Page 94 of Bad Men

I was marched fifty-nine steps into the unknown. Each one resonated through my bones. Concrete faded under foot to iron grates. A different kind of echo filled the space, a deeper one as if we were in a factory. I was beginning to think we would walk forever when I was forcibly shoved down into a chair.

“Don’t move,” the voice growled.

I didn’t. I stayed perfectly still, hands clutched together at my chest as if shielding myself. But angry fingers snatched my wrists. The ties were cut with something cold and sharp that nicked the side of my right hand. My arms were yanked down and pinned to the armrests of my chair. New ties were fastened into place, restraining me.

The hand dropped away. Two pairs of feet scuffled around me, making sure I couldn’t escape before pulling back. I heard them retreat, going back the way we’d come, leaving me sitting there in a rolling hollow of vast emptiness. I waited three erratic heartbeats before daring to double over, pressing my chest as firmly against the tops of my thighs as possible and wildly shaking my head. The motion sent spirals of pain up my neck and down my spine, but I managed to slip the bag off. It hit the floor at my feet, freeing my vision to my surroundings when I straightened.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

The overpowering stench of meat, metal and blood consumed my senses in a wave of heat and bile. I had to blink around the tears and coils of hair to take in my surroundings.

I was in an open space, a concrete and iron box discolored by dark, crimson stains. The ground beneath my sneakers were slated grates, the metal peeling with rust. But it was nothing to the sight yawning open ahead, a hallway of horror dancing in and out of sight beneath a series of flickering lights.

It took a moment for my brain to realize what I was looking at, what the bulges lining the sides actually were.

If I wasn’t placed close enough to see the rot, the swarm of maggots, the foul slime oozing off the flesh, I never would have recognized them for what they were. Even with a dozen steps between us, their odor clung to the air, soaking up every clean ounce and leaving an oily smear of death.

I gagged. My stomach heaved. I tried not to breathe, tried to turn my head away, but it swarmed around me with the persistence of a demon.

“Disgusting, aren’t they?”

The voice came from somewhere behind me, male with a faint accent I couldn’t pick up right away. The steady clip of approaching footsteps had me stiffening. The thin layer of sand strewn across the floor to soak up blood crunched beneath his heels. He brushed my shoulder in passing as he came to stand before me.

I didn’t recognize him.

“I normally love pork, but this…” he sucked in air through his teeth and eyed the skinned and gutted carcasses swaying gently on their iron hooks. “Such a waste but keeping things running would draw attention and I’m trying to fly under the radar at the moment.”

“Who are you?” I blurted, taking every opportunity not to glance at the decomposing pigs lining the hallway behind him. “What do you want?”

The man studied me, eyes narrowed, head bent slightly to one side. “I want what’s owed to me and you are going to help me get it.”

“What? How?”

Denim rustled, kneecaps popped as he lowered himself down to a crouched position in front of me. “By making a very important phone call.”

Chapter Seventeen — Davien

“Hey, me again.”

I sucked in a breath before hitting send. My sad, repetitive message spun before falling into place with the other five hundred messages I must have sent the last two months. It hung there, waiting with the others for a response I knew wouldn’t come.

The time at the top flipped lazily, stealing away minutes while I sat there, waiting for even the smallest change, but the screen remained stubbornly unmoved by my suffering. My pathetic attempts to reach Mia sat unread in my hand.

If anyone had told me a year ago that I would be sulking alone in my bedroom, waiting for a girl to text me back like some love-struck teenager, I would have accused them of being on crack and hit them for good measure, yet there I was on my bed, bent forward in the semi dark, elbows braced on my knees, watching my phone betray me.

I closed the app and tossed the useless thing down on the bed where it was immediately swallowed up by the tangle of sheets I’d kicked aside an hour earlier. I resisted the urge to dig it back out and triple check to make sure my sound was on high, that my toss hadn’t turned the device off completely, that I hadn’t somehow missed a message in the two seconds I had looked away.

The items I’d kicked off the night before snagged on my toes. The belt still looped through my jeans tinkled with my absent-minded kick into the corner. I trudged the still unfamiliar path in the direction of my dresser.

I tried to keep my room exactly the way it had been at our old apartment. The distance between everything was a lot more than I was used to, but I was getting better at night walking into things.

The lights stayed off as I dressed in fresh jeans and a long-sleeved top; I’d learned to moderate my daily light intake and braced mentally and physically before crossing to the door, pausing briefly to snatch up my phone and stuff it into my back pocket. I took a breath before reaching for the knob.

The explosion of light had me rearing back as if punched in the face. Angry tears assaulted my eyes, forcing them to squeeze shut. The unnecessary glow made me want to slam the door closed and lock myself back up in my dim solitude, but I had shit to do and no amount of torture was keeping me from getting them done.

It amazed me how much white was actually used to decorate the stupid place. The apartment he’d gifted us as part of Nero’s promotion was what I imagined a mental asylum would look like if the patients were being treated to the white room torture. The only good thing about it was … nothing. I missed our old apartment. I missed the thick, brown carpet, the weird stains on the ceilings, the smells from the people living around us. I missed not being terrified of brushing up against the walls or leaving fingerprints on the doorknobs, but more than anything, I missed not being blinded every morning. Nero accused me of being a bat, but the condo with its millions of windows and direct view of a fifty-foot drop didn’t feel like home.

It felt like a prison.

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