Page 168 of Beautifully Shattered
Getting to my sister.
I don’t think I’ve ever run so fast in my life as I bolt through the orchard, towards the Jacaranda tree, finally spotting a group of black-clad men standing around Tahli, their guns raised at something, or someone, off to the left.
“Tahli!” I scream, and her head snaps to me instantly before she wrenches free from Millie’s grip and sprints straight into my arms. “What happened?”
“A-a-a m-man,” she sobs, her voice breaking as she clings to me, and I glance up, straining to see past the wall of men blocking my view.
Passing Tahli off to Jols, who appears at my side, I shove my way through the Marx security to find a man bleeding on the ground.
“Who are you?” I demand, then bark to anyone that will listen, “What happened?”
“He came out of nowhere,” Alana blurts out, rushing to my side. “Like he was hiding in the grass or something.”
Frowning, I glance to where she points, and Riggs storms in that direction to investigate as I turn my attention back to the man.
“You look familiar,” I snap, and his lip curls as he glares up at me.
“You stabbed me once,” he seethes, and my brows hitch, memories slamming into me of the night Officer Allen and his cronies ambushed this place and took me.
But not before killing some of the Southern Sadists, and then shooting Jols and Millie.
“Fucking hell,” Riggs sighs, drawing everyone’s attention. “He fucking tunnelled in.”
Mybrows climb into my hairline as I spin to find Ringo. “They are tunnelling in now?”
“That must’ve taken fucking days,” Ringo snarls, shoving through the Marx men to come to my side.
“Like I had a fucking choice,” the man on the ground rasps, his voice cracking in desperation. “That fucking cult, and Allen, they’ve got my son. If I don’t come back with one of the Delaney girls, then my boy is fucking dead.”
“You and you, down the tunnel,” Riggs barks orders to two of his men. “Find where it leads and call it in.”
They nod without hesitation, lowering themselves into a man-made hole that could very well cave in on them at any moment.
Jesus. No one could pay me enough money to do that.
Tahli’s whimpers float to me from where Jols is trying to comfort her, and everything inside me screams to reach for a gun and shoot this bastard in the head, but Ringo is my voice of reason.
“Take him to the barn,” he orders, glaring at the thug on the ground. “Let’s show him the very best of hospitality until he coughs up a location for Banes or Allen.”
When Ringo’s eyes meet mine, I nod and flash him a mischievous smile.
“I wonder if Hush might like to help,” I murmur. “That sort of hospitality seems right up her alley.”
34
Eight fucking days. That’s how long it took for the arsehole who tunnelled his way onto my property to finally crack.
I’ve gotta hand it to him. He was fucking tough. But I suppose almost any father would suffer the most brutal torture if it meant keeping his son safe.
So what was it that made him crack?
The same twisted shit Hush did to Darnel.
The threat of having his dick severed.
Turns out some fathers just don’t have the balls to see it through after all.
Mind you, Hush told us from the start that the fastest way to get answers was to go for the cock, but we didn’t want to believe her. So she spent days torturing him in other ways. She even dug out one of his eyeballs with a pair of fucking tongs.
