“I know far more than you think I do, Ezra Wolfe; I always have.”
The fight in me dwindles as I look across at Cara, tears tracking over her reddened cheeks as she listens to Lenora admit all the awful things she has done to get me here.
“Your mother had a weakened sensibility, couldn’t take charge and own our legacy. Wanted to donate a portion of her estate to every fucking deaf charity that came knocking with their hands out. Our family has been dealing in the skin trade since before I could walk, since before I was even born. I respect my lineage.” Her twisted sense of pride is unnerving. I’ve done plenty of fucked up things, and even I can see the fault with her logic.
“You’re downright certifiable, lady.”
“Well then, I’m in the right place; I certainly know crazy.” She cackles.
“Wildly psychotic and criminally unhinged feel more fitting, but who am I to question the semantics of how epically fucked in the head you truly are?”
“Big words for someone who is at my mercy,” she croons with sick satisfaction as she holds up a scalpel from the tray of medical tools, the blade glinting under the light before she swipes it against my neck, a dribble of blood trickling down onto the collar of my scrubs. I refuse to acknowledge it and that has her cackling as she turns and walks away from me. Cara struggles against her cuffs when she sees the blood coating my fingers as I dab at the wound.
“It’s okay, Red,” I say softly, wishing I could bundle her up in my arms and protect her from this world.
“So who’s dying first? Neither of you can live now anyway,” Lenora sing-songs nonchalantly as she paces between us, interrupting our brief moment of comfort.
Everyone here knows that neither Cara nor I are walking out of here; the likely outcome is that we will be shot at close range, dismembered and fed to the furnace down the hall before breakfast has even been served upstairs in the dinner hall.
‘Scrambled eggs and hash browns—sort of bummed we will be missing that,’the beast in my head chimes unhelpfully.
I glance Cara’s way, and she pushes up on her knees, using her bound hands to sign the wordhope.
If there is even a sliver of a chance that one of us will make it out of here, then I know what I need to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EZRA
“I’m first,” I state.
“No, no, Ezra. EZRA!” Cara screams in protest, writhing in her shackles as she pulls at them, tears streaming down her cheeks, blood running in rivulets down her arms and onto her dress as the metal bites into her skin. “Take me. I won’t fight you,” she cries out, but no one is listening.
“Simon,” Lenora barks; he steps up beside her as he awaits her instruction, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed like he expects her to scratch him behind his ear as a reward. Her lip curls in disgust as she uses the tip of her gun to push him aside so he isn’t touching her. If he’s offended, he doesn’t show it—his beady eye not leaving Cara for long.
“Prepare the needle, I’ll need the authorities to rule a natural death to get my money.”
“Not fucked anyone in the morgue offices yet to aid and assist you? You’re slacking, Lenora,” I tut under my breath, earning a backhand of her gun to my cheek. I’m playing with fire, and I know it, but the beast in me feeds off the adrenaline—and right now, I need something to spur me on. I spit out the mouthful oftinny blood building up in my mouth at Lenora’s feet, vermillion spittle coating her precious shoes.
With a click of her fingers, Simon is on his knees wiping them clean with his sleeve. When he stands, Lenora asks blankly, “The needle?” which prompts him into action. He simply raises his mangled hand, and I smile cockily, being pistol-whipped clearly has done nothing to diminish my fucked-up sense of humour.
“You need to be a little quicker around my girl, Simon.”
“She’ll be my girl soon,” he smarmily retorts, massaging his crippled appendage against his chest with a wicked glint in his soulless dead eye; I’m hoping the stained fabric he’s fashioned into an eye patch to cover the damage I did with my spoon gives him a staph infection or something equally painful—a flesh-eating virus maybe.
“Unfucking likely, Pirate Pete; I’d rather strangle myself with these cuffs than be anywhere near you,” Cara hisses defiantly, as her lip turns up in a sneer of disgust at his insinuation that she could ever in a million lifetimes be considered his.
Annoyed with the bickering, Lenora cuts Simon off as he opens his mouth to speak. She orders Caleb to deal with the preparations with a haughty flick of her wrist. It clearly pays to be the harbinger of freedoms in this place. The barbiturate brothers—Caleb and Cooper Knox to the world outside these walls—are drug cocktail aficionados; if there is a blend to be made, these boys know down to the letter the effects that they’ll have. Considering I’m not getting high, and death is pretty fucking final, I can’t imagine too much thought has gone into the clear mixture swimming around in the base of that needle. I watch as he gets the tourniquet out and prepares what he will need on the table.
I’ve never been scared of dying, too much blood has been spilt by my hands; I knew the Grim Reaper would be nipping at my heels eventually. I hadn’t factored her into the mix though.I’d never had to consider someone might actually miss me if I was gone, and that has a nervous energy blooming in my chest.
I take the moment—likely my last—and scramble over to Cara. My bound hands fit around her face snuggly. She’s shaking like a leaf, her lip bobbing as she struggles to contain a soul-crushing whimper. She bends into my touch as I stroke her cheek, my thumb catching a tear mid-fall as it escapes.
My heart lurches, the reminder that it belongs to her heavy in the way it thumps a little faster when we touch. If carving it out for her would lessen the blow of watching me die, I would—ironically—in a heartbeat.
“Come now, sweetheart. Don’t look at me like that. You’ll make me think I’m doing something foolish.”
“Because youare—this isn’t right! I should be the one—” she begins, but I don’t let her finish, dipping down to press my lips against hers. There’s none of my usual brutishness, only softness and longing as I savour her taste. She deserves to be wrapped up in the calm of Ezra Wolfe right now, to witness the more considerate man I’ve become since she walked into my life.
