Rory turned, eyes bursting with barely contained excitement. “And there it is.” He sheathed his knife in the breast pocket of his jacket and stood. “As I was saying. Incentive.”
The wavering patterns of his speech swayed from proper to mocking. No matter how he pronounced his words, every one was intentionally delivered, purposely measured like a caress or a slap.
Callan leveled his stare on Rory. “Let him go.”
“Of course,” he pouted. “But nothing’s for free.”
Murder suddenly seemed too merciful for this cocksucker. “What do ye want?”
“You’re so much more than a bare-knuckle boxer, MacGregor. You’re a force of nature, the devil incarnate, and I want you to work for me.”
Callan spat, a knee-jerk response brought on by his repulsion to have any association with this animal. “I’ll never be on yer payroll.”
“Uh, uh, uh. Never say never.” Rory spoke with cumulating flaccid gestures that only added to his unnerving aura. “Everyone has a price.”
“I don’t.”
“Oh, I believe ye do, my boy.”
“I’m not yer fuckin’ boy.”
“Well, of course not. You’re a vigilante, and vigilantes are rarely children. Aye, you’re all man. I think we’ll be great friends over time.”
His molars scraped. “We’re the opposite of friends.”
Rory chuckled. “If life’s taught me anything, it’s that hate can motivate a person almost twice as fast as love. You can hate me and still work for me. After you hear what I propose, I imagine that’ll be the way of it, no matter how much every cell of your being objects. Like I said, every man has a price.”
He was growing tired of the dramatics. “Do you plan on tellin’ me what ye want? Or are ye gonna continue blowin’ yourself for another hour?”
The lunatic truly laughed this time. “Oh, my apologies. Am I keeping you from a prior engagement?”
“Aye. Slittin’ yer fuckin’ throat.”
Rory tsked several times in a row. “That’s no way to speak to yer superior.”
“You’re not my fuckin’ superior. You’re a worthless shite who’ll never have my respect, least of all, my loyalty.”
Rory tipped his head back and sighed. “Oh, I’m going to enjoy watching you eat those words. Pick up his friend. Gently.”
The guards lifted Rhys off the floor. Rory removed a roll of tape from the table and hesitated before placing it over Rhys’s mouth. “Behave, and I willnae let them hurt you. Misbehave, and I’ll let them do their worst.” He covered his mouth and pointed to the wall. “Hang him there.”
The guards stretched Rhys’s tied hands above his head, hooking his arms on a peg in the wall, high enough to leave his toes twisting over the ground.
Callan’s heart hammered with uncertainty. “You can let him go. He’s not who ye need to worry about.”
Sweat gathered on Rhys’s brow as he groaned a garbled swear, shooting off muffled threats at the guards who slung him up. Callan glared, silently ordering him to shut the fuck up.
“Easy now,” Rory warned. “He’s not any concern.”
Callan frowned. Then why not let him go?
Rory typed something into the phone and crossed his arms over his chest, cupping one elbow in his palm and flipping back the hand holding the mobile. “I apologize for this next part, but you understand I must protect my men, especially after you left me so short-handed these last few months.”
A heavy chain clinked and dragged from the wall. The guards twisted it around Callan’s neck, cutting his airway down to the width of a pin. Tape covered his mouth, and a blade pressed into the soft flesh under his eye.
“Move a muscle and my man has permission to remove yer eye.”
Callan seethed, his head bent at an unnatural angle due to the weight of the chains. But the point of the blade made sure he dinnae shift a muscle.
“Now, we can talk business.”
Rory pulled a chair across from him and sat, crossing his legs. Callan’s vision blurred as sharp pressure poked beneath his eye. Head tipped back, he watched Rory through his lashes as his eye watered.
“You’re going to act as my tax collector. Twitch the fingers on your right hand if you understand what I mean by tax collector.”
He balled his fist. Rory smirked at the challenge. “If your hands are not working, perhaps you’d like to borrow your friend’s. I could cut his fingers off and bring them to you—one by one.”
