Page 9 of Crown of Lies

3

QUINN

I’ve gottenmyself into some fucked up situations before. After all, you don’t grow up in a gang without running into trouble at least once or twice.

Or three times, I guess, where the Princes of Carnage are concerned.

I’ve got to get out of here.

It’s kind of insane—needing to escape from my own fucking house. It’sinfuriating.If the Princes had another clubhouse to burn down, it’d be my first stop after getting out of here.

IfI manage to get out of here. But although I’ve been working on that particular problem ever since the Princes went upstairs, I haven’t gotten far on it yet.

My fingers are starting to go numb. They’ve got that prickly, fuzzy, falling-asleep tingle that’s equal parts annoying and uncomfortably painful. The cuffs Atlas put on me aren’t tight enough to dig into my wrists, but I also can’t seem to wriggle my way out of them, although I’ve scraped my wrists raw trying. All the way down from my elbows to my shoulders, that same numbness is starting to creep in.

I shift my weight a little, going up onto my tiptoes so that I can get a little more bend in my elbows, trying to relieve the achein my shoulder. Despite the pain of Killian digging out the bullet and stitching me up, my upper arm actually feels a bit better now that the wound has been tended to, but all of this movement is pulling at my stitches.

“Fuckers,” I mutter under my breath, doing my best to ignore the angry screams of protest from my muscles asI shake my arms, trying to see if I can loosen the pipe I’m attached to.

Clang, clang, clang.

Metal against metal echoes through the room, louder than I expected it to be. From above, I think I hear something.

A shout?

I freeze immediately, thinking that they must have heard me. That somehow, despite all of the soundproofing, they know what I’m doing down here.

Like a rabbit alone on a plain scenting for predators, I remain absolutely still, waiting through one skipped heartbeat, and then another. But no one comes down for me. The door at the top of the stairs doesn’t open.

So I get back to it,clang, clang, clang,attempting to loosen that pipe. Time drags on, achingly so, with no real progress made on my escape.

It doesn’t end up mattering, because eventually, after who knows how much time, the door to the basement opens.

I stiffen.Did they hear me after all?

Listening closely, I strain my ears for any hint of what’s to come. It’s just one set of footsteps. Nico, maybe, coming to assert his husbandly authority over me? Or it could be Killian. He may have been silent as stone earlier while he was patching me up, but I know him well enough by now to know that he’s the kind of man who excels at torture. Is he coming back for round two?

It turns out to be neither of them. This time, it’s Atlas who graces me with his silent presence.

Alone.

I grit my teeth and straighten my shoulders as best as I can with the way I’m cuffed up. He doesn’t say a word as he pulls up the chair they had me in earlier, turns it around, and settles onto it in front of me. With his muscled forearms balanced on the back of it, he peers at me intently, his expression unreadable.

“Tell me about Silas,” he says after a long moment.

I groan, rolling my eyes.“Thisagain?”

“Who is The Saint?” he presses, his voice gaining a little more urgency.

“I already told you I don’t know anything about eitherof them.”

“Did they pay you to work for them? Were you gathering intel on us too?”

“You know, usually if someone wants information out of someone else, they don’t just ask the same questions over and over, as if that’s going to give them a brand spanking new answer,” I mutter. “But if you like wasting your time, be my fucking guest. I’m not going anywhere.”

I rattle my cuffs, emphasizing the point. Atlas just stares at me for a moment longer, a small muscle in his jaw contracting beneath his skin. I can’t tell if the agitation is because he believes me that I don’t know any more than he and the other Princes do, or because he thinks I’m holding out on him.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he says suddenly. “You’re so important that The Saint had us watching you, reporting on you—and so valuable that Silas came after you himself—but you have no idea why?”

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