Page 110 of Diamond Kisses

Victor screamed behind the sock that I’d stuffed into his mouth. He thrashed in the guards’ hold. They didn’t even look at him. Holding him as if his dramatics were utterly inconsequential.

I almost suggested they put him down and make him walk.

The sinister part of me would happily witness him crawling, unable to stand because of me. I needed him to come face to face with the same level of despair he’d forced me into. The same humbling vulnerability. The same forsaken knowledge that for all his power as a man, I’d transformed him into nothing with just two quick flicks of a knife.

A knife I hadn’t given back.

A knife I clung to with a white-knuckled grip as if I could stab through the rest of these illusions and hack away the past six months.

I could almost taste the salty sea air of Devon and hear my mother’s groan of pain down the stairs. Perhaps I’d merely passed out after caring for her during one of her many rough nights and this had all been a nightmare.

The corners of the sky seemed to fold inward, deflating like the castle.

No.

Wait!

I stood taller, fighting away insanity.

I didn’t want this to be a nightmare.

I didn’t want her to not be real.

Ily…where are you?

The world flipped upside down.

I gasped and swayed. I cried out as my left knee buckled and crunched against the grass. The hole in my side burned as if something with many teeth and vials of venom chewed through me.

Christ.

Tapping my head with the heel of my hand, I willed myself to stand.

Get up.

Stay awake.

Just a little longer.

Stewart grabbed my elbow and hoisted me up. “Come on, Mercer. Let’s finish this. Then we’ll get the pilot to fly us out of here and come back with help, alright?”

I nodded and tried to speak, but no sound came out.

“Let’s go,” the bald guard said. “Seeing as you’ve hobbled Mr Grand, you better be right about this. You better pay us what you promised. And you better be able to get us off this island because if you can’t…we’ll do to you what you did to our boss.”

“You’re going home.” I nodded, forcing myself to speak. My tongue felt swollen in my mouth, my teeth ached, my entire face unfamiliar. Every step we took, the pain I’d ignored returned, one agonising memento at a time.

The punch to my jaw by Victor.

The gunshot to my side by Larry.

The uncountable number of lashes.

The cracked ribs.

The broken ankle and forearm that had healed but not enough.

All of it clung to me like sandbags, weighing me down, making every step such a fucking struggle.

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