Callan’s nostrils flared with boiling rage. His fist loosened and his fingers twitched.
He knew what taxation was. It was said to be the perfect crime. No authorities intervened when thieves stole from other criminals like drug lords, sex traffickers, and weapons dealers. But Callan wasnae a crook, and he’d never work for a man like Oscar Riordan.
“I’ll expect you to be ruthless. I want you to make me a lot of money, MacGregor. You’ll be well paid for your service. But the job’s permanent.”
The man was off his rocker if he thought the threat of losing an eye was enough to broker such a deal. He wouldnae share his fucking toilet to take a shite. No way would he go into business for him. He could have both eyes. Callan would still kill him in the end—blind or not.
“I see we’re still not in agreement.”
He stood and moved to the metal door outside of Callan’s view. Two firm knocks, and then he returned, but dinnae take a seat. He smiled like a sadist about to take his victim’s balls.
Callan couldnae see who came in the door when it opened, but he could see Rhys. His friend’s eyes widened like white saucers as a muffled shriek peeled against the taped gag. He thrashed against the wall, and Callan’s heart jackhammered at the unknown.
Should he turn, say fuck his sight? He roared against his own gag. What’s happening?
His eyes bulged, straining to see, wincing as the blade pressed into the soft flesh above his cheekbone. He blinked rapidly at the prick to his tender tissue.
Rhys kicked and screamed, bucking wildly against the wall. Panic welled. Rory grinned like a lunatic, holding out a hand to whomever had entered while watching Callan.
Callan roared with impatience, his feet jerking against the ropes. And then he heard nothing. The world silenced. His pain vanished. The earth fell out from beneath him, rolling right off its axis as his sister stood before him.
A wave of chills chased up his body. Was he dead?
Everything he knew to be true shifted into a blatant lie.
But there was one thing Callan knew to be true. Rory had him by the fucking bollocks. He’d do whatever the man wanted because he’d found Callan’s price, had the perfect incentive to motivate him. He had Innis.
Chapter Thirteen
Saratoga Hospital
Saratoga Springs, New York—America
Present Day
The fraying threads suspending Emery’s sanity unraveled, thinner and thinner with every question. Words were flung at her like bullets, no matter how soft-spoken, and her broken mind struggled to provide even the slightest answer without feeling her guts bleed all over the floor.
These things, these facts they wanted to know... They were her most shameful secrets, freshly inked tattoos marring her soul. The pinprick still burned and the stain had yet to set, but they all waited for her to pull it together and regurgitate the horrific details.
But shame wouldn’t fit into a tidy box, and it certainly would never go by one name. It was slippery and sycophantic. As much as they all wanted to help, not a single one of them could ever understand her pain.
The female police officer came to the hospital to follow up and completed the report. Emery gave as much information to the cops and nurses as she could manage, her words clumsy and basic. Recalling the simplest details hurt her brain. Hurt her body.
Question, after question, after question... She was a once full object now shaved wafer thin. And then ... nothing. Her voice just quit.
Her stunted mind suffe
red too much trauma. The finite details of her memories scattered like chaff to the wind, pieces of her womanhood cremated and lost without a proper goodbye.
All she wanted to do was sleep. Shut off the broken record in her head that stunned her with every turn. Mute the ache in her body and silence the recurring thought that this had happened to her.
Strangers hovered. People she didn’t know, expectantly waiting for her to hemorrhage excruciating details from her ravaged soul. Every memory was too humiliating, too intimate, too fresh, but if she wanted a scrap of justice—knowing it would only be a crumb compared to what he stole—she had to divulge every painful part.
Her conscience whispered constant reminders that these strangers were not the enemy, but it wasn’t always easy to hear through all the screaming in her head.
