TRENT

Nausea spins in my empty stomach. My head swims with forming regrets that trigger flashbacks that nearly blind me. My chest feels tight and heavy, while my blood feels thick and sludgy from whatever drug they must have given me. “Goddamn.” It sure as shit isn’t something to ease my pain. It’s burning my flesh as it courses through my veins.

I’m acutely conscious of my body, and I recall every slash, punch, and kick that landed on me. My blood feels like its bursting, and blood vessels are popping behind my eyes. Each nerve ending is sending out electrical tremors to try and balance my mind.

Christ, I’m all kinds of torn up on the inside and out. I can hear and feel my heart beating in my ears, and it’s no surprise my vision becomes tunneled when I pry my lids open by blinking.

The sight I witnessed earlier has me screaming on the inside as I relive the same beating these men performed on me on a man they claim was the guy I thought was my brother.

Even though the chains felt like they were pulling my arms out of the sockets, I fought and kicked to try and help the man. After they beat the hell out of him, they dragged him while he kicked and screamed. Then stabbed him repeatedly right in front of me. And I swear with all the sanity left in me he was trying to tell me something before they took his life right before my very eyes.

I’ve lost my mind. The guilt mixed with whatever they must have shot in my now stiff and sore neck has me seeing and smelling things that aren’t there.

Maybe they killed him; maybe they didn’t. Might be they want me to believe it. Who the fuck knows for sure anymore? I’m so Goddamn high I could fly and never land on solid ground.

I shake my head, bang it on the brick wall over and over until I’m on the verge of vomiting. I need this shit out of my system.

I open my eyes the best I can. One feels all kinds of swollen; the blurred lines are still there in front of me, yet becoming clearer with every staggered breath I take.

It was real. I can smell his death in here. See it all so fucking clearly now. Every detail from beginning to this very moment. I gag. The view of his body a little too clear now. A deadly reminder of what Luciano can do. How in the fuck does he have this much control over these fuckers?

Leaning my head back to reel in my thoughts, I concentrate on what I remember.

At first, I thought I smelled flesh burning, which I did. It was my own frying from being whipped. Then the next thing, I was seeing my brother.

I honest to God thought it was Turner until they forced the man to step further into the light and the idiots who beat me down laughed and asked me if this was the man I saw.

The man who I’m assuming I thought was Turner looked scared to death, while the other two stood beside him with grins on their faces. The poor man knew he was going to die, so he babbled off that Turner wasn’t here, and before my next breath expelled from my lungs, one grabbed the man by his arms, while the other put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Blood flew in all directions, and the man’s dead body slumped to the floor at my feet. But not before he told me a few more things while struggling to get away. He said Luciano was upstairs with Tara, and he had plans to make her pay. There was something else, too, something about her daughter. Damn it. What was it?

“Where the hell is here, and why can I remember the beating but not them getting me here? Think, Trent. Fucking think.” If they were screwing with my head, then Luciano knows about my family, and if he doesn’t get his way, he may hurt them.

I’ve lost all concept of time as I sit here waiting for my brain to wake in order to dig through my thoughts. I laugh, deciding my phone is doing the thinking for me when it vibrates in my pocket. Over and over it repeats the process. I suck in air when it stops, hoping it’s Adrian. He’s all I’ve got at this point because unfortunately for me, there’s no way I can break free from these chains.

“Hang on, Tara. Help is coming. I swear it is,” I say, wanting her to hear my voice if she sees me, yet hoping she isn’t. Not sure if she could handle watching what they did to me. I sure as hell could barely stomach watching him beating her.

I shake my head again to try and clear the rest of the cobwebs out. Not sure what kind of drugs they gave me. All I know is I have to fight through the hazy visions that keep shifting in front of my eyes. I’ve done some pretty messed-up drugs in my earlier days, but none of them have made me feel as if my mind isn’t attached to my skull. Or maybe it’s the pain I feel everywhere that has me losing my shit. Who the fuck knows at this point? All I can be sure of is, I have to find out if Turner was a figment of my imagination and if Tara is alright.

My eyes water, eager to see the shadowy sliver of light flitting across the floor. When I glance up, a beam of brightness shines through the small window in this room.

My body tightens up, the chains around me rattling from the movement when the door flies open. The handle ricocheting off the wall and echoing in my ears.

I raise my head. Eyes feral and challenging at the man who finally graces me with his presence. One crazy motherfucker right there. The one thing he doesn’t know about me is, I’m as crazy as they come when I set my sights on something I want. And I want him six feet under in a way I’ve never wanted to kill anyone before.

Squinting my eyes to adjust to the light that’s fucking with my head about as much as the drugs, I narrow them more when Luciano and another man step through the door.

