Page 112 of The Beautiful Dead

A heartbeat passed, and the strength drained from my bones. The lights cut out, and the warehouse plunged into darkness.

That’s when the screaming started.

CHAPTER 22

DOMINO

Pain was nothing new. It was ingrained in every cell, woven into my very existence. I didn’t fear it. I harnessed it. Turned it into something useful.

Rage.

It throbbed in my arms, deep and pulsing, where my shoulders felt like they were being ripped apart one sinewy strand at a time. The metal cuffs cut into my wrists, fresh blood welling around them as I flexed my fists. My body sagged from the corroded air conditioning pipe above me, the old screws whining with every subtle movement. It wouldn’t hold. Not for much longer.

Time was a luxury I didn’t have.

Copper coated my tongue. Bruised ribs protested every shallow breath I sucked in through dry, cracked lips. Blood seeped from the multitude of wounds on my body—fists, boots, and blades had all left their mark, but they had failed in the one thing that mattered most.

Breaking me. Taking me from him.

Remi had become the sole focus of my existence.

He was too quiet. Too still. Tied to that metal girder, head slumped forward, dark hair spider webbed with white, shieldinghis face. But I knew him. Knew he was listening, calculating, waiting—because he knew I was coming for him.

Would always come for him.

Salvatore Gallo and his sons droned on, their arrogance thick in the air like rot. Their men patrolled the space, careless, smug. Believing in their false sense of control. Fools.

I memorized them all, counted their steps, marked the ones who hesitated when they looked at me. They would be the first to die.

The dim overhead lights flickered.

A test run. A signal. Ghost was close.

We had a plan in place if Remi or I were ever taken, and it looked like my diligence was about to pay off. The embedded tracker in Remi’s necklace had led him right here. And when the lights went out for real, I would make each one of the men here regret everything.

A slow, steadying breath filled my lungs. I swung my legs and the momentum shifted the screws in their housing. A little more. A little looser. Again. And again I swung.

Salvatore’s words should have hit harder. They should have meant something. Instead, they rolled off me, insignificant against the only truth that mattered—Remi. Tied up. Vulnerable. Hurt.

The only thing in this world that I gave a fuck about.

I smirked, a calculated twitch of my lips, as Salvatore looked up at me, still rambling. “You’re talking a lot for a dead man,” I muttered just as the lights went out.

Chaos erupted as darkness blanketed the warehouse. Feet pounded on cement, echoing in the hollow space. A scream tore through the blackness—the first of many, if I had anything to do with it.

The last screw gave way. Metal groaned and snapped. I crashed to the ground, landing atop the unlucky bastardstanding sentry by me. His ribs cracked beneath my weight, the air forced from his lungs in a sharp, wet gasp.

I was moving before he even had time to choke and stutter his last breath. Momentum carried me forward as adrenaline surged through my veins, sharpening my lethal focus.

The chain of my cuffs snapped tight as I looped it around the throat of the nearest soldier. His fingers clawed at the metal, gasping, gurgling as I twisted, using my body weight to yank him off balance. He stumbled, boots skidding across the blood-slicked floor.

A jerk, a twist. The satisfying crack of his windpipe breaking was music amidst the carnage. His body slumped in my hold. Dead weight. I let him drop and was already moving before his corpse hit the ground.

Even cuffed, I was faster. Stronger. More vicious than any man in the room. My monster was unparalleled in its brutality.

My fingers closed around the barrel of a soldier’s gun before he could even think to raise it. I yanked it from his grasp and flipped it until my finger curled around the trigger.

Bang.

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