Their determination to salvage something that wasn’t there overwhelmed her. No matter their efforts to comfort her, they couldn’t ease the trauma. If anything, their professional proficiency neutralized the severity. They were so calm she wanted to take offense. Didn’t they understand what he did to her? But then again, if they acted hysterically instead of professionally, she’d never get through this.
There was one person who got it, one person whose eyes reflected the shock that swam in hers.
Callan...
Maybe he understood, because he found her, or maybe because he didn’t hear her scream. But she placed no blame on Callan. He was the first to come to her rescue.
She’d been in enough danger that her needs now included words like rescue... Her spine softened, denial and acceptance seesawing inside of her as she tried to find some sort of balance.
Her gutted insides pulled in ways she didn’t want to feel. She should have fought harder. She should have bitten him and clawed out his eyes. Why hadn’t she?
I thought I had, but then...
I lost.
I lost everything.
It seemed impossible that another human being did this to her.
Not a human being. A monster.
Without Callan’s strength and resolute presence, she’d be lost in a sea of statistics, swallowed down with so many other women who suffered the same. One nurse, trying to calm her, whispered that they dealt with this every day as if the commonality of assault might soothe her aching heart.
Every day? How was that possible?
She had to trust them, let them do their jobs. She was on autopilot, lifting, scooting, opening, obeying... Better if she just shut off for a while.
She was mad at the world. Crushed. Physically and emotionally.
While her pulverized insides ached, her outsides itched to be scrubbed raw. Her mind shattered like a one-dimensional piece of glass, broken shards reflecting the last few hours and mocking her in some distorted mutation of the truth. Repeating and fishing for answers that weren’t there only confused her more.
How had this happened? To her?
Dull acceptance eased in like a glacier splitting from the place it rested for a million years. This would be her life now. This was who she was, now.
This day, this horrific time would become a defining point in her future. Every other man would be judged harshly. And might judge her. Would judge her.
No matter how optimistic she’d always been, from now on, skepticism would always precede trust. She could feel herself chilling into a frigid person, measuring others in a forever skewed light. Maybe that was the only way to ice her injured soul.
Her shoulders hunched. Now that the worst of the examinations were over, Callan returned to her side. An anchor in a storm.
“Hey.”
Her gaze lifted. He hovered a few feet away, hands buried deep in his pockets, eyes haunted by the inescapable truth of what brought them here.
God, it hurt. Beyond the physical, beyond the shock and shame, it hurt to see him look at her that way. This would always be between them.
Her chest quaked as an unexpected sob tore out of her. He was there in an instant, crouching in front of her dangling legs, fists braced on either side of her hips, pressing into the paper cloth.
“Hey. Look at me.”
She blinked through her blurred vision, her lungs burning with each expelled, shallow breath. There was a hole inside of her, preventing her from breathing right. Maybe she’d never draw a full breath again.
“Right here, love.” Keeping his touch feather light, he lifted her chin until her eyes met his. “In. Out. Nice and slow. In ... and out.”
Her gaze dropped to his lips, her body mimicking the rise and fall of his shoulders. He dropped his hand but continued to hold her with his stare. She wished she could swim away in the blue of his eyes, disappear like a sapphire fleck, lost forever in a sea of beauty, far removed from all the ugly of this world.
“That’s it. Just breathe. Yer only job right now is breathing.”
He watched her for a few more moments as if a sort of reluctance to turn away held him close. Once her breathing regulated and she no longer seemed on the verge of hyperventilation, he retreated to the nearby wall.
As they waited for the nurse, he kept his head bowed and his focus mostly on the floor. But when he did look at her, his eyes shimmered more than usual.
His stoicism proved she’d been right about him all along. Callan was one of the great ones.
Anger rushed through her. She was suddenly furious with herself. Why had she never told him how she felt? She’d waited too long, and now she was broken.
A fist locked around her heart, squeezing mercilessly. Shutting her eyes, she trapped her tears until too many built and seeped through her lashes.
