The pain woke me.
Its angry claws dug into my chest and arms, dragging me up from the depths of a deep and dreamless unconsciousness.
A foul taste defiled my dry mouth and I resisted the swift and sudden urge to turn over and vomit onto the cement floor. But, unwilling to move just yet, I forced the rank taste of death down as I swallowed, trying to moisten my aching throat. Knowing there would be nothing to throw up even if I succumbed to the urge. My body felt frail, wisp-like as though hollowed out and stuffed with leaves.
My sight returned in increments, eyelids heavy and crusted so thickly my eyelashes plucked themselves free of my flesh as I worked to open them.
Breathing hurt.
My brain was on fire.
I couldn’t feel my fingers.
But I was alive.
My neck strained as I turned stiffly on the sweat-soaked pillow beneath my head, trying to blink through the haze clouding my eyes. The cold room wavered in and out of focus. I groaned, but that only made my ribs scream in protest of the vibration.
Fuck.
I couldn’t be sure how much longer I lay there in a pool of my own sweat and blood and piss and stink, but long enough that the feeling returned to my fingers. Long enough that I could draw a fuller breath and the dim light no longer seared my eyes. Until I could move enough to reach over my battered body to the IV needle I’d haphazardly jabbed into my vein when the fever came on, bringing with it a delirium so complete that I saw four of my own arm as I fed the needle into my skin. I tugged it out with a grunt, and felt the warmth of fresh blood pool and spill down my forearm.
The IV bag hung shriveled where I’d fastened it to the wall above my cot with a blade stabbed directly into the wooden beam.
I had no doubt it was that bag of hydrative solution that prevented my death.
I’d misjudged the injuries.
The broken ribs were more a nuisance than anything, and gratefully none had punctured a lung. The fractured elbow would heal. The bleeding into the skin and soft tissues around my chest was ugly as shit but it would fade with time and proper circulation. It was the head trauma I’d misjudged. The internal bleeding had seemed slight. Manageable without emergency intervention.
But instead of better, it’d gotten so much worse.
It was a small miracle I was alive. That I still had the ability of rational thought.
Though I doubted the throbbing ache pressing on my skull like a drum would ease any time soon.
Hands shaking, I carefully eased myself upright, shutting my eyes against a wave of vertigo I was sure would take me to the floor. But my grip on the cot’s edge saved me from the fall and I waited until it passed.
My cell phone peeked out from beneath the cot and bent to grab it, coughing when the movement sent a bolt of lancing pain through my side.
The screen flashed to life, blinding me, the battery icon in the top corner red and blinking.
This couldn’t be right.
I’d been on this cot, unconscious for five days. Nearly a fucking week.
Slowly desiccating in this dungeon of my own making.
My upper lip curled into a snarl.
What had I missed in those days.
Where was she?
Was she still alive?
How many times had she allowed them to touch her?
My blood heated with a fury so swift and all consuming it made my vision blur and tint with crimson. Made my weak muscles shudder and ache. The Crows would be punished for touching what was mine. No amount of pain or weakness would stop me from meting it out.
It’d been too long.
A week since the fall from the window, and I could do nothing in this state. I had to wonder if I could even stand, much less follow her.
Ava Jade. What have you been up to?
The question ate at me, striking a new fire in my blood. Enough to propel me to standing.
My legs buckled, but I braced myself on the cool wall, damp with condensation.
It took minutes to cross the small room, but I got there, to the long desk and the sleeping monitors awaiting the stroke of my fingers to wake them.
I slipped into my chair, numb fingers turning each one on in turn before reaching below to the small fridge to grab a bottle of water.
The unwatched video and audio files were in the hundreds. I settled in to watch and listen to every last one, sipping the chilled water as they began to play, their sounds filling the space. Filling my mind. Sharpening my focus and my resolve.
It took hours, and with each recording, my muscles tensed. Until they burned. Until I burned.
My knees popped as I rose once more, going to the wall where I kept her.
Her face stared down at me with anger. With disdain. With resolve. With eyes sparking with life.
I pressed a palm to one of the photos I developed. The one of her asleep in her room at Briar Hall. So innocent. So peaceful. It was a face I doubted any other man had ever seen. I treasured it most of all.
I thought she would, but she didn’t wake when I crept in. Not when I hid in the shadows at the edge of the room with her panties in one fist pressed to my face and my cock in the other. I liked that she smoked pot with Becca some nights before bed. Those were the nights she slept the soundest. Though I wouldn’t tolerate such behavior once she was in my possession.
My eyes shut as I recalled that scent. The scent of her pussy. The taste, diluted by the soapy flavor of her laundry detergent.
Soon, there would be nothing to dilute that taste. Nothing to corrupt its singular essence.
When she was mine, and no one else’s.
