“No,” I say, but it’s more of a croak. I don’t know if I’m talking to the men around me or the ghost of Vic. As black comes into my vision, reality splits, and I feel like I’m back underneath his fists, struggling to stay alive.
It doesn’t matter. They don’t listen. Another blow, this time to the face, no doubt to shut me up. Danny's fist connects just under my eye, and I snap around on the rope. My arms scream in protest, and my head feels like I have the worst hangover on the planet within seconds. Combined with the breathlessness leftover from the blow to the stomach, I hurt so bad my brain doesn’t know which part of me to focus on.
Someone barks an order, but I can’t hear it over the ringing in my ears. There’s a flurry of activity, and then someone grabs my hips from behind.
For one brief, terrifying second, I think they’re going to rape me, and I struggle back to consciousness, fighting them as much as I can while I’m bound and helpless. Then the one in front of me, Danny maybe, slaps me across the other cheek, and I realize the dick holding my hips is only doing so to steady me, so I don’t move so much.
My left eye is already partially swollen shut, and my other is watering from the smack, but even with my blurry vision, I can see the horror movie quality table of nightmares they’ve arranged at some point.
Knives. Power tools. More rope. Guns. I shudder and throw up the water I managed to choke down. Danny scowls and backhands me again. This time I sway into the body of the man behind me, which only makes me gag again. The sensation of another man’s hands on me is physically revolting.
When I can see again, it’s to find Danny with a small torch in his hand. Behind him, an extension cord trails toward the wall. The torch hisses to life and heat flares across the sensitive skin causing me to wince.
“Tell us what you know about Gracin Kingsley,” Danny says as he casually waves the torch in front of my face.
I don’t owe Gracin any loyalty, and I sure as hell would tell them whatever they want if it meant I’d get out of here alive, but there are two things wrong with this scenario.
One, I have no idea where the hell he is.
Two, I know the moment I give these men what they want, I’m dead.
So, I say nothing.
At my lack of a response, the torch flares, and the hands on my hips tighten to the point of pain. I’m shaking all over, but there’s no controlling that at this point. Danny squats at my side, takes my leg in his arm, and locks it tight. If I had the strength to fight him, I still wouldn’t have been able to break his vice-like hold.
The torch isn’t huge, but the flame shooting out from the tip is very, very real and, I have no doubt, effective. But in the moment, I don’t even care, because the rippling and spasming in my womb coupled with the fresh dampness between my legs can only mean one thing. And if it’s what I think it is, I don’t care how much they torture me. I’ll survive it if only to rip their fucking throats out with my bare hands.
Danny ignores the urine soaking my jeans as he has one of the other men slice them up so they’re little more than rags hanging off my legs from the knees down. He rips them off and tosses them away before bringing the flame closer to my skin. I hear the sizzle of my flesh and smell cooking meat before I feel the pain of the burn. I throw my head back and scream up to the rafters. Before long, I lose my voice and can only grunt out strangled cries until he removes the flame.
When I refocus on him, the flame is dark, and his face is hard and blank. Death incarnate. “Where is he?” he asks.
I don’t answer him. Past caring, I zone out, my tired body resting against the one behind me. There’s another sizzle, and then I convulse, wanting to move away from the pain, but unable to because of the hands holding me still. He pulls the torch away, and my body automatically sags forward. For the first time, I’m grateful for the bindings. I wouldn’t be able to stay upright if it weren’t for them.
This time Danny barely pauses and doesn’t repeat the question. The flame moves up my leg, getting closer to the sensitive flesh of my thighs. His hands slip on my wet skin, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, and I forget to mention that it’s blood and not urine because he touches the flame to flesh again. This time, I do pass out.
When I come to, the sun is high in the sky, and I feel like I’m a column of burning ice. Freezing and on fire at the same time. I gag against the smell surrounding me—my cooked flesh—and manage to vomit away from myself instead of down my chest. There’s nothing but bile to throw up anyway, and soon, I’m back to dangling.
