Page 127 of That Sik Luv

I’ll kill them all if they so much as lay a hand on him in there.

“Well, let’s go enjoy the show, shall we?” I hear what sounds like a foot rubbing against the concrete, probably Callum putting out his cigarette.

I rush towards the bathroom as silently as possible, locking the door behind me. Taking the pill out of the bag, I pop it in my mouth and swallow it down with some sink water. I gaze at my reflection, peering into the eyes of an entirely different woman with a past that was snuffed out. My mother stares back at me. The stark blue of my lash-framed eyes, the inky black hair that surrounds my flushed face.Determined as ever to defy the church that took her child.

I may not know her, but her story is ingrained in my blood. Running through the veins of a woman sent here to right their wrongs. The same blood that burns for the vengeance I’m bound and determined to unleash.

Chapter fifty-five

Eye of My Existence

Iwelcomepain.

Pain is necessary.

Pain tells me I’m alive and on the same earth as her.

We need to be in the same existence. Me and my Briony.

Blood drips from my head as my hair clings to my forehead. My left eye is swollen shut, and my lip is most definitely split open. Crusted blood flushes with the fresh blood trickling down my chin. They chained my wrists behind me to a stripper pole through the back of the chair I’m sitting in, and I quickly realize that I’m in the exhibition room, facing a stage.

I’m at Nox’s club.

The light above me shines brightly in its singularity, pointing directly down onto the mess that I am. No shirt, exposing the entirety of my scars they’ve created, bloodied pants, and a face that’s contorted beyond recognition cloaks me now. Everything he ever wanted.

The guard nearby circles with laughter exuding from him, enjoying the superiority of standing above one of the most ruthless and lethal killers he’s more than likely ever met. He thinks he won, his arrogance rotting from the smug grin he wears on his overweight face, not knowing I’ve willingly strapped myself down before him.

He walks near the table of items they’ve set up to the left of me, and I squint through my only available eye, noticing the bottle of wine he grasps by the neck. Someone behind me pulls the top of my hair tightly before I’m jarred back abruptly. My neck bends at an awkward angle, twisting my face up into the light, the shadow of a man above me coming into view.

“Ah, my sweet, sweet boy.” He clicks his tongue. “It’s been many years since we’ve been acquainted.” He bends down toward the side of my head, whispering into my ear in a tone that makes my spine shiver with broken memories of my tortured past. “I’ve missed our lessons dearly.”

Bishop Caldwell.

They’ve brought me into the lion’s den, filled with nothing but the demons of my past.

I pull against my restraints, fighting the hold on my hair as I give everything I have to be released from his grasp, but every part of my body aches as I attempt to twist and turn. Ribs are broken and tendons are torn in the cage I’ve willingly thrown myself in.

Sacrifices often need to be made for the better of the people. So here I am, offering myself up in the hopes that she’ll find that strength I’ve nourished and fostered to save the man that demands her endlessly.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” he begins again, circling to the front of me as the guard behind me grips the top of my hair, holding me in place again. “I’m delighted to have learned you’ve lost the faith. That you’ve fallen far away from Christ and the sanctity of your religion.”

I grit through the pain and glare at him with the only sliver of vision I have left.

He hasn’t changed. He’s aged, that much is certain, evident in the purplish divots beneath his eyes and the loose skin that hangs beneath his chin. His unsightly warts have grown on his chin and neck, but he still wears that same haunting face of kindness, those rosy, round cheeks, cloaked in artificial goodness.

“Makes your resurrection all the more entertaining,” he says with a grim smile.

He passes the wine bottle to the guard above me, giving him a light nod.

“The blood of Christ,” he commences, raising his fingers to bless me with the sign of the cross.

The guard holds my head back before he places a white cloth over my face. Without warning, the wine pours over me, filling my mouth and nose with the bitter, astringent taste. Alcohol burns my various cuts as I cough and gag against the slow-pouring liquid, fighting my restraints to no avail.

I inhale some of it as they intended, and my throat constricts, coughing it out of my lungs. The bottle finally runs out, and before I can take a much-needed breath, the cloth is torn from my face and I feel the sharp blunt force of the bottle crack against my head.

Laughter and conversation fill the space again as the darkness slowly retreats from my clouded vision. More voices jump out around me, the ear-splitting ringing in my head slowly subsiding.

I feel as if I’m drowning above ground with the tightening of pain in my chest and the burning in my lungs. Every inhale has a sharp, piercing pain hitting my sides. The smell of iron fills my nostrils, replacing the tart wine, before I realize it’s my own blood I’m inhaling.

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