He watches me with as much vile in his eyes as I have in mine. He won’t get a drugged reaction out of me. I’m good, really fucking good at pretending, and this fucker wears his emotions on his sleeve. I can see them burning brightly behind his eyes, like a diamond shining in the rough.

While he’s aiming for the one thing that he thinks I’ll surrender to, I’ve already figured out his. In his own sick way, he cares about Tara. The difference between him and me is, I won’t show him how scared I am that he’ll kill her right before my eyes for her betrayal. Learned how not to show my fear a long time ago. Especially to people who have you chained to a Goddamn chair.

Even though I would give anything to take back what I did to my brother and his wife, I’m glad the years I spent in prison taught me to speak when I needed to, to observe and to always remember to stay silent unless you were put in a position to fight for your life or asked a question from the guards. I observed everyone around me and stayed the fuck away from those who caused trouble. I also learned how to intimidate and to never show a man how terrorized you truly are.

I’d love nothing more than to kill him with my bare hands, but the pussy-ass motherfucker can’t take on a man. If he could, he wouldn’t have others perform his dirty work. Wouldn’t hit a woman and wouldn’t take a baby away from her mother.

You took things from Clove that weren’t yours to take. She belonged to your brother. You’re no better than he is.

Wrong. I am better than him. So much better. I’ve done my time. Asked for forgiveness. And I won’t allow my troubled past to jeopardize my future. Not even if the voices talking to me are mine.

“My men tell me you thought you saw your brother. If I had known you were that hard up, I would have gladly brought him to you. Mistake on my part. I could go get him now, if you’d like.” He smiles.

I can’t trust the man, so I’m going to go with my instincts that are telling me Turner is safe and sound.

“I never believed in the saying ‘A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.’ How can that be true when men like me don’t have a heart? The real way to his heart is a woman’s taste,” he quotes with mockery. “If she’s worth it. And Tara is worth it, isn’t she, convict?” he adds, stepping closer. “She’s good, isn’t she? Or at least she was. The bitch can make you do things you normally wouldn’t do. She is that fucking beautiful. Untainted from the lives men like me and you live that even a man like me becomes addicted to her. I’m not a man who takes kindly to someone trying to steal from me. Surely, you can understand that. When a person steals or betrays me, they don’t live. The man you saw die betrayed me. He should have been keeping an eye on my wife so she wouldn’t escape. As you witnessed earlier, he’s no longer with us. I’m not a man to forgive as easily as your brother. He should have killed you for what you did. I’ll be the man he wasn’t and make sure this is the last morning light you’ll ever see. You’ll die, and no one will give a fuck. Not even Tara, who is upstairs in bed waiting for me to erase the memory of you from her.” Fucking hell, if he takes her by force and makes me watch, I’ll die right along with her.

I’ll bet anything the dirty fucker has taken me to a different state, too. He’s going to try and set me up. He can keep telling himself whatever he wants to believe. My friends will find me. I know they will. And Tara might be in bed, but he’ll never erase me from her. I’m embedded deep in her soul, as she is in mine. That’s all I have to go on.

I keep my thoughts to myself. There’s going to come a day soon when I’ll tell him how good she really is. How untainted her soul is in spite of how he tried to corrupt and disintegrate her lively spirit.

He’s right about one thing, though; Tara is worth it. She’s worth everything, and we’ve fought through her demons. She will survive. I have to hold on to those words, or I won’t make it through this.

We set goals. Started planning them since she changed my life. And finally, after all this time, I was living in freedom, well on my way from moving away from my past, and I’ll become the man I used to be before I allow a man who destroyed her soul and left it hanging by a thread until I helped stitch her back together break her until she can’t be repaired. I’ll get out of here. I believe with all the love I have for Tara, all the talks and the true friendship I’ve made with Adrian, that he’ll figure out something is wrong and be here before too long. I’m about to become his worst fucking nightmare, and he has no idea the things I’m capable of bringing with me when I invade his dreams.

I stare at him in silence. The stillness from me is like an empty cavern to this man with no heart. I can see it sitting in the hole where it should be. Whispers of me not saying a word shackle him down more than he has me. He’s craving a reaction from me. When the time is right, he’ll get the only reaction I’ll give him the minute I slice his throat.

I tilt my head and wonder just how much this man really knows about me and the things I can do. I’m not invincible, and he could easily kill me now. That’s not what he wants. He’s out to watch me squirm, to fuck with my mind before he sets me off with his devious plan.

Naw, this man doesn’t know the real me. I’m street smart. An alley rat. And so is Adrian. If he doesn’t kill me, I will get out of here and come for him.