I traced the red line of string fastened between two pins on the wall, the one tracing upward, to the blueprints for Briar Hall, and across to the picture of Rebecca Hart. Her network of red lines flaring out like a spider’s web over the top of the wall. To her father and his business dealings. Her mother’s death certificate. Her connection to the Crows. She was always my mark. The girl Rook Clayton had taken a sexual interest in last year. The girl who had every reason to hate the Crows. The girl who, if I worked her just right, would prove a worthy asset and informant. I’d hoped, eventually, to turn her into a full blown spy. Convince her to bed them, gather better intel. For me. For us. For all the things she ever wanted but couldn’t have.
Once, Becca’s was the only female face on this wall.
And then everything changed…
I could hardly believe it when I saw Ava Jade all those weeks ago on the pre-dawn streets of Thorn Valley. There she was, muttering curses to herself as she hauled a swollen suitcase up the street. Though I didn’t know her name then, only her face. Those fiery eyes. The whip of her sleek black hair.
I wasn’t certain at first, but I followed her, unwilling to lose her again if fate had brought us back together.
I’d searched for her after that night in Lennox at the train tracks, but I never found her. I assumed she’d run after what she did.
The memory made my cock hard in my soiled jeans and I pawed at it, a shuddering breath passing my lips.
If I’d known how she would haunt my every sleeping and waking moment, I’d have taken her then, but I was younger. I hadn’t come into myself. I didn’t know what it was to own another person. To bend them to my will. To break them. To burn myself so irrevocably into their minds—to imprint myself so fully onto their souls—that they were no longer them anymore, but just extensions of me.
Mine.
And just like Ava Jade, there was no one to miss them when they never resurfaced again.
But I wouldn’t bury her.
Her, I would keep. I would practice restraint for her.
She would see, I could be her everything and more.
How serendipitous, that if I hadn’t taken her father’s life, she never would have left Lennox. Never would have gone to Thorn Valley. I might never have found her.
Fate.
She just needed time and a strong hand to show her what she couldn’t see for herself. That she was better off without her father. Better off without The Crows. Better off with me.
It would take time and patience to show her. To smother her fire and teach her obedience.
I would do it for her. I would do anything for her.
But first, there were three problems to deal with.
Well, more than three, but I would start with them just as I’d always planned to. The Crows.
It would be to both my personal benefit and my advancement in the gang to decimate them, and after all the recon I’d been doing I was finally ready.
I’d do it for Ava Jade.
But I was also going to do it for me.
We deserved Thorn Valley and all the territory between. It should’ve been ours from the start. If our leader had half a brain, it’d already be in our hands. But no one seemed to understand that a man’s greatest weapon was his mind. Not his gun. Nor the number of bullets inside it.
His mind and what he could do with it. The things he could make happen simply with knowledge and know how.
I reached for the new papers resting in the print basket atop the desk and tucked a few into Ava Jade’s file from Briar Hall to inspect with a closer eye when my head stopped throbbing. The others I placed on the board, tacking them on, running red thread between every other thing they could be connected to.
The connection formed immediately between two items and I grinned. Gotcha. Snatching a permanent marker, I wrote does daddy know? Beside the gps location I just pinned. A concert venue.
I grabbed a burner phone from the basket next to the printer and slid the cheap plastic backing off to shove in a prepaid SIM card, powering it on. A message waited for me there. One I hadn’t expected.
Unknown: This ends now. If you have even a shred of dignity, meet me in person. I want to see the face of the coward who tried to drug me.
I smiled.
Not yet, my love.
But soon. Sooner than you think. Once they’re gone, and it’s only you.
I quickly powered off the phone and pulled out the sim. I couldn’t use it now. Too risky.
I’d have to get a message to the boss another way. Let him know I was alive. Still undercover.
And Becca. After what I saw and heard from my surveillance, she would no longer be of use to me. A shame. She’d proven great practice for the real thing. A testament to my ability to control my darkest urges. It wasn’t without great difficulty at first, but once I began to look at it as the game it was, it became easier. Easier still when it was a game I kept winning.
I’d take this minor loss and learn from it. As I had every other loss before it.
The Crows wouldn’t catch me off guard again.
I unpinned the single sheet of paper containing my false identity next to Becca’s photo and tore it in two.
For Becca, I was Jericho.
But I had different names for others.
None of them my real name.
I couldn’t stand the sound of it spoken aloud.
All I could hear was my mother’s voice in that name. Her threats. Her dominance. Her manic commands to do it more, do it better, do it, or else.
My self reckoning happened the day I turned the tables. The moment I took the control from her hands and put into my own. Wrapping those hands around her pale throat. The transference of power flooded me like a drug. And I couldn’t get enough.
I wouldn’t ever get enough.
It was time for a new persona. A new face. A new way in.
And I had just the thing.
They wouldn’t even see me coming.
