Page 33 of Lawless God

“Fine.” Nate’s agreement makes me want to set his face on fire and drag my nails through the burns.

“This is not how the exchange works!” I pull at my binds, because only one woman can make me lose my patience and it’s her. I vaguely feel Nate’s hand leaving my body, but I’m too angry to think more of it.

“You can’t just take everything. People need to eat, they need to live. There’ll be riots if I go back to my crew, telling them they have nothing left.”

A smile tips at the corner of her lips. She knows exactly what she’s doing. “Aw, no. Riots in the Kings’ ranks.” She pretends to shudder. “How terrible.”

“Emma, I swear to fucking god—” I choke when something soft is pushed inside my mouth. It pulls from behind, tugging until I feel it being knotted at the back of my head.

He gagged me.

The bastard gagged me with some sort of rag. Both corners of my dry mouth split open from the material now keeping my lips slightly apart. My desperate need to drink is enhanced, and I groan behind the gag, incapable of talking anymore. Unable to believe what he just did, I fight in my binds, but my battered body doesn’t let me do much moving before it gives up.

For the first time since this ordeal began, I feel myself flush from the humiliation. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have been worse than being tied up and gagged in front of my worst enemy and her bitch boys.

I would rather die a painful death than witness the mocking cackle that is now leaving Emma’s throat.

Nate’s hand now wraps around the back of my neck as I feel him lean down. “I think I gave you plenty of chances to simply nod like I told you to. You are not here to fight for your case, simply to make things official. Clear?”

His thumb presses at my pulse point, his fingers on the other side, and his palm hot on the back of my neck. My cue to nod.

But how can I? I’m witnessing someone destroy my lifelong work, and he expects me to be quiet and agree. I had to fight NSC and my own family to end up at the top. I had to jump through every single fucking hoop, and all for what? So Emma Scott can steal it all because she and Nate found a common enemy in me?

The enemies of my enemies are my friends. That’s what this is. Pure and simple. She’s a fucking opportunist who jumped at the first occasion to put me down.

And she succeeded.

Nate’s grip tightening makes me cough. I want to refuse. I want to put all my mental strength into this. But my body is giving up, the agony too much to take anymore, and before I know it, I’m nodding silently, my head falling forward, my eyes stuck on Emma’s pink platforms.

I have to hold back a whimper when he releases the pressure. His hand stays there, but I can feel blood flowing to my head again.

“You may carry on, Emma,” he says calmly. Because hurting me and making me live my own personal nightmare has no impact on him whatsoever.

“Anything you want to sell will have to go through us. We can provide you with stock…” She keeps going with a joy in her voice that kills me a little more with every word.

The rates she offers me are laughable, a cut that means they’ll keep getting richer and keep my crew completely dependent on them.

But Nate presses on my neck, so I nod.

And when she starts naming streets of the North Shore where Kings are now forbidden to go, it takes all of me not to scream behind the gag. Instead, I nod like a puppet on a string whenever Nate tells me to.

That’s until she says, “…and Willow Close.”

I freeze. Not that I was moving much anyway, but I feel every single one of my muscles locking tight.

It takes all of me to lift my head when Nate pushes on the nape of my neck to make me nod. My eyes cross Emma’s self-satisfied stare.

I shake my head, incapable of agreeing to not set foot in Willow Close.

I twist, craning my neck to meet Nate’s stare as I move my head from side to side. They can’t do this.

They can’t make me give up my own street. My house. The place where I grew up. I might hate the shithole, but it’s my shithole.

But all I need to understand that he had planned this is Nate’s blank stare and the way he nudges his chin in Emma’s direction.

He knows exactly what he’s doing when he makes me nod again, agreeing to give up on ever setting foot in my own home again.

Which begs the question: Where the hell does he expect me to live?

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