by Celia Crown
Chained
Celia Crown
Copyright © 2019 by Celia Crown
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are from the author's imagination or folklore, legends, and general myths.
The book or any portion of the book may not be reproduced or used under any circumstances, except with the written permission from the author. Public names, movies, televisions, and locales, or any references are used for atmospheric purposes. Any similarities and resemblances to alive or dead people, events, brands, and locales are all complete coincidences.
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Cover Editor: Designrans
Editor: Syeda Erum Fatima Naqvi
Contents
Copyright
Warning
Chained
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Author’s other works!
Follow the Author
Warnin g: This contains sensitive material that will be triggering to some, and so reader discretion is advised. Death and Violence.
Chained
by Celia Crown
She’s a woman walking on a path of self-destruction and he’s a man finding his way to redemption; their lives aren’t meant to synchronize in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Vengeance comes with a tune of chaos, death holds hand with prayers, and purging dances in flames.
Hera is a tragedy, beautiful and disastrous.
Damon Maverick is a beast, chained and owned.
She broke his iron cage, and he will follow her to the end of the world.
The world can burn for all he cares; Hera has been Damon’s the moment she snapped the restraints on him.
She doesn’t want to be saved, but he is done following orders.
He will save her.
Chapter One
Damon
It isn’t much of a fight.
The other fighter was an amateur with no formidable form. When I was in the ring, he was wide open in every aspect of his defense, and it was pathetic that he called himself a fighter. He bounced in his toes too much. It throws off his balance from time to time.
Looking back, I could have ended the fight—ended his life in five minutes, but that wasn’t the order that was given to me.
The man that owns me is the older brother of the local mob boss in Philadelphia, and he has a lot of power in terms of men and influence. When he wanted something, his little brother would get it for him. If it is trouble that he is in, the younger brother will bail him out by any means necessary.
There is resentment from the older brother because their old man had left the mob business to his smarter and more intuitive little brother, and the older brother had been milking that cow for all the benefits without having to work for it.
Abe is the younger brother of the Callahan crime family. He’s the brain and strategic manifestation of a businessman. Abel is the older brother, and he is a leech that sucks everything dry with his sick sense of fun.
He thinks beating a man to death is entertainment.
The pain in my body from a fight just mere weeks ago still hasn’t healed. Abel doesn’t let me heal fully before he has another fight lined up.
It’s a common thing; Abel would have me fight the fighters that other crime families have in their hands. The money would be placed as bets and defeat is not an answer. Those who have been defeated were killed on the spot with a bullet between their eyes, and I have been forced to witness all the deaths that ultimately stemmed from me.
I signed their deaths with my fists.
Their deaths became a motivation for me to live on, to win the fights that are thrown in my way. I can’t afford to lose; my life depends on it, and I don’t want to die.
Every old and unhealed injury is the foundation for new and scorching pain that would amplify the existing wounds.
I don’t stop. I have to push my body to the limit and breakthrough those limitations to be better and faster. Being stronger and merciless will get me another day of survival, and I can’t think that one day I will lose because there will always be someone stronger than me out there.
There were times where my death came close with opponents that are strong and smart; those are the days that I think back and learn from them. There won’t be a next time for me to stand here and let an opportunity like that go to waste. Being the best fighter is what keeps me alive.
The blood that has been spilled in my hands isn’t the reason why my body feels the adrenaline. It’s the fear of death that makes my blood run cold. It runs so cold that it’s boiling when I face my opponents.
A commotion outside breaches through the room where I’m wrapping my bloodied hands. There are voices that scream of fear and rumblings of what sounds like footsteps stomping in chaos.
I’m on my feet in seconds and rushing out of the room to find the source of the commotion. This building is abandoned for years with dust and rodents collecting at the sides of the corners, and it’s the wide base level area that attracted the mobsters for a night of fighting.
My eyes sweep the area; mobsters are staying put with their bodyguards flanking their sides, but the rich bastards are running away before the next fight can happen. They paid millions to have a seat in the front. They want to watch with their own eyes and feel the rapid animals being released on each other.
My shoulders are being knocked back by the swarm of people trying to leave the arena, but some stayed to see what the hell fell through the roof. The damage done to the ceiling left a big hole that allowed the moon to shine through. The rubbles had landed on the spot where fighters are supposed to fight.
There sits a metal case of something alarmingly ominous that sends chills down my spine. I can’t see the contents inside because it’s locked under what seems to be military-grade security.
No one dares to move as the rubbles beside it crumble from gravity before they find the right place to become still. The lights cast down allowing me to see dust particles swirling around from the debris, and the scent of mold gets stronger.
