Page 112 of The Demons We Hide

Lex and I round the final train car with a dark swath of graffiti spray-painted down its side that almost makes it look as if the big car is bleeding. My feet slow to a stop, and Lex doesn’t force me to keep walking as I take in the scene before me. Several yards away, the blacked-out van that my kidnappers had used to take me away from the parking lot sits with its back door slung open.

I don’t remember anything slamming into me as the driver had spun us all over the place, forcing not just me to roll around in the back, but his companions as well. They must have had it locked down, though, because now I see the half open black duffle bag as well as the twine and other tools sitting in the back. My eyes land on the hammer sticking out of the duffle’s zipper.

“Baby?” Lex squeezes my hand, but I pull away, turning my gaze to the rest of the clearing in the train’s graveyard.

There are four figures under the moonlight. Three kneeling assholes with their ski masks removed, bleeding and glaring at a cold-faced fourth.

Gio.

Jesus…fuck.

The man in front of me is not a man I recognize. I always thought it odd that Giovanni Vargas was known as the heir of Silverwood’s most notorious crime lord and yet, he’d always acted so nonchalant. I see it now in the blood staining his hands, reaching all the way up to his elbows. The droplets on his cheek as he glares daggers at the three men before him.

A sex god turned killer, that’s what he is.

In his hands is a long cylindrical piece of metal—likely something either pulled from the back of his victim’s own van or scrap metal from the yard around us. Gio turns and though I want to step away from the fury blazing in his eyes, I don’t.

A hand touches my back, making me jump. “It’s alright, baby,” Lex soothes. “You know he’d never hurt you.”

Do I know that, though?

“Took you long enough,” Gio says, directing the words to Lex.

“I wasn’t sure if I should bring her or not.”

Gio glances at me. A prickle of awareness crawls through me as his gaze spans down my face and to my throat and then the rest of me. His already frowning mouth deepens into a scowl.

Without a word, he turns and brings the metal pole up and whacks it across the face of the man closest to him. My eyes widen and Lex releases some low hum in the back of his throat. “Not that I mind you beating the shit out of him, but was there a reason for that one?” he asks.

Gio glowers down at the man whimpering underneath him while the other two scoot away from him on their knees. It takes me a moment to realize why they’re moving so slow—Gio has bound not just their hands but their legs too. “She has a fucking bruise on her face!”

I do?I reach up and touch my jaw and then farther up, wincing when I realize the skin under one eye is slightly tender. I don’t remember them hitting me. Maybe it’d happened when we’d been rolling around in the back as I’d fought against them.

“We didn’t?—”

Whack!Shock ripples through me as Gio doesn’t let the man to his right finish his sentence. There’s no warning. One moment, G is standing over the middle one—a man with a short crop of dark hair and a beard—and the next he’s swinging the pole like a bat. It clocks kidnapper number two in the jaw, sending the man sprawling across the tracks.

Lex merely chuckles, and as I gape between the two of them—one laughing at the sheer brutality, while the other merely dispenses it as if it’s his favorite pastime—white, faded headlights dance down a dirt path behind us, glinting on broken glass embedded in the ground.

Lex’s laughter cuts off and he reaches for me, snatching me back and pushing me behind him. A moment later, the engine turns off—though the lights remain on, washing over the clearing—and the door pops open. Lex relaxes.

“Juliet?” It’s Nolan’s voice that echoes into the night at the footsteps that approach.

Not giving the others the chance to answer for me, I step out from behind Lex. “I’m here.”

Nolan pauses about ten feet away. There’s a black strap of a bag hung over his shoulder, and he keeps it there with one hand. He’s changed out of his football uniform which makes me realize that neither Gio nor Lex have. They look like All-American jocks, splattered in dirt and blood while Nolan stands there, the exact opposite. They are the facade. He is the reality.

Dark jeans. Dark t-shirt. Colors that can hide the violent nature of what’s going to happen tonight. And I know what’s going to happen. It’s clear in the way Gio stands over my kidnappers, barely breaking a sweat as he clutches the metal pole in his grip as if he wants to start swinging it again.

Nolan starts walking again. “Are you okay?”

“I—” have no fucking clue how to answer that question. When the world had faded in the back of that van, I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d ever wake up again.

Now, not only am I awake and alive, but I’m not alone out here, facing three men intent on killing me for fuck knows why.

“I’m … dealing,” I finally surmise. “I’m alive.”

Cinnamon eyes move over my face and down. “She got away on her own,” Lex informs him.

---