Page 59 of Crimson Tears

I’m torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to slap her. I know she is putting on a tough act so that we can’t see how much she’s hurting right now. So, I play along, for her.

“Well, for starters, you’d still be bleeding. Duh.”

And she calls me Captain Obvious.

Boris shoots me a venomous look and Nessa side-eyes me, but after a second, we can’t contain our laughter. And just like that, there is a little bit of light in all this darkness that surrounds us.

All too soon, silence descends over us again. I don’t want to give away my plan yet in case they’re watching. So I do my best to communicate it without saying too much.

“Hey, Old Man.” Boris looks up at me. “I’ve made a mess here.” I grab the rocks that have fallen and toss them off of the mattress and into the corner by the door that the camera won’t be able to see.

“You sure have,” he says with a slow nod. “Looks like you’ll have to clean it up before we get some rest. I do hate it when you’re a slob.”

I roll my eyes, standing and dusting myself off while picking up the thin mattress from the floor and shaking it out. I survey the mess before tossing it back over by the blind spot as well. It will likely still show some of me while I lay on it, but I think I can get away with what I need to for now.

“The two of you have to hold on,” Nessa says. I know she can hear us hurting too, just in a different way. “You have to keep it together until Evie can get to us.”

I nod, looking down at the bracelet still on her wrist. Boris told me it was a gift to her and that it has a tracker inside of it. It’s likely no one will be able to get a signal down here, but if she or Boris could sneak it into the pocket of one of the guards, we might get lucky.

I lean into the wall by her, trying to cover my face to appear flustered while I whisper, “Get the tracker on one of them.”

Her eyes light up and she nods. It wasn’t loud enough for Boris to pick up over the speakers, but they must have their own language because a few minutes later, Nessa taps her bracelet and makes a gesture to the door. Boris must seem to understand.

Nessa drifts off to sleep and Boris watches her carefully while I try to calm my racing heart and solidify this plan. We’re going to make it out of here, or at the very least I will ensure that she does. Even if I have to sacrifice myself to make sure of it.

Chapter 17

My whole body aches as the doors to my cell open, but I do everything I can not to give this guy, Green, the reaction he’s looking for. As they haul me into the chair, I try to fight, but it’s no use. I know my ribs are broken, and every movement feels like agony.

Instead, I decide to focus on what a ridiculous name Green is. My father always had this habit of naming his men after colors. It was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard of. The only ingenious part of it was that there was actually a hierarchy based on the colors.

If you are a main color, like the colors in the rainbow, then you’re higher up in ranking, but if you’re something weird like amber or cyan, then you’re a lower tier. The more ridiculous the name, the lower in rank you are.

He actually named one of his men Fulvous, an orange puke-like color, after he screwed up a gun delivery. I don’t think that man lasted very long.

I try to come up with all of the reasons my father named this man Green; the only thing I can conjure up has me laughing hysterically as my torturer presses a needle beneath my nail bed. I want to scream with every bit of pain I have to endure, but when I think of my father trying to come up with a name for this man and all he can picture is shapeless slime, it helps the laughter flow.

However, I only end up feckin’ myself over more with this thought process.

“Think that’s funny, you little cunt?” He slaps me across the face, the same bruised area he hit me countless times yesterday.

It hurts so much worse when he does it today. The dull ache that was already there turns into a throbbing pain. I swear I can feel my heartbeat on the surface of my skin.

I am certain hours go by as I do my best to focus on other thoughts, never letting the present into my mind. If I can think of the good times in the past, then I can escape this room.

A hiss of pain escapes my lips, eliciting a smile out of him. I don’t dare risk a look at Cillian or Boris though. I can handle pain. I’ve experienced torture before, and nothing will ever be able to remotely touch the depths of what I suffered after witnessing my sister’s brutal murder.

However, I am certain that seeing the pain on the faces of the two men I care about most in this world as they’re forced to watch me scream in agony could actually ruin me.

I need to stay strong.

Overall, the plan to break me and have me kill them after forcing them to watch is actually genius. It’s a real mindfuck. So much so that I have no doubt that someone other than my father came up with it. All he’s good for is hitting people that are smaller than him. He isn’t capable of thinking past step one and two, but this is much more than a three step idea.

A pain in my lower arm jolts me from my thoughts, and I look down to see Green…biting me. My heart threatens to burst from my chest as I squirm in the chair to try and get away from his mouth, but he clamps down tighter, forcing me to shriek in surprise and terror.

When his pointed teeth leave my skin, blood wells up around the marks they left. It looks like a combination of some kind of shark bite and mark from a zombie movie.

After all of my classes in torture, this is a new one for me. I’ve only ever been tortured to the point of shock once before, but I feel it settling into me as my body starts to tremble uncontrollably. My teeth begin to chatter, which causes him to look up at me with a bloody, sinister smile.

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