Page 3 of Reaper & Ruin
I stared down at the body, my chest heaving, my hands trembling around the gun. My stomach lurched, and I had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up.
“Clean this up,”my father said to his men, already turning away from the scene.
Then he placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, ignoring Emilio entirely.
“You’re a man now, Giovanni,”he said, his tone almost proud.“Remember this. Everything we do is for the family, and this family will be great. This is just the beginning.”
He walked away, leaving me standing there in the cold, suffocating silence. Leaving my younger brother and me to just… wait. Watch. Do anything other than be children.
“I hate him.”Emilio whispered quietly enough that I almost didn’t hear it.“One day you need to kill him. Or I will.”
I looked down at the gun in my hand, at the body on the floor, at the blood that would never wash out of the rug.
I looked at my younger brother who was asking me to kill the man who gave us his DNA.
I hated our father more than I’d ever hated anyone in my life.
“So do I.”I breathed.“I’ll work it out.”
And for the first time, I hated myself, too.
Chapter One, Roomies
The best part about having an active imagination was that you could have dreams about licking chocolate off the abs of hot alien dudes and it would help you forget about the fact that you’d been kidnapped. Not just kidnapped, but shot with a damn tranq gun, like you were in some spy movie.
Not even a cool spy movie. But a low budget one.
When I came to, dream collapsing with a cry of sadness, everything felt wrong. My head throbbed like I’d been hit with a brick, and my throat burned from breathing in air that wasn’t clean. Not just gross city air, rife with pollution like I was used to. I meant really dirty air. Filthy ass, dusty, crusty, musty air. The type only found in serial killer basements and that one storage closet in your house that you stored Christmas décor in and never aired out.
I coughed, spluttered, and blinked until my eyes caught the flicker of dim light coming from a vent near the ceiling. The dirt ceiling. As in, underground dirt ceiling.
Lola,I thought of my therapist again, as my heart instantly started to pound,I need you to know I died happy and you were a great therapist. My ass was fat, my stomach was full, and I’d just had a threesome in the woods. Don’t feel sorry for me. Just delete my browser history on my phone. I don’t need the cops knowing how shit I am at spelling, or that I enjoy watching ASMR videos of people pretending to be giving me cranial nerve exams.
I sniffled as I tried to sit up. The smell was of metal, dirt, and something that used to be disinfectant but had long since turned sour tickled my nose. It was enough to make me sneeze hard enough to jolt my back.
I tried to move more, but my body was heavy. My wrist jerked and metal scraped—chains. Thick ones. Not the fun kind used to tie you up before a sex game, but the legit murderer kind.
My back hit cold concrete, and I took stock one piece at a time. My legs worked, my chest hurt, but nothing felt broken. No bruises I could see, no blood, no cuts. Aside from a dry throat, heaviness, and the fact that I was kind of craving chocolate now, I was fine.
But I was also in a murder basement, with a steel door the only way in or out, so I tugged on the cuffs again, harder this time.
They didn’t give. Not even a little.
“Come on, you motherfuckers, be a good chain for mommy and break.” I hissed as I yanked my arm three more times until my shoulder hurt and I coughed again.
A noise came from across the room, rough like someone clearing their throat. I jerked my head toward it, presuming I was about to get murdered by a jackass in a mask.
And not the cute mask like Atlas wore. But a creepy one. Made of human skin, or a sack with holes in.
A man sat against the opposite wall. Massive and terrifying but not in a mask. He looked at me, and I narrowed my eyes, trying to get a clearer look at him. A few blinks later, my eyes adjusted better to the dark.
“Mornin’, miss.” He drawled, Southern accent as thick as my friend Ruby’s.
The sound instantly made me want to find her and hug her. And then ask her to shoot whoever had kidnapped me because kidnapping was rude, and I… well, I was a hypocrite. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I was a criminal. I was a good girl.
Kidnapping was fine when I did it,notwhen it happened to me.
“Good morning,” I said, as I checked him out for safety reasons and pretended not to be terrified.
