Lilah pulled her trigger first, opening fire on the gangsters hovering around, keeping each of the rooms free from distractions and threats. Honestly, they were doing a shit job, considering she took out two men before me. It was even worse for them, considering I opened fire long before one of them managed to even grab at the guns on their hips. They were useless – they were nothing. Fodder for the sharks and we were those sharks. Big fucking ones with nasty teeth and the taste for bloodshed. I was fucking Jaws, and they were nothing but pesky bodies in my way.
“Check the rooms!” I yelled to Delilah, as I rained death down on all the gangsters in our way, trusting my friend to do her job.
My gun ran out of bullets before I’d killed everyone, but that was fine. I had hands, and I enjoyed using them. There was something so personal and wicked about using your fists, or a blade, or anything else that meant you were right up close and feeling the life drain from your enemies.
Bodies fell like dominos and blood covered more of my skin than anything else. I was drenched with enough lives to ruin my soul for eternity, and I didn’t care one bit because I was here for something that I would never leave behind and didn’t care how much I corrupted my soul for.
Henley was here. Henley was in one of these fucking rooms.
She was somewhere in these halls of heartbreak and pain and God knew what she’d been through. So fuck it. Fuck the morality, fuck the risk, fuck the staining on my soul. She was mine.Myfamily –myblood. Nobody got to hurt people thatwere mine and get away with it and anyone who stood in my way was going to die like the rest of my blood had – like Rocky and his goons had done to the entire fucking McCormack family before he dragged Henley kicking and screaming from a place she should have been safe in.
A place I should have kept her safe in.
A place that all those I loved should have been safe in had we not got too cocky and presumed John O’Malley wouldn’t find a way to fuck things over for everyone.
We all knew what he was like – we all knew the depths of his depravity. Fuck. I’d been eight the first time I’d discovered what he was capable of, when I’d come home from school to find my older sister, Poppy, as nothing but a message from the psychotic Vice King leader.
She’d been beaten to death and then he left her hanging in our hallway as a message to our father not to mess with the Vice King businesses.
Poppy had been thirteen.
I still couldn’t get the sight of her mutilated corpse from my mind, despite how many years had passed. I still couldn’t get over the hatred in my heart for every single gangster who had been involved.
Even my own father.
“Widow!” Lilah screamed for me, as I killed the last gangster and forced my brain off from its trip down memory lane.
I ran without thought towards Lilah, skidding to a stop in the doorway of the room she was in. It was just a giant concrete room with nothing but a hook on the ceiling and a single lightbulb on the back. There was enough light for me to see what Delilah was struggling with, as she used her knife to hack away bits of rope that looked like someone had spent weeks pulling at and desperately trying to escape.
The light was enough for me to see the sick and twisted shit that had gone down in a space Henley should never have been in.
“Help me!” Delilah hissed. “I can’t get this shit off her – I’m not strong enough.”
“Fuck.” Even though my body moved for me, heading to Delilah’s side to hack at the same ropes, the air left my lungs with the force of a shotgun blast as I stared at the barely conscious form hanging by her rope bound wrists, her bare feet barely scraping the filthy concrete floor.
“We’ve got you, Henley. You’re gonna be okay.” Delilah murmured, as she continued hacking away the ropes that bound my cousin to the hook on the ceiling and we worked together to get shit done as fast as we could. “You’re gonna be fine, girl. You’re safe now.”
I couldn’t seem to make my lips repeat the same bullshit words of sweetness that Delilah offered. Not because I didn’t want them to be true, but because I couldn’t seem to do anything but stare as I worked.
Henley wasn’t just beaten like I knew she would have been – like I had spent each night having nightmares over until the fucking sun came up.
She’d been tortured.
Cuts, burns from a cigarette, and bruises covered her from head to toe. She only had her underwear on, which meant most of her body was on display, and I could see every ounce of damage that some sadistic fucker had done to her that would no doubt leave more than just mental scars. Like the cut over her left eye that I had a nasty feeling would have done more than just scar her. The rest of the deep welts and marks trailing down her tanned skin that were no doubt permanent, too. All of them leading to the worst of them all – the sickest, most sadistic thing out of the fucking lot.
Someone had carved a word into her flesh. On her stomach, nearly covering the entire space.
Mine.
Letters overlapped. They were messy and manic and entirely not able to be covered. Unless Henley got inked up from head to toe, there would be no way to hide what was on her. No way for her to cover up the pain.
Rocky had done his best to make sure she would spend the rest of her life remembering him, even when I managed to turn him into a fucking ghost.
As the ropes gave way and Delilah and I finally succeeded, Henley groaned. I caught her limp form, cradling her to me as gently as I could as once again the numb ringing in my head came back, far worse than before.
She dropped a little as her head bobbed and she blinked at me, once or twice, barely seeming to see through her cut up eye. Fuck, I was pretty sure she was blind there. Or at least that eye was hazy and unfocused, not entirely able to grasp what was visible around it.
The motherfucker hadblindedher. He’d scarred her. Marked her. Fucking scrawled on her flesh with a fucked up signature. He’d made sure that there was no way she could stomach the sight of herself in a mirror for a long ass time and that was just what I could see.
