Page 34 of Crush (Deadly Hearts 1)

ChapterNineteen

Ramsey

Feeling the stress of the night draining my energy faster than ten rounds in the ring, I push open the front door of my apartment. Before I can take a step inside, I’m approached from behind swiftly and whacked on the back of my head with something heavy, hard and unforgiving that makes me go down. Dropping to my knees, I groan, putting my hand up to the back of my head, the blood already seeping out of my skull.

“Fuck,” I groan and try to stand up, but a cloth is pressed to my face and within seconds my vision goes blurry and then nothing.

“Rise and shine!”

I hear the bright call before cold water hits my face, rousing me to the point of consciousness. I try to move, but my arms and legs feel too heavy to move and my head is aching.

Someone grips my chin tightly and lifts my head up. I struggle to open my eyes, the water dripping into them when I crack them a tiny bit. “You awake?”

I pause. I don’t recognize the voice. I try to move again, but this time the bite of plastic digs into my wrists, alerting me to the fact that I’m tied up. I’m upright, which is a plus, but other than that, my situation appears to be dire.

I force my eyes all the way open and try to take in what I can. My vision is gray and hazy, but the face in front of mine is male, which connects with the voice I heard. I’m wet through and cold, shivering in my damp clothes in the middle of what I can barely make out to be an abandoned warehouse.

“He’s awake,” the man laughs, letting go of my chin and then punching me in the face, snapping my head back by the force of the blow.

“Wrap up, you knob,” another voice grates out over my loud grunt of pain.

This fucker has broken my nose, blood is pouring out it. My eyes will start to swell up soon, not that it matters. I can’t see for fuck anyway.

I try to wipe the blood away on my shoulder, but I don’t succeed much.

“The boss wants him in one piece.”

“Why? What does it matter?” the first guy says.

“Because,” a voice with a broad Manchester accent pipes up. “We want to show her that we’ve got him first.”

“Jake Noonen,” I growl, beyond pissed off with myself for being jumped outside my own apartment by this arsehole’s nutters.

“That’s right, lad,” he says, walking into what would be my view if I could see properly.

“Can’t we just start sending him back to her in pieces?” the first guy growls again.

“No!” Jake snarls and the sound of flesh on flesh, followed by a soft grunt tells me that he just got a fist to the face. Can’t fault Jake for getting his own hands dirty if the situation calls for it.

“We tell her first, watch her scramble to get her fella back and if it takes too long, then you can start cutting off his fingers to send to her. Got it? The idea is to watch her in action. I want to know every move she makes, every contact she gets in touch with, every favor she calls in. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Boss,” is the muffled reply. “What’s too long?” the second guy asks.

Good fucking question.

“A couple of days or so,” Jake replies. “Work him over if you must, but no body parts. It will antagonize her and that’s not the purpose of this game.”

I wonder what the purpose is. I mean, I know he just said he wanted to see what Ruby will do, but why? What is the reason behind it? It seems odd to me, just a bloke not involved in underworld crap to understand what Jake is trying to achieve here.

“Fine,” first guy says with a sigh, which is followed up with a boot to my knee which hurts like fuck and makes me cry out unintentionally. I’m going to rip this guy’s face off with my teeth if I ever get out of this. Little prick.

Another punch to the face, which splits my lip and aggravates my busted nose, is then repeated again and again until I can’t hold my head up any longer. If I had been in any decent shape to begin with, I’d have put up more of a fight, but they got me when I was tired, ambushed me from behind, knocked me out and tied me up.

“Cowards,” I snarl, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Untie me and see how far you get.”

It’s big talk, nothing more. If they untied me now and asked me to stand up, I probably couldn’t. Still, they don’t need to know that.

“You wish, arsehole,” the second guy growls at me.

I hear footsteps retreating and figure Jake has taken his leave, which now means these two goons are unsupervised.

I brace myself, expecting the action as soon as one of them grips one of my bound hands tightly.

“Do nails count as body parts?” he growls in my ear and then the howl that echoes through the warehouse makes me sick to my stomach knowing it’s mine, as he rips the nail off my thumb, laughing maniacally as I resist the urge to throw up at the white-hot pain that flashes through my hand.

All I can think of as he tears the nail from my index finger is that Ruby was right. They’re using me to get to her and I’m a liability.

Part of me hopes she doesn’t come for me, leaves me here to show them that she can’t be threatened by these pricks, but most of me hopes she comes for me so I can tell her I’m sorry.

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