“Poor girl is broken-hearted at the moment. All worried about getting her hands on our daughter. She’s quite banged up, too. Maybe not as bad as you, but she’s hurting. It’s a shame you didn’t hear how she spoke up to me, but you saw it, didn’t you? Imagined what was going through her mind. How she felt and what she wanted to know about you. I should thank you for teaching her how to be strong, should have fucked the feistiness out of her. Somewhere along the way, you must have given her a backbone, but I’m the man who's going to break her. Take away her life for what she’s done. She doesn’t belong to you. She never did, never will. Tara belongs to me. I bought her. Spent more money on having her than I have with every whore I own. I thought about leaving you down here to die before I left. Then I thought it would be rude of me not to say good-bye or to let you know that the FBI should have all the information I sent them on how you’ve been stalking my wife. A man who became obsessed with a woman who was only trying to help him bide his time.”

He’s a Goddamn liar. He’s playing Tara and me. He has nothing to go on but his desperation. He fucked up somewhere, tying up what he calls loose ends before he runs off and takes her with him. He has no plans to set me up. His plan is to make me think he does. Fuck me, this is priceless. My guess is, somewhere along the way Tara had a big hand in whatever is happening. I knew she was hiding something else from me. This is it. But what she did to get him to become paranoid is what my foggy brain can’t grasp.

God, Tara, what did you do?

My heart rips as the visions of him hurting her run through my mind. Clove is there, too. All the horrible things I did to her won’t leave. It’s a repeated hell.

I do my best to shake those thoughts away.

I won’t, nor will I ever claim to own Tara. She needs to be free to figure out who she is. What I will acknowledge is, I owe her and every woman out there the will to escape from the hell they’ve fallen into, a hell they can’t crawl out of because men like Luciano treat them like a dog you train. To obey the master’s every command and abuse them until they have nothing left if they disobey.

I made that oath the day I was released. It was a silent one to Clove. My way of traveling down a long road of forgiving myself. I’ll never reach the end, but I’ll keep traveling it until I take my last breath.

“Go get my wife and bring her down here; it’s her turn to watch.”

No. Every nerve ending in my body shuts down. “Go to hell, you rotten motherfucker. You stay away from her, and you keep clear of my family,” I snap. Jesus Christ, I’ve failed her. He’s going to bring her down here and force her to watch them torture me more or finally kill me. My promise to keep Tara safe means nothing if I can’t get out of these damn chains before that happens. I have no control over the man who has her until I do. Fuck, what she must be feeling right now. Frightened out of her mind and wondering what to do. She needs to find her daughter and forget about me, that’s what she needs to do.

I refuse to give him any more than those words. He might think he’s breaking me down, scaring me by mentioning my brother and bringing her down here, but I’ll be damned if I break. I’m not built to buckle in front of a coward who can’t get his hands dirty.

My fear isn’t coming from what they will do to me; I’ve been tortured my entire life. No, my fear is the sheer terror I’m afraid I’ll see in Tara if she sees what they've already done and what they’ll do.

She will experience endless agony and guilt if she’s stuck remembering seeing me in pain. If I do get out of here alive, I’ll make sure he chokes on every word he said.

“Now, that is a saying I can agree with. We all live in some sort of hell, don’t we? Life is pure hell. You of all people should agree. The poor boy no one loved. The man who stole from his own flesh and blood. Hell is going to welcome you. I’ll see you there, but not before I make Tara’s life a living one. You see, I have something she loves more than she does you. I have our daughter, and Tara knowing this is all she needs to make her live out the rest of her days in hell. I warned her, Trent. Warned her many times not to double-cross me, yet she did. I’m going to fuck her senseless. Take what’s mine. And when I’m done getting from her what I want, I’ll send her to live in hell with you. Worn out and used. She’ll be as scared as you are.”

I’m not even going to ponder on his insult about her loving her daughter more than me. I would hope she does.

I’m acting out my best here trying to remain calm. Tara has to be frantic if what he’s saying is true.

This situation reminds me of my father. The way he snatched me from my mother and stripped my brother and me of our right to bond. My mother suffered for years without me, while he corrupted my mind. Brainwashed me until I became obsessed with money. With hating my brother for having something I wanted.

That time in my life pushed me over a cliff that never had an ending for me to crash into. I floated through the darkness for years. Jesus Christ, I cannot allow him to taint a little girl’s mind to become a man like him.

My body shakes, and my stomach churns as I hear feet shuffle at the top of the stairs.

“Fuck,” someone growls from upstairs. My pulse is thrumming rapidly at the side of my neck when a gun goes off and Tara’s scream tears across the walls in this room. Luciano’s eyes go wide. He turns, bolts out the door, and leaves me here suffocating on my thoughts.

All I can think of now is, was that gunshot was meant for Tara?

Once again, I turn my head toward the muted screen in front of me.

Motherfucker, I’m never going to escape this hell.