“Don’t you dare touch Jax or Sadie with that needle. They’re not initiating. I forbid it!” Cobra hiss-yelled at Spike.
I gaped at Cobra’s sheer audacity.
What did he think I was, some type of wimp?
“You can’t forbid me from doing anything. Stab me, Spike!” I yelled with authority.
Jax rolled his eyes, and Xerxes sighed heavily.
Sadly, Spike did nothing.
He stood still as a statue and watched the seven of us sway back and forth. Our muscles strained, sweat dripping down our faces.
Spike flicked at the gigantic needle in his hands.
Instantly, I had regrets.
Realistically, as a woman with dignity, I couldn’t let Cobra hinder me from having experiences. However, was getting stabbed by a massive fucking needle an experience I really wanted?
Hard no.
Unfortunately, feminine pride required sacrifices.
Sometimes, you just had to do shit to prove a point. I didn’t make the rules.
Speaking of which, my arms were really burning, and I didn’t want to be rude, but so far all Spike was doing was torturing us with silence.
You’d think a Mafia torturer named Spike would be a little more fear inducing. Sweat dripped down my forehead, and even though my arms were in tremendous pain, I got sleepy in the silence.
Suddenly, Spike said in a deep voice, “This is the first trial to become an alpha of the Mafia. A ruler of Serpentine City.”
“Exhilarating,” I muttered sarcastically under my breath.
Cobra glared at me and Jax like he was trying to kill us both with his eyes.
I chuckled. The pain in my shoulder blades was making me delirious.
Spike sneered, spat on the ground, and pulled a thick cigar out of his pocket.
He balanced the terrifying needle between his fingers as he bent over and lit it with a glowing lighter.
He sighed and blew a thick cloud directly into my face.
I hated the smell of smoke; it reminded me of Dick’s beta scent.
Choking, I gagged and gasped for air like I was drowning. “That’s vile.”
Spike didn’t reply, just walked slowly back and forth in front of us like he was in zero rush. Blowing smoke in our faces and grinning.
My arms shook from the strain of hanging by my wrists.
Maybe this was the torture, they were just going to leave us suspended for days.
“What does the don look like?” Spike stopped pacing. “Just answer and you can leave.”
The silence in the room was deafening.
We all came to the same conclusion, because no one spoke.
The alpha literally had “Loyalty” tattooed across his forehead. How dumb did he think we were?
Spike shrugged nonchalantly and resumed pacing. “Just describe the don’s appearance. Then you’ll be let down from the ropes.”
He was trying to act casual, but the crazed look in his dark eyes was the same one the fae queen had had before she lit me on fire.
“Don’t answer,” I whispered to my men. Just in case they were complete dumbasses, which, from the behavior I’d seen, was a very real possibility.
Jax nodded at me, and the multitude of gold chains hanging from his braids tinkled softly.
“No shit,” Cobra snarled at the same time Ascher barked, “Worry about yourself, Princess.”
The annoying alpha from before shouted. “Holy fuck. Will you fuckers ever shut up?”
Spike chuckled and adjusted his meaty paw on the syringe. A glowing green substance sloshed back and forth.
A tension headache pounded through my skull.
The damn flickering light was not helping my mental health.
Spike smiled and showcased a whole lot of pink gums and, at the most, four yellow teeth.
I gagged.
His jowls quivered with excitement. “You see this little guy here?” He held up the colossal fucking needle.
I rolled my eyes.
Men were always so dramatic.
Copper flooded my mouth as I bit my tongue hard to stop myself from shouting at him to just stab us already.
I accessed the dark recess in my brain and was 0.1 seconds away from spitting my blood at him and infecting his body when I remembered that this was a voluntary test.
My gut told me Cobra’s terrifying snake father would not take kindly to me controlling his torturer.
I forcibly swallowed down my blood.
The don better initiate me just for my superb self-control.
Do you know how hard it is to not stop a torturer with a massive needle when you can?
Very fucking hard.
Mentally, I patted myself on the shoulder for being a bad bitch of poise and self-control.
Spike shook the needle. “This is a rare herbal poison mixed with an even rarer witch spell.”
My jaw dropped.
Holy mother of the son god. Witches were real?
My entire world tilted on its axis.
I’d read fiction stories about witches and had always thought they gave off amazing energy. In one story, a witch had basically single-handedly saved a world from an evil dude who didn’t have a nose.
Iconic.
But it was always fiction.
Spike continued, “It’s a pretty little potion made specially for the don. Paralyzes a beast and pumps their body full of excruciating pain that maximizes fear. It’s the only solution in existence that can accurately recreate and predict how an individual will act under extreme torture.”
Suddenly, the pain in my shoulders didn’t seem so bad.
Why the fuck was I putting myself through this?
