So this was how they were going to do this. No beating around the bush. I didn’t know what to do.
I swallowed hard before tipping my chin up and flicking my gaze from her to the two men looking down at me. I hated all three of them. I really did. “I don’t have the money, and I know you aren’t going to believe me anyway, but it’s the truth,” I replied slowly, sniffling, knowing I needed to buy The Defender time, and pissing her off wasn’t the right way to do it, but…
She stared at me for a long time with dark brown eyes, and I just stared back.
I hadn’t taken the money from her. From them. I hadn’t asked for any of this shit.
Eventually, the woman ticked her head to the side as she flicked her index finger just enough for me to barely notice. “Are you sure that’s what you want your answer to be?”
There was something about her tone that didn’t sit well with me, not at all.
But I had to do this for The Defender. This wasn’t about me. “I’m sorry they stole from you.” That was a lie. I was sorry that this had trickled down to me. If anybody deserved to have money stolen, it would have been them. I’d done my research. I knew what kind of drugs they produced. What kind of crimes they were guilty of. But as much as I wanted to give her—give all of them—the middle finger, I had someone to protect. Someone worth keeping my mouth shut for. “I don’t have the money, and that’s what I’m going to tell you now, what I’m going to tell you six months from now. I don’t have it.”
The woman’s expression went carefully blank in this creepy way before she smiled, and it wasn’t a nice one. Just from the look in her eye, I knew there was nothing behind it. “Everyone always starts by saying they don’t know, and most of them change their mind after a while, Altagracia.”
I shivered at her use of my name, and if I had some sense, I might have shivered at her low-key threat too.
My sense had walked out the door the second a member of the Trinity had landed in my yard. And that’s why I shrugged at her, holding back a groan at the discomfort. “I don’t have it, and I don’t deserve this.”
I hated her fucking smile.
“So be it.” She turned to one of the men who had tied me up, still looking so amused. “Boss said not to hurt her yet, so don’t leave any bruises. I don’t know when he’s going to come by, and I don’t feel like listening to a lecture from him.”
I’d watched a lot of action movies in my life.
Maybe it was because I’d liked the characters’ strength or their sense of adventure, or more than likely, I just liked revenge.
And in those action movies, a lot of them included torture in some way. There was always some information that needed to be taken by force. But everyone knew that once you ratted something or someone out, you were dead. The “bad guys” were never going to free you. They were never going to let you live no matter what they promised.
And that’s why I kept my mouth closed.
Because I knew.
I’d made my decision. And I especially wasn’t going to give this motherfucker who had burned my house down shit. Even if she was giving me granola bars to keep me alive.
So I wasn’t surprised.
Heartbroken and scared, definitely, but not surprised.
What felt like some kind of cloth was put over my face. A familiar, faint sound I wouldn’t recognize until later came from somewhere in the room, and in the time it took me to take a deep breath that had the material getting sucked into my mouth, the water was there. Rushing over my mouth and forehead and chin.
The water came again and again.
The sound of the door opening had me glancing up from the cocoon my arms had formed around my head. I was huddled into the corner, shivering and miserable. I was fucking scared too. I hadn’t stopped being scared. But if I’d thought I was mad before, it was nothing compared to now.
If someone examined my cells under a microscope right now, they’d probably discover they were shaped like middle fingers at this point.
And they would have been aimed at this asshole. At the men doing what she asked them to do. At everything.
This was all her fucking fault, whoever the hell she was.
And it was her who appeared at the door, hands casually inside the front pockets of her now-blue slacks, the expression on her face so blasé, so I-don’t-have-a-worry-in-the-world, I wished there was a zombie apocalypse so somebody could eat her face.
Hell, I wished I was The Defender and could drop an airplane on her ass.
I wished I could give her a yeast infection. I’d settle for that, no problem.
“Are you ready to talk now?” the woman asked so casually it was like she was asking what time it was. Like she hadn’t asked these other motherfuckers to drown me.
I’d thought about it a lot honestly. Over the last few hours, while I’d been sitting there, alone, wet, and cold, with a headache that put every migraine I’d ever had to shame and my nose and throat almost unbearable from being forced to feel like I was on the verge of drowning for what felt like hours, I’d thought a lot about how I could have handled this differently. If I should have. And no matter what way I looked at it, I kept reaching the same conclusion.
No.
I wasn’t going to beg them, and I wouldn’t give anybody up, no matter what they promised—and nobody had promised anything.
Fuck this whole shit.
So that’s why I lifted my gaze, hoping like hell I wasn’t making anything close to the expressions that The Defender had shot my way at any point.
I’d choked and coughed for hours thanks to this asshole.
My whole face, every nook and cranny in my head, was on fire thanks to this asshole.
She sighed again, but it seemed superficial to me, like she was putting on an act. “I don’t enjoy doing this, you know.”
I bet she didn’t.
Liar.
I lifted my eyes and focused on the two men standing in the corners of the cell. Even if she didn’t, they did. I was going to remember the way they laughed after I’d thrown up all over myself. It was why I’d taken my shirt off when they’d removed the zip ties on my wrists to give me a break and tossed it in the corner.
I was going to remember their faces.
I was going to remember all of this.
Maybe they were just employees doing what they had to do to pay their bills. Who was I to talk? But I’d heard them. Seen their sly smiles. They’d enjoyed what they had done.
That had made it personal.
And I wouldn’t forget.
That became the second reason why I decided I was going to make it through this and out of here, some way, somehow. So that one day, even if it was in the afterlife, I could pay these two a little visit. Just a little one. If I was still alive, I’d have to spend the rest of my life amending for what I would do, but that was something I could live with. And if I was a ghost, they were fucked because I wasn’t going anywhere.
The woman put her hands on her hips, everything about her just so irritating. “All you have to do is talk. I’d like for you to tell me a few things, that’s all.” She slipped her hands in her pockets and aimed for another fake smile. “I know you didn’t take the money yourself, but make this easier on all of us and tell me where it is.”