Page 1 of A Little More Hope

Chapter One

Mason

Strong arms wrapped tightly around my chest like a vise, yanking me backwards and dragging me into the shadows down a dimly lit alley. A second pair of hands joined in the tussle as I desperately battled to break free. Screaming loudly to try to attract attention at the same time as twisting rapidly from side to side, I haphazardly kicked my legs out to do everything possible to dislodge the grip of whoever held me.

Cold, hard, metal jammed painfully into my temple. I instantly froze, my screams dying in my throat, heart pounding wildly as my scrambled brain recovered enough to register the barrel of a gun.

I tensed, my body becoming rigid as someone chuckled darkly beside me. “Yeah, buddy. Life has suddenly got all serious for you.” His words chilled me to the bone and carried the remnants of a foreign accent I had no hope of placing.

The guy’s arms squeezed painfully across my body, pushing the remaining air from my lungs as he dragged me deeper into the darkness and shoved me hard against a dumpster. My legs slipped under me on the greasy ground beneath my feet, as I tried to gain traction. I made a futile attempt to calm my erratic breathing, but as I pulled a shallow gulp of air down, the stench of rotting food and God knew what else made me gag. “Wh-whatever you want, take it. All of it. Phone, wallet, whatever you want,” I stuttered out.

My pulse hammered so hard in my veins their reply barely registered as the bigger, stockier guy not holding the gun rummaged through my suit jacket and pants pockets, pulling out every item he laid his hands on. There wasn’t much, only what I’d already told them. Wallet, phone, and keys, nothing else.

Looking through my new designer wallet, a thirtieth birthday present I’d received from Gabe this morning, he found my driver’s license, which he tugged out of the narrow slot before throwing the leather aside. Watching my gift land in the dirt, knowing the pristine leather would be covered in whatever crap littered the floor, annoyance flashed through me for a split second.

“Nothing,” Stocky Guy spat, pulling my eyes back to him. Forties maybe. Beard, buzz cut, definite muscle head. He held my license up to the alley entrance. “Pretty Boy.” He peered closer. “Mason Wilder has nothing.” He flicked the license away in disgust.

My heart sped up even more.

What did that mean for me?

I hardly ever carried much cash; who did these days? So the only items in my wallet were my driver’s license, gym membership, the couple of credit cards I regularly used, and a few notes. I didn’t wear jewelry or a watch, so the only item of value I had was my phone.

Roughly grabbing the front of my shirt, Stocky Guy half lifted, half dragged me farther into the alley and the darkness, away from the streetlights and safety of the sidewalk.

I turned to the other guy: taller, thinner, and with his curly hair pulled into a ponytail. Definitely the one in charge. “P-please. I don’t have anything else. I swear.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he ground out. “It ain’t my fault you don’t have more than twenty bucks.” He spat in my face. “Fucking piece of crap.”

“You got nothing we need,” he growled, “so I think it’s time we taught you a lesson; ya know, for your stupidity.”

Stocky Guy turned to his accomplice. “Whaddya think?” he asked before turning back to me, forcibly grabbing my face—his fingers pressing hard into the flesh on my chin—then painfully twisted my jaw, forcing me to look at him. “Time to make you a not-so-pretty boy.”

The other guy cackled, the empty sound sending a shiver down my spine. I was about to speak, I was sure, to say something to try to prevent what was about to happen next. I was gonna die, right here, in a dingy alley, a few feet from the bar I’d stupidly left, and where my friends had remained, not yet ready to stop celebrating my thirtieth birthday.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the first punch hit me right in the gut, the blow rattling my insides, knocking the air from my lungs. Doubling over, I fought to drag in air, but a punch to the side of the head had me seeing stars and sent me sliding to the ground. I tried to roll away and received a heavy boot to my ribs as my reward, pain instantly erupting through my chest, carving into me like a knife.

There was no letup with the punches and kicking to my body and I instinctively curled into a ball, hands covering my head, my legs drawn up tight to protect myself. Losing count of the number of blows they rained down on my battered body, I began to slip in and out of consciousness, my brain shutting down as the constant pain became too much.

“Let’s finish this,” one of them stated as the cold steel of the gun rested against my temple once more. In the distance, I thought someone shouted a warning, their voices coming from a long way off, accompanied by shots being fired, or maybe not. I was too delirious to think clearly enough to tell the difference between what was real and what was my imagination anymore.

Bang, bang, bang. The explosive release of the gun against my ear jolted me. Tearing pain ripped through my skull, and I tensed, as the last seconds of my life flashed in front of my eyes before unconsciousness took over.

Bang, bang, bang.

I awoke with a start, tangled in my soaking wet bedsheets, covered in a layer of sweat. My heart thumped rapidly against the wall of my chest trying to hammer its way out of my body.

Struggling to sit up, pain ripped through my side as my fractured ribs protested the action, the effort almost too much for me. Forcing air into my burning lungs I tried to take in deep breaths as I’d been shown by the doctor at the hospital, the ones meant to magically calm me down.

The supposed remedy wasn’t working.

Shoving a hand roughly through my damp hair, I fought to get control over my own fucking body.

Two weeks in the hospital and now a week back home, and absolutely nothing had changed.

Nothing.

Sleeping meant a repeat of the night in the alley, reliving each and every blow to my body, and feeling the unforgiving metal of the gun pressing into the side of my head, its barrel digging against my temple. The heat and searing pain of the shot that should have killed me, the one that should have ended my life, had only grazed the side of my head instead of penetrating my skull and splattering my brains all over the alley wall when Gun Guy had gotten distracted for a split second by the shouting.

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