My stomach cramps, and a fresh wave of blood coats my inner thighs. I moan, and tears course down my cheeks. I think I pass out again because the next thing I know, a barrage of water fills my nose and mouth, startling me awake. They keep it in my face full blast until I’m breathing it. Then they turn it off, and I cough and hack up water at their feet.
I hear one of them cursing and then the water hits me in the chest as they hose me down like a dog. It burns like liquid fire when it hits the burned flesh of my legs. I want to pull away from it, to cry, or to scream at them to stop, but I can’t. I’m completely powerless.
“The fuck’s she bleeding from?” one of them murmurs. “You didn’t hit her that hard.”
I can feel their eyes on me, but I can’t open mine to see. Besides, I already know what they’re staring at. What conclusions they’re drawing. Let them see what they’ve done. If they have hearts enough to care, I hope it eats them alive until I can cut them out.
The hose comes back, this time to give me an impromptu shower. I want to tell them it’s pointless because it’ll just keep coming. They’re still grumbling and trying to wash away the blood when orders are barked, and the hands are back on my hips. Danny’s shadowy form and the flickering light of the torch are all I can see.
I use my last burst of energy to kick the torch out of his hand, and my foot glances off his shin as I follow through, and he grunts in pain. The metallic clatter of the torch hitting the concrete floor echoes throughout the warehouse. Danny waddles to it and snatches it from the ground. There’s a flare of heat and then the screaming pain returns, this time on the opposite leg.
“Where is he?” he asks.
“Fuck you,” I whisper.
This time he leaves the flame against my skin a lot longer. So long that I don’t feel the pain anymore, which sounds good, but I know it can’t be. Injuries without pain equal death.
What does it matter? I’m dead anyway, right?
He removes the flame, only to bring it back to a new spot, causing fresh pain. Eventually, I have to go to another place in my brain. One where there is no pain. Where there is no death. Where the baby I hadn’t planned for isn’t leaving me before I ever got to properly love it as it deserved. The place I cultivated at the hands of a husband who didn’t know the meaning of the word mercy.
I’m ripped back to reality when they bring back the hose to clean me off again. The man behind me is gone, and I can’t hold my head up anymore or stand on my legs, so I’m dangling forward, my eyes on the concrete beneath me. Bloody water travels in rivulets across the ground and to a nearby drain.
Agony doesn’t describe what I feel when I realize that’s the little life I’d already thought of as mine. Sobs burst from me then. Deep, wracking painful things, and I feel like a part of me has been ripped right from my heart, like I’m changed right down to my DNA. I know if I make it out of this, I’ll never, ever be the same.
The water cuts off, and then they’re back. I can’t stop crying, not even when the flame comes back. Then my tears turn into screams, and I’m shouting and wailing with everything I have. It echoes throughout the warehouse, and the flame shuts off, and Danny hits me again, his fist colliding with my jaw, making my vision explode in a kaleidoscope of stars.
“If you aren’t going to answer the question, keep your fucking mouth shut,” he growls as he stuffs a strip of cloth into my mouth.
I’m past caring.
My legs too burned to be his canvas of torture, he lifts my foot and the torch clicks back on. The moment the flame touches the sensitive skin of my sole, I scream against the gag and writhe against the man holding me.
“Where the fuck is he?” Danny asks. “Tell me what you know, and this all stops. The pain will stop if you just tell me where he is.”
He drops the torch on the floor and removes the gag so I can speak, but instead of talking, I muster up enough saliva to spit in his face. His look of utter outrage causes me to laugh, though, it’s tinged with hysteria.
“She’s fuckin’ losing it,” Andrew says. “Completely fuckin’ nuts.”
Which only causes me to laugh harder.
There’s a loud screeching sound from the warehouse door, and I wilt a little inside knowing it must be Sal, whoever he is, coming back to get the results from the past few days or to finish me off. Part of me almost wants them just to put a bullet in me, but the other part, the one who’s sick and damn tired of being treated like shit wants one chance, just one, to pay them back for everything they’ve done, everything they’ve taken.
“Last chance,” Danny says. “Where is he?”
Then a voice that isn’t Sal’s says, “Well, boys, if you wanted to see me that much, then all you had to do was call.”