Foolish mobsters stand there with arms crossed over their chest while Abel cowards behind his men. He refuses to be the first one in the line of battle due to his spinelessness.
No one could understand how he could be the brother of the infamous Callahan mob boss, but family runs deeper than blood at times. It would be dishonorable for the younger brother to kill the older brother without provocation, especially since their father is such an old-school scoundrel.
I’d imagine the tension in the house to be quite intense. In traditional families, the eldest son takes the throne from his father and runs the family business to another level of success before handing it off to either his younger brother or his offspring.
Abel didn’t live up to that standard, and everyone talks of how much the old man despises his son, and family is a business that is dealt with at home to avoid embarrassment. The old man has honor and self-respect even if he commits a crime on a daily basis.
There was a time where Abel had gotten in trouble with the law for being caught with a gun that was used in mass murder. His father bailed him out of jail before his trial and shipped his ass off to a place that no one knows, and for a long time, people thought it was the final straw for the old man.
Then Abel came back with the same smugness and cowardice that mingles with pettiness. A part of me wasn’t surprised that he was alive; the old mob boss was a reasonable man wh
o finds out the truth before delivering the proper punishment for the crimes.
Some people had been accused or framed for crimes that they didn’t commit, but the former boss had taken the time to deal with the matter individually. Those who have their names cleared were free to continue to work for the Callahan family, and those who have been found guilty were executed by the man himself.
The loyalty of his men runs deep, and it’s a factor that makes other mob bosses admire him. No one understood why he returned and left the spot for his youngest son, but speculation has people whispering again about his grandchildren that the youngest son had during a fling.
Not a single soul knows where the woman had gone, but she is most likely dead because no mother would give up their children willingly.
Then again, in a world of blood and violence, everyone’s concern is themselves. Children are a matter of disposal if they are given a choice, and no one is truly safe; self-preservation comes before anything else.
I am one of the best fighters, and I am still unaware of tomorrow’s fate. I only care about myself and living through the night. Everyone else can die at my hands for all I care.
I have no one to live for. Everyone in my family is dead from a freak accident that was inevitable. Getting thrown into foster care and running up a sheet of crimes in the system, I was never adopted, and I preferred it that way.
I don’t need to be saved. I’m capable of surviving in this world without love. It’s a stupid belief that love can save the deranged ones, but they need to understand that some people don’t want love and some are so far gone that not even a higher power can save them.
I’m somewhere between not needing love and being too damaged to be saved.
I would have gone away sooner, but having a run-in with the Callahan family has trapped me in their grasp for years. I was their fighter, a beast that needed to be caged and locked up until there is too much aggression.
Of all fucking criminals, I had stepped on the toes of Abel with his petty pea-brain.
I let out an aggravated sigh as I switch my view from watching the man hide behind his guards to the questionable package that is delivered from the roof.
By now, more than half of the rich bastards had run out. It leaves the mobsters and the rich bastards that have no qualm of their money feeding the inevitable deaths for tonight.
Everyone stands there to absorb the shock. There is a round of murmur that breaks the silence of the arena before one bodyguard from each mobster takes a step forward as a cue of unspoken order from the mobsters themselves.
Abel hasn’t seen me yet as I’m on the top floor that overlooks the crowd. He stands at the bottom where his front seat gives him the best vantage point of the bloodshed.
From a distance, Abel looks too pale, and I can’t tell if it’s from the moonlight or the mysterious package. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he’s scared shitless right now. Abel can’t handle anything remotely dangerous without screaming for his guards to kill the threat.
The former mob boss did the right thing by not giving this weak man a position of power.
He wouldn’t know what to do when a crisis arises.
Lately, there has been a string of unrelated murders of people getting skinned alive because more than one bodies clad in bloodied muscles were barely breathing when help got to them. None of them survived the encounter with the attacker, and it’s shocking that they were built with power and physical strength.
Whoever killed them was most likely a man with immense strength and a body of iron to be able to carry that dead weight to hang them up in the most public places for maximum shock value.
The victims included a financial manager at a law firm, a laborer working on a construction site, a soccer mom married with two children, and a philosopher student a day before her graduation ceremony.
The victims vary from the perspective of age, gender, occupations, and geolocations. Two of the victims were overseas, and the others were local. All were with different upbringings and socioeconomic backgrounds; the police can’t find any leads that tied them together, and they are starting to believe that it’s a serial killer.
A sadist with no remorse, he just kills for fun and will keep going until his victim pool runs dry.
