Page 3 of Ruthless Commander
I flinched as though he'd slapped me. But he didn’t see how his words hit, only shoved his hands into his pockets and I watched my twelve year old brother walk out, leaving me standing there, watching an empty doorway once more.
2
Mateo
Twenty-one years old
The toweringgates of Ispeli prison rolled open with a squeal, leaving me to walk through on my own. Guards watched me from the towers, fingers poised over the triggers of their sniper rifles aimed my way. One wrong move, one wrong look, and I’d never make it to the door.
But I had to make it…
I had no choice.
I looked away from them, keeping my focus fixed on the barbed wire that ran the length of the fence beside me. Strands of hair waved in the wind from the sharpened ends. Razor wire stained with blood ran along the top. Not that they needed honed steel. The name of this place alone was enough to make even the beast in us cower in submission.
Ispeli.
This place…this goddamn fucking place was notorious.
My heart was heavy, weighing down my steps. But my rage made up for it, driving me toward that locked steel door on the other side of the fence. A guard waited at the entrance, standing sentry against the bleak goddamn backdrop of this place.
My brother was in there.
In there, with those fucking monsters.
In there, with the beatings and the betrayal.
In there, where pain was currency and they hungered for your blood.
I tried not to think about that, tried not to think about the events that had led him here. Instead, I lifted my ID to the officer at the gate and waited. He took my papers, glared at the photo, and shifted his gaze to me. He never spoke, never said a word, and for a second, I thought he was going to shake his head and deny me entrance.
I lifted my gaze to the moss-covered walls and the bleak towering building, trying to figure out how I was going to get inside.Because leaving without him wasn’t an option.
But then the guard stepped forward, unlocked the gate, and swung it inwards. Howls came from inside those walls. I kept my gaze down and strode toward the door that opened in the distance. The stench of piss and blood hit me as I stepped through the doorway. I looked around in the gloom.
"Mateo.” A man stepped out of the shadows and nodded toward me.
I narrowed in on him. His fresh suit, sparkling gold rings, and the big fat cigar between his fingers all whispered of the kind of man he was, but it wasn't until he met my gaze and I looked into his eyes that I truly knew the kind of monster that lived in a man's skin.
“Edon,” I responded. “Is he…”
“Still alive,” he answered. “Barely.”
Barely…my heart raced at the word. A nod toward the guard and he turned, looking along the dark and dank hallway screams of men echoed in the distance. Screams filled with hate and rage bordering on something broken.
I turned and stopped at a gate across the hallway. Inside the gate, the guard watched us, glancing me up and down before leaning forward and hitting a button. The steel gate opened, leaving me to walk through. They didn't take me to his cell, instead they walked me through the massive recreation room and out the other side to a corridor. A shiver raced along my skin as we made it through the other side, stepping through another set of doors into another hallway.
Our boots echoed, resounding against the walls and slamming back at me until the guard stopped outside the doorway and motioned with his head, leaving me to enter on my own.Infirmarythe sign printed on the doorway said, but this was no place of salvation. No, this place was another one where you came to die. I stepped in, scanning the gurneys where the dead lay covered in sheets, and turned away.
He wasn't dead…
He. Wasn't. Dead.
I lifted my gaze to the movement of a doctor as he came toward me, his green smock stained with blood.
“You are here for Edon Ristani?”
I gave a nod, glancing behind him to a partially uncovered cadaver.Was that…was that…my pulse boomed in my ears.
