Page 49 of Carter's #Undoing

Eighteen

CARTER

The taste of blood in my mouth was the first thing I noticed when I woke up shirtless and chained to a chair in a dark room, a little disoriented from being hit on the head.Fuck.This had Rodney’s MO written all over it, and even worse, I hoped Serenity was okay after everything she witnessed.

And my parents.Sometimes Rodney bluffed, but he knew them. Had met them from the neighborhood. Caden was in Arkansas and had extra security on his ranch and my parents B&B, but you could never underestimate your opponent.

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.”

I could hear his voice before I could see him, flashbacks of being knocked out as I’d approached Rodney’s car.

“You always did have a way with theatrics,” I stated, noting that I appeared to be in some basement with practically no sunlight.

“And you’re still the damn boy who used to come sniffing around my house for Serenity.”

“Because she was living in a house with psychopaths,” I spat as Rodney stepped into view.

“Me?” Rodney laughed, each malicious cord making me wish I’d just shot his ass anyway, to hell with if I got killed in the process. “I was more pissed that you kept her ass out every fucking day because I should have been fucking her and her momma for all the shit those women put me through.”

This fucking asshole.When he stepped a little closer, I yanked at my chains, testing if had a weak link. “I should have killed you back then.”

“But you didn’t,” he joked, as another man stepped out of the shadows. A man who I knew to be even more ruthless than Rodney if I kept my personal feelings out of it. “Carter, you remember my brother, Kevin, don’t you? Your former Army sergeant?”

I didn’t even give him the satisfaction of acknowledging Kevin had walked into the room, and from the looks of it, he was ready to make me pay for everything I’d done. Rodney taped up my mouth and tightened the chain, my eyes still trained on Kevin.

“I’ve been waiting for so long to do this,” Kevin said, sticking the end of the metal rod he’d brought in into the fire. “Carter, you know what my brother and I hate even more than men who betray us?” I kept quiet. “Men who betray us because of their love for some dumb ass bitch.”

I was watching his every move, trying to figure out when he was going to stab me with the rod because I knew it would happen soon.

“It’s true,” Rodney said. “More men fail in America at the hands of some decent ass pussy, than they do diabetes. Isn’t that something?”

Kevin slowly strolled toward me, holding my gaze, and then dug the rod into one of my latest scars on my chest, the immediate pain shocking my nervous system. I let out a groan, pissed at myself for having a reaction at all.

“Is that so, Rod?” Kevin asked. “Was your ex-wife worth the headache before she had that accident?”

“Fuck no,” Rod replied. “In fact, I was glad somebody else killed the bitch so I didn’t have to hear her crackhead ass snore in my ear anymore.”

Kevin dug the rod into another scar, on my abdomen this time. Unlike before, I kept my mouth shut which only made him dig it in more. I knew from experience that once I hit a certain point, I didn’t even feel it anymore. My pain tolerance was such a high level and Rodney knew that shit. It was never good when your enemy knew more than you intended.

Kevin went for my leg next, sticking the rod back in the fire before digging the metal into my leg through my jeans. I was losing a little more blood with that one, but for me, I had to maintain mental control and hope that Serenity was able to help the guys track me down.

“You know what else I regret?” Rodney asked me. But, of course, I remained quiet in response. “I wish my brother would have been at my house that day to help me hold down Serenity instead of her crackhead of a mama.”

I lunged at him again, feeling the chain only slightly weaken. I didn’t even want to hear her name in his mouth.

He danced around the chair, every cruel word out of his mouth nothing more than a brutal mind game for him. “It would have been so much more fun taking turns fucking her than all the mess that happened afterwards. I didn’t care for her mama, but seeing her insides splattered across the dirt was such a sad way to go.”

Kevin dug into my other leg, my body starting to feel numb from the pain. I’d spent years witnessing how these men operate, carefully waiting for the opportunity to expose them for who they really were or kill them on sight. As fucked up as the situation was, I refused to lose hope. I wasn’t going to accept never seeing Serenity again when it had taken me so long to get her back.

“Listen to me very carefully, Carter.” Rodney smacked his tongue over his yellow teeth as he leaned down close to me. “I want you to remember how it feels to cross someone who let you into their operation so that you could be better than the life you thought you wanted.”

Instead of the rod, Kevin passed him a knife this time, and when I recognized the weapon, it was the only time I felt some of my confidence break.

“You could have been one of the great ones,” he said, taking the knife and waving it around my face. “There’s not too many young fuckers that I take under my wing, and I thought you and I had an understanding. Never choose a bitch over your brotherhood.”

I lunged at him again, but he had something waiting for me this time. He pressed the hot knife into the old scar on my face, the pain too much to hold in.

“Do you remember when I gave that to you?” he asked. “It was that first day you agreed to do whatever I needed you to do in order to save your girlfriend. You know I could have still killed her that day, right? Only reason I didn’t is because you impressed me. You couldn’t tell me that stuck up bitch was letting you hit it right, but you were all I-gotta-protect-my-woman, banging on your chest and shit. It had moved me. Made me wonder what I would have been like if I’d been born a pussy ass fucker like yourself.”

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