Before I could announce that I was quitting and would start my own gang where people didn’t have to go through an awful initiation, Spike stabbed the needle into the annoying alpha in the corner.
Immediately, the large man began to moan and writhe with his head flung back and his jaw clenched.
I desperately searched for the switch in my head that activated the numb, or the song of the hunt—whatever made me an emotionless brick wall.
Nothing happened.
Like I’d suspected, it needed to recharge.
I was fucked.
Spike walked swiftly down the line and stabbed my men in the neck.
Now he developed a sense of urgency?
I smiled sweetly at him and tried to give off helpless-female vibes. “Um, could I speak to your manager? I think there’s been a mistake.”
Spike stabbed me in the neck.
“Fuck you,” I growled as the awful pain sliced through my neck. There was a 100 percent chance he’d hit my spinal cord.
I moaned for the rafters and thrashed my legs desperately as a pain like nothing I’d ever known consumed every cell in my body.
It was like being lit on fire from the inside.
Jax roared loudly, and Ascher shouted expletives.
Cobra screamed.
Xerxes was dead silent.
The pain coursing through my body, which was the worst thing I’d ever experienced, somehow tripled in intensity.
I heaved and sobbed.
Cobra kept screaming.
Apparently, I was an awful person, because I was glad that I wasn’t suffering alone.
My momentary satisfaction left as my chest collapsed with agony. The pain morphed into the sensation of a boulder crushing me. It paralyzed my limbs.
The end was near.
A spider stared at me before it was crushed to death.
John dragged me through the forest.
The beta pawed at my chest as he pinned me to the floor.
“Die, cunt.”
“Useless servant.”
“Weak whore.”
Dick was in the room.
He slammed his belt down, over and over.
“I have to make you bleed!” Dick screamed at me. “It’s an order.”
He begged me to understand as he destroyed my flesh. Said it was for my own good.
I didn’t listen to Dick, just screamed at him to spare Lucinda while I was away at school.
She lived alone with Dick. Four long years. She was trapped with a monster. I’d abandoned her.
Slap.
Slap.
Slap.
“Wakey, wakey.” A man’s smashed face blurred in front of me in a haze of flickering green.
Agony rolled through me.
“Good, you’re with me. We can begin.” He smiled and showed off a row of gums and four yellow teeth.
Terror battered my chest and snapped at my sternum.
I gasped, trying to breathe around the awful weight.
I didn’t know who the man was.
Who was I?
Where was I?
I needed to fucking escape. I needed to get away. I tried to run, but realized my hands were trapped above me and I dangled off the ground.
I was hanging by a rope.
My fear increased tenfold, and a choking sob racked me.
The strange man grabbed my cheeks in his meaty paw and squeezed. “Yes, it’s all very scary, pretty dove. Concentrate.”
I pulled my head back and kicked desperately.
The man easily held me in place and said, “You met with the don recently.”
Disjointed images flashed through my head of a gorgeous pale man with long black hair and a massive white snake around his shoulders.
I couldn’t remember how or why I’d met him; the boulder on my chest was too heavy.
It was crushing me.
The meaty fingers holding my face squeezed my cheeks until my teeth cut the sides of my mouth.
“Describe him to me,” the strange man demanded.
Tangy copper filled my throat and triggered memories of Dick’s fist slamming across my cheek. His punches had always cut the inside of my mouth.
I opened my mouth to speak, but stopped as I stared at the black words sprawled across his forehead.
It was the same word tattooed on the don’s neck.
The strange man shook my face back and forth violently, and the oppressive weight of fear returned with a flash.
I couldn’t remember what I’d been thinking. It was just out of grasp.
What I needed to do was escape.
“DESCRIBE THE DON TO ME!” the man alpha-barked in my face, his gross, warm spittle spraying across my skin.
Just like Dick.
There was a boulder crushing my chest, and every cell in my body screamed at me that this was the fucking end.
A man was hurting me.
There was only one way to respond.
I opened my mouth and, with all my might, spat blood all over the fucker.
He slapped me across the face. Front hand, back hand. Repeat.
The room spun, and the weight on my chest expanded endlessly into a mountain.
I would not survive.
I needed to escape.
My abuser arched a mangled eyebrow. “What about a man named Cobra? Tell me what you know about him. Anything at all and I’ll stop.”
A fuzzy warmth spread through my chest, and a small burst of happiness zinged across my lower back.
Images of a gorgeous man covered in sparkly jewels, pushing food into my mouth and arguing with me, flashed through my mind like a movie.
The warmth in my chest dulled into fear.
“DESCRIBE COBRA!” he alpha-barked.
With blood dripping down my lips, my aching face contorted into a smile. “Go fuck yourself.”
His fists descended in a haze of violence as he asked me questions.
Even as he beat me.
I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t stop smiling.
And I said nothing.
