Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 739(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 493(@300wpm)
We only managed to locate this place through the tracker I had Jethro insert in Gareth’s bracelet. We lost the signal when Declan took him on a plane, but we got it back again once they landed in Chicago and then they headed all the way here.
It took us time to arrange the plane and the plan, but we finally made it—without a wink of sleep on my part. I couldn’t do that when Gareth’s fate is unknown.
Declan’s men start shooting at us immediately, but Simone and the others cover me as we kill our way in.
Simone’s presence is like a wall of steel at my back. The air is thick and suffocating inside as she shoots and wrestles men twice her size with brutal efficiency, tossing one of them into the wall.
I grab one by his hair and slam his head on the concrete, watching as it cracks open.
Jethro gives me directions to where Gareth is, and I follow, letting Simone and the others take care of the men.
The floor beneath me thuds with each step, but I barely hear or see anything. Not the shouts, the alarms, the gunshots.
As I shoot open the door to the room where Gareth is, my heart pounds so violently in my chest, I feel the sickening sound of it in my throat, like it's trying to rip its way out.
Gareth’s arms are bound in a straitjacket as he bangs his head on the wall.
Again.
And again.
The thuds are a disturbing silent scream.
Blood spatters across the wall, splashing over a projected video, and drips in jagged lines, carving small veins that trail down to the floor, pooling beneath him. It stains his bare feet, and his white pants, and there’s a red blotch on the arm of his straitjacket—messing him up.
You messed him up.
I rush toward him and pull him back by the shoulders. There’s a gaping wound in his forehead, blood trickling over his nose, his eyes, his entire face.
Fuck.
I wipe it with the back of my sleeve, keeping the gun out of reach.
His eyes stare at nowhere, his pupils are so dark and blown up, he looks like an entirely different person.
My little monster, who often takes pride in his unearthly beauty, is now all bloodied.
Because of me.
“Gareth?”
He pulls from my grip with inhuman strength and bangs his head harder on the wall. It’s so powerful, I think he’ll crack his skull open.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he mumbles. “Stop laughing, shut up.”
I press my hand against the wall, and he slams against it as I shoot the projector in the ceiling, making the video stop.
Gareth stays still, his bloody forehead resting on my palm. His breathing is so low, it causes my skin to prickle.
“Gareth? Can you hear me?”
No reply.
Goddamn it.
I pull him up straighter and he stands on unsteady feet, swaying as if he can’t feel his legs while still looking at the wall with those blown-up eyes.
Eyes that used to only look at me.
Following me everywhere.
Even when he pretends he doesn’t care.
Now they’re not seeing me.
“Gareth?” I stroke his face, beneath his eyes, his cheek. “Say something.”
The wound in his head is still bleeding. I need to have that looked at—
“Sir, we’re leaving!” Simone growls from the door. “Now.”
I gather Gareth in my arms, and he’s so stiff, his limbs resemble a rigid cord. I manage to lean his head on my shoulder.
“I’m getting you out of here,” I whisper, but he’s not responding, his lips trembling, his face pale, his eyes still staring nowhere.
Like they’re dead.
No.
Simone covers me as I rush back to the van and then we speed away, Declan’s men still shooting at us. The man himself wasn’t there, but I’ll find him and rip his head off his shoulders for what he did.
I cut through Gareth’s straitjacket with a knife as Simone forms a makeshift bandage for his forehead.
My molars grind when I see the long slashes along his arm, and the sloppy stitches Declan probably did to torture him further are mostly ripped open. Bruises on his torso, his collarbone, his chest.
I’m going to torture that motherfucker Declan before I kill him. A week for every goddamn wound he put on my Gareth’s previously perfect body.
You ruined him, not Declan.
It’s you.
“Gareth.” My lips tremble around the word. “Talk to me. Say something, baby, please.”
He blinks twice, and I think he sees me, even for a fraction of a second, but then his eyes stare up.
At nothing.
No. At something.
Anything.
Just not at me.
33
KAYDEN
“Alexander Carson speaking.”
I release a long breath at the sound of his voice.
Not too long ago, I wanted to kill this motherfucker with everything in me, but now, I don’t wish him harm—just because he’s Gareth’s grandfather.
The grandfather he wouldn’t stop talking about. Grandpa this and Grandpa that.
I don’t know when my animosity toward Alexander stopped, but it was probably around the time Cassandra started appearing in my nightmares trying to kill Gareth.