Page 183 of Inside the Sun

"You bastard!"

My whole body strains and my muscles shiver. I hit the wall with the back of my head, arching my spine… but the clamps hold me tight.

I failed. I fucking failed!

We’re all defenseless now.

Fuck!!!

Sun just stares at us, unsure of what happened.

Anzo ignores me and takes away his phone, not even commenting on it, as if it were just obvious that he has that covered and there’s no need to humiliate me even more. His triumph appears to be total.

But my mind is boiling, fury is raging…

Anzo comes over to Sun’s cage.

"Where were we, my pretty alpha? Ah, yes. There’s not a single goddamn thing I don’t know about Summer." He taps his neck and points his fingers toward Sun’s collar. "I just needed to change the collar into a new model that can catch even your fucking AO subsonic whispers!"

What… what the actual fuck, he heard it all? Like… ALL?

Wow, for the first time I’m starting to really understand why Anzo was able to overthrow every fucking enemy on his way to the top, alpha or not.

He’s good. The fucker is really good.

Sun stares at him, blinking, his mouth gaping. It probably hasn’t sunk in yet how fucked up we are.

"Do you even know who Summer really is, Sun? What he actually looks like? I bet he never showed you his true form,huh? A little bird told me he only reveals it to the people he truly loves, so that’s not exactly an everyday occurrence."

Sun still blinks, then swallows and glances uncertainly toward Summer, who’s lying there with his eyes shut. Maybe unconscious. Maybe high out of his mind on whatever Anzo’s been pumping into him. Or maybe… maybe he can still hear us?

Fate, please, let him hear us! Because we are seriously screwed up. All of us.

There’s no plan B.

No plan C. Not a fucking plan at all!

"So, yes, Sun. I know exactly what I need to know about Summer. I know he could kill me in a fraction of a second. Drain every drop of blood from my body and splatter it against that fucking wall. He could wipe out everyone in this fortress, and probably well beyond. But I also know about Summer's moral dilemmas. He’s convinced he shouldn’t play a vengeful god here."

Now Anzo furrows his brows, his eyes as narrow as pointed knives.

"He suspects that he’d end up in a military lab, strapped to some table as an experiment, a fucking lab rat, getting vivisected by scientists. And he’s probably right. Not that I care. In any case, he has to stay in hiding. No government would let someone like that walk around free, a ticking time bomb who, if slightly pissed, could eliminate every human within a mile. What do you do with someone like that? Nuke him? Even that might not work. He could probably redirect it right back at you with his telekinesis."

Anzo lets out a short chortle. "No bullet can touch him unless he lets it. I’ve assembled this whole picture in my head over the years, piece by piece. How amazing would it be to use that power whenever I want, huh?"

He walks over to the cage where Summer is lying.

"But the problem with using Summer’s power," he gestures to the IV stand next to the cage, "is that first… I have to break him."

Silence falls. I feel like I’m about to boil over. Because I have no idea what he’s doing to my brother’s brain. What kind of chemicals he’s dumping into him. And I need to know!

Summer’s our last hope.

"When I took over this organization," Anzo continues, his voice calm, "I had to kill my brothers first. I had no problem with Tito, he was the source of all my pain. But Paolo… Paolo was different. More manipulative. He didn’t beat me, but… he never said no to Tito either. He just stood there. Letting it all happen."

Anzo walks up to the empty cage next to Sun’s and stares down at the bare floor.

"After I killed Tito, I went for Paolo. He cried. He begged for his life. I told him,‘I’ll do exactly what you did, I’ll just stand there and watch while you suffer.’Then… I killed his True Mate." He turns back toward us, his eyes shifting from my face to Sun’s.

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