Her shoulders trembled to hold it all in, as if she’d swallowed a tornado, each tumultuous and traitorous thought left a trail of devastation in its wake. All her focus poured into containing the storm inside of her.
Stillness helped her silence the thoughts she didn’t want to think. As long as she didn’t move, she could almost forget that she hurt, pretend this happened to someone else. Almost.
“Em’ry? Do ye need me to call for a nurse?”
She blinked, heavy tears skating down her cheeks as she met his gaze. How was he so aware of her up and down turmoil?
“No. I was just thinking... Or trying not to.”
His brow creased, that long, jagged scar carving a divot in his skin. “Do ye pray?”
Of all the things she expected he might say, none had to do with faith. Her shoulder lifted. “Not since I was a little girl.”
He took a slow step closer. His hands reached into his collar, coming away with a beaded rosary. He held it out to her. “Take it.”
“I don’t know what to do with it. I’m not Catholic.”
“Just hold it.”
Her fingers closed around the long chain of beads, still warm from the heat of his skin. He sidled closer, his voice low. “The crucifix is for the Apostles’ Creed. Then the Our Father. All these little ones are for the Blessed Mother. And at the chain, ye say the Glory Be. Ye do it all the way around until ye get te here, the Hail Holy Queen.”
She blinked at him, his voice soothing in itself but his words going right over her head. “I don’t know any of those.”
He adjusted the beads, closing her fingers over the cross. “It starts like this. I believe in God...”
It didn’t matter what he said, only that he kept speaking. The quiet, baritone burr of his voice cocooned her in a familiar rumble. The way his mouth formed every memorized word made her feel stronger simply by listening to him. And when his tongue rolled over the R in Lord, she felt a shiver as if God Himself had reached down to touch her.
To her, they weren’t prayers. They were beautiful distractions, and she clung to them. Part of her believed he knew she would, as if he spoke them to simply give her something to hold.
Her hand turned, her fingers releasing the cross to close around his rough fingers. “You’re one of the great ones, Callan.”
His gaze devoured their entwined fingers. His wo
rds cut off and his brow pinched, the jagged white scars around his eye emphasized by the look of confusion twisting his face. He untangled their hands, leaving the rosary draped over her empty fingers as he took a step back.
“I think yer medicine’s kickin’ in.”
They’d given her something to relax and ease the pain. She did feel a little calmer, but it wasn’t the pills. “You don’t have to be embarrassed.” A breath of laughter punched inside of her chest as she glanced down at her bare legs dangling from the disposable hospital gown. “I think we’re past that now.”
“Em’ry, please don’t mistake me for a decent man. I’m not one of the good ones.”
“But you are. You’re good and decent and kind—”
“A decent man would have been there when ye needed him most.”
“You were.”
His face pinched. “I was late.”
Her heart broke for the regret shimmering in his eyes. “But you were still there. In the end, that means more to me than I’ll ever be able to explain.”
His gaze broke away, and he swallowed hard. “Try to rest. I’ll see what’s keepin’ the nurse.”
He didn’t stray far. And even when he stepped out of the room his presence somehow lingered, the heavy timbre of his voice and distinguishable thump of his boots always within earshot.
He was a rock. A life raft in a stormy sea.
Tonight, he saved her. She’d been shattered, nothing but jagged edges jutting out every which way, but he collected all her broken pieces and kept her together. He kept her stable. Human.
Her eyes grew heavy, and she drifted in and out of sleep, only partially awake when they moved her to a bed. The physical aches numbed to dull throbs. Whatever they gave her was magical, a buffer against the psychological damage unraveling on the inside.
Guilt washed away, teasing in the periphery of her mind, but never creeping close enough to sink its claws in. She was a passenger. Maybe a hostage. At the moment it didn’t seem to matter.
They’d stitched her up like a puppet, yet she still felt severed from her strings. Broken.
Her mind floated on a cloud of opiates and whatever else they put in her IV until there was nothing. Just ... emptiness. Robbed.
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