Page 96 of Ruthless Reign

“Is he dead?”

“Just passed out,” Becca replied.

Kaleb came over wordlessly as I tossed the bloody needle and gauze into the metal bowl on the table. “Help me flip him over.”

I’d already checked his front torso for more wounds and his legs seemed fine, but there might be more bullet wounds in his back that needed to be dug out and stitched up.

Kaleb used Aodhán’s jeans to heft his middle while I shoved at his injured shoulder and ribs. “Hold him like that,” I said once we got him onto his right side.

The angle was pulling at the stitches in his neck, but I figured if he bled out it’d be less headache for us later.

“Scissors,” Kaleb said and I passed them to him from my side of the table.

He cut up the back of Aodhán’s shirt and right away I could tell something wasn’t right, but it wasn’t what I was expecting. The bruising I noticed on his ribs seemed to extend to his back, but that wasn’t what had my lungs seizing and my teeth clenching as if my jaw was wired shut.

The bottom flap of the shirt fell to the table and Kaleb flicked the other side over his front, revealing his back to us.

A strangled sound left Becca behind us only a second before she doubled over and vomited on the rug.

I’d never seen cruelty like this.

And I’d been subjected to a fair amount of my own.

I was definitely a fucking authority on the subject, but as I beheld the carnage of Aodhán’s back, something deep in the hollowed out trenches of my stomach tightened and twisted. Something I thought died a long time ago.

Scars laid on top of scars on top of scars.

Kaleb went to help Becca, leaving me to hold Aodhán up as I just stared.

I swallowed, finding the ability to breathe again as I bent to get a closer look even though the sight both physically and mentally repelled me.

They looked like welds. Done in flesh instead of metal.

A whip.

That’s what it was. Aodhán had been flogged. Recently. Some of the marks were still angry and red with blood lingering at the surface of the raised ridges of skin. Other lashes were silvery. Some more of a pink color. They created a macabre work of art carved directly into his back. I couldn’t see a single square inch of space from his neck to his tailbone that wasn’t marred with wounds old or new.

Séamas.

It was Séamas who did this to him. His own father. I had scars from mine, but not like these. I had angry lines from my biological father’s buck knife. I had cigarette burns and burns from the stovetop. The entire surface of my right knee was one big scar. But all of mine were given to me when my father was in a blind unseeing, unfeeling rage. And all were easily covered in black ink tattoos.

These?

These weren’t given by a man who lost his temper. These were marked into his son’s flesh with purpose. Practiced patience. Likely as a punishment. Were some of them given because of his connection to Becca?

By the horrified look on her face and the guilty set of her eyes, I knew she was wondering the same thing as she pushed away the glass of water Kaleb offered her and walked over to the table.

She fell into the chair next to it and sniffed, reaching out to touch his back, but stopping just shy, curling her fingers into her palms, setting her hand back into her lap.

“What did he do to you?” she whispered.

I was careful not to jostle his shoulder as I lowered him onto his back again. No wonder he didn’t want us to remove his shirt.

I wished I hadn’t.

I didn’t want to feel like this.

I’d rather go on fucking hating him.

---