Page 39 of Spiteful Heart

A new message in the group chat brought me back to the present: it was from Maddox.A car just drove in.

I was going to respond and tell him to follow the car from the shadows, but right then, my phone rang. My eyes watched as Lola’s name flashed across my screen, and I was quick in answering it. “Lola?”

But I didn’t hear anything. She didn’t speak, and soon enough, the line went dead.

Shit.

I dialed my brother’s phone, putting the car in drive. Maddox answered within the first ring, but before I could say anything, another car pulled up on the sidewalk near the alley, blocking my exit. Instinct took over, and I ducked, leaning down over the center console and into the passenger’s side.

Not too soon, because right after that, a bullet pierced the front windshield of the car. Within seconds, a spray of bullets pelted my car, and I worked on putting it in reverse, backing it up deeper in the alley, away from the shooters.

Hard to do without looking, trust me.

I hit the speaker button, shouting to my brother, “I’m pinned down. Our killer brought some friends.” I grabbed my gun, resting it against the top of the dash. I shot off a few rounds and was greeted by another spray of bullets.

“I’m coming your way,” Maddox started to say.

“No! Go to Lola. I can handle myself.” As I said it, I fired off another few shots; it’d be easier if I could actually aim, then I could take these assholes out. I went into the glove compartment and pulled out a box of extra ammo. I put the car in park and loaded my clip back up, bullet after bullet.

It wasn’t long before Maddox whispered, “Shit. Sounds like Viper and Mike have company, too—”

“Get to Lola,” I ordered him. “I don’t care what it takes.” As my poor vehicle was sprayed yet again with another round of bullets, I stayed on the line with Maddox as I typed something else out.

Good thing I had a backup plan, because after these fuckers were dead, I doubted my car would be driving anywhere.

Chapter Ten – Lola

I woke to a raging headache. My eyelids were slow to open, a cold concrete ground under me. My head was still a little foggy, and I sat up and felt my face. My mask was still on. Something cold was on my wrists, and I looked down to see my wrists were bound in some kind of handcuffs. The handcuff chain was attached to another chain latched on the floor near my feet. I couldn’t move too much, and no matter how hard I tried to pull at the chains, I couldn’t break myself free. The most I’d be able to do was stand, but beyond that, I wouldn’t be able to take any further steps.

They were too tight. So tight that dislocating my thumb to get my hand through it wasn’t even possible. The metal had already started to bite into my wrists.

I reached into my jacket’s pockets, finding they’d been emptied, then my boots. No knives available to me anymore, which was great, and from what I could vaguely recall, I’d dropped my phone after being hit in the ass with a dart that had to have been full of drugs to knock me out.

Well, this night turned into a shit show, huh?

I looked around, not knowing where I was. Obviously no longer near the warehouses, because if I was, I didn’t doubt my men would’ve found me by now—and that meant I’d been taken to a secondary location. Again, great. Things just kept getting better and better.

I didn’t know where I was. The walls were made of cinderblocks, so my best guess was a basement somewhere. I didn’t know. A single lightbulb on the ceiling lit the place in an ugly yellow, no windows anywhere. The air chilled me to the bone. Nobody else was around.

Oh, come on. Let’s get this show on the road, already.

“Hey!” I called out. “I know you’re there! I don’t think you’d go through all this trouble to get me, bring me here, and then leave me—” My gaze landed on the only door out of the place. It was metal, but even with the shitty lighting, I could see that it had been scraped, like someone had taken something jagged to it over and over in a fit of madness.

And a peculiar feeling rose up within me, the same feeling I’d gotten when I’d stared out at the river. Didn’t some stupid detective guy say when you exhausted all possible explanations, look to the impossible? The idea that had occurred to me as I’d stood there gazing down at the current of the river had been one fucking impossible idea.

The sound of someone laboring down steps filled the air, the sound of metal scraping against something. It came from behind the door, and I struggled against my restraints. My wrists wouldn’t budge in the handcuffs, but the bolt in the ground keeping me in place wasn’t the strongest. If I pulled with all of my strength behind it, I might—

The door flew open, its metal hinges creaking the entire time. My gaze locked on the person standing there, his face covered in shadows. He walked with a gait, his shoulders uneven. A mess of brown hair sat on his head, unkempt to the extreme. He walked inside the room, stopping when he stood ten feet in front of me, his head slow to rise, and when I met those green eyes, I knew the uneasy feeling I’d felt before had been warranted.

My breath caught as I stared at his face.

“What?” he asked, sneering at me. “Didn’t you miss me?” His cheeks were gaunt, his skin having a yellow hue it most certainly didn’t before. His lungs labored with breath, his figure not very imposing—because it never had been.

But then my eyes dropped to his hands… or where his hands should’ve been. Like a macabre Captain Hook, he had two metal gauntlets fastened to his arms, right where his wrists ended, and each gauntlet had a single jagged knife protruding from it. No hands, just knives.

I was too speechless to say anything, my mouth agape as I stared at him. This was impossible. This… tell me I was dreaming, because there was no fucking way this was real. There was no goddamned way this was happening. The man standing before me should be dead—and yet he wasn’t. He looked half-dead, but he wasn’t fully there yet, and the hatred for me in the depths of those emerald eyes was palpable.

Ironic, considering what he’d done to me.

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