The only group the killer hasn’t selected from is children. The police hoped that the killer has a conscience and stay away from children. Some criminals have an ethic code of not killing elders, pregnant women, and children.
So far, the killer hasn’t touched the elderly, pregnant women, and children. The triad is still intact, and it would be horrifying to know that a killer is out there with no moral limits.
The police suspect that it’s an individual who has been released from a psychiatric hospital. No reports have been given out to the public yet, but the police don’t believe anyone has escaped from an asylum.
I know that the rich and powerful would want that to be covered up because hospitals are run by political figures who want to climb the ladder of success. A deranged psychopath on the loose and responsible for the skinning of people is not exactly good for their public image.
It makes them look irresponsible, and they will lose supporters from the public, and that also means that they will be losing money.
Money is what makes them powerful, and without it, they are just regular Joes.
“Fuck!”
I snap my attention back to the arena. My eyes adjust to the sudden movement as the black figures jump back from the innocuous suitcase; murmurs start up again as I lean over the edge to get a better look.
No such luck, the guards are all wearing black and shoulder to shoulder when they back away. I squint my eyes to adjust to the angle to make out what the shape it is in the case, but it’s too far for me to see.
“Hold it up!” one of the mobsters shouts from the crowd from below.
I turn to see who it is, but no one makes any move to indicate who had spoken. As the guard of the mobster shakes his body in an attempt to gather his courage, I hear something in the distance.
It’s soft, almost inaudible through the darkness of this abandoned building. A tune of haunting melodies flows into my ears. The beautiful voice has laughter in it, and my heart nearly leaps out of my chest when it stops.
My head snaps in both of my directions, searching for the source of it and it never comes back. My eyes are drawn to the crowd again, but what I’m seeing is unbelievable.
Heinous and frightening, the content of the briefcase isn’t documents or clothes. The guard has two of his fingers pinching each side of the shoulder parts of what is left of a human; the entire picture of seeing a full-body human skin flopping in the wind and displaying under the moonlights is nauseatingly disturbing.
From face to toes, every piece of skin is intact, and the face of the victim is bent to the back where it faces the guard.
A wave of shocked disgust echoes through the arena, but Abel’s reaction is the strongest as he yells at the guard to put that shit away as if it’s fucking laundry being aired out.
The guard didn’t need to be told twice as the skin plops down on the ground; it shocked everyone as they all jump back away from it.
Being in the mafia should have exposed them to horrendous life experiences, but this might take the cake. The most I have heard of is people getting dismembered for easy disposal methods, but this is the first time I have personally seen the skin of a human being.
There is more than one, and they are all neatly folded in the suitcase in such bizarre ways that it must have been done by a maddened individual who isn’t right in the head.
Normal people don’t have the stomach for this, and it takes me everything to hold onto the bile that wants to escape from my throat.
A humming starts again. The same voice and tune get louder as it echoes throughout the arena. Everyone hears it this time as they all move their head to find where the sound is coming from.
Guards are drawing their we
apons in preparedness for whatever shitstorm is about to happen. The humming becomes words, and they are words that send chills down my spine.
Not many things scare me after being exposed to a life of slavery in the hands of Abel, but this one makes it to the top of my list.
“Maybe, maybe… you’re here. Don’t hide. I’m knocking on your blood. Can you hear me?”
The lyrics of a song that I’m not familiar with brands itself into my brain as my blood pumps obnoxiously loud into my ear. The rocking of my heart blurs my vision as the area sways.
“Take a deep breath. It won’t hurt you too much. I’m just having fun. Don’t be mad.”
There is no rhythm or rhyme to the song, but the tune that comes from the woman’s voice strings the words together into a song of desolation.
It’s as if she is talking to me. Those words aren’t meant to be in a song, and it’s too systematically pieced together.
I choke on a breath. My heart pounds harder as my eyes squint to find the balance in an unstable world. My knees buckle to the ground, and my shoulders slam into the wall behind me as my feet stagger unevenly.
Sliding down the wall, I cough as my eyes have black spots clouding at the corner before they spread. I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head and colliding the back of my skull to the wall. The pain beats whatever nerve gas is filling the room as the crisscrossed railing lets me see the fall of everyone in the area.
I bring the collar of my shirt up and press it to my nose with my hand to prevent more gas from entering into my body. It slows the process, but the gas is acting up too quickly.
I don’t lose consciousness, but my body is numb because of the gas, and I can see everything clearly as my hand drops to my lap.
Rapidly blinking the blurriness away, I watch as a hooded figure step into the dimly lit arena with a gas mask over her face. The voice is a dead giveaway of being a woman, but I never expected her to be so small.