong for them. How had they gotten to this point? Was it really all about money and power? That couldn’t have been it. There had to have been some deep seeded darkness there, or some seriously crossed wires.
Guard two undid his pants and pulled her up onto her knees. With a grunt, he pushed his way into her and I had to close my eyes, but I couldn’t block out the sound. Even though I couldn’t see what was happening, the images put themselves into my mind. How had I gotten into this nightmare?
“Mislav has some issues. He’s cost me a good amount of money, but he is one of the best men I have. So, I let it slide every now and then.”
I didn’t want to know what kind of issues he was referring to. Though I couldn’t help but let my mind go there, and I knew right away.
A guttural scream filled the room and I couldn’t stop my eyes from popping open. The scene that was in front of me was more gruesome than anything I’d ever seen. Worse than that unexpected shit that I’d come across in my searches. Something that I’d never be able to scrub from my mind. And maybe I didn’t deserve to even if I could have.
He was raping her, I already knew that, but now he was stabbing and slicing up her back. Deep gashes soon covered her entire back, so wide that the skin almost appeared to be peeling back. Over and over, he pushed into her and carved into her flesh.
I lost it then, ripping my head away from the hand that had been gripping my hair. My body fell forward, straining against the bindings that held me in place as the bile rose up my throat and out of my mouth, covering the floor between my feet.
Mislav’s grunt echoed through the room and I knew it was over, in more ways than one. Her body hit the floor with a thick thud and I didn’t have to look to know that it was lifeless.
“You could have stopped this,” he said as he walked around me and out the door. The guards followed behind, dragging her body out by her ankles like it was nothing more than a bag of garbage.
His words reverberated in my head as the room went suddenly too silent.
I could have stopped this.
I should have. I made a choice and for the first time in a long time, I felt that I had chosen wrong.
I sat in that room, staring at the bloody, messy trail, wishing for my own death. Wishing for a way out. A chance to stop all of this. A way to end them all.