Page 55 of To Claim A King
I received a curt nod and a dismissive wave before both women stood and turned their backs to me, lowering the heads to speak in muffled tones before the never-been-fucked agent left the room.
Weston squeezed my shoulder and pulled, a gesture to stand. I rose to my feet a little awkwardly as Agent Stanhope—hag—cuffed my hands behind my back. I turned to face my fate sitting in her old, weathered palms.
“You won’t be released until your information checks out,” she informed me with her hand on the doorknob. “You are to remain here until Agent Smith brings you your phone, and we can discuss the major details of your ‘innocence’ in the shootout later. I suggest you get comfortable.”
“I’m unable to stay,” Weston interjected as he too walked toward the door. “But I expect to be present at that conversation. Agent Stanhope.”
We received only a snarky lip curl before she exited the room, not even leaving the door open for Weston to follow behind her.
He walked back toward me when the heavy door closed shut, lowering his lips to my ear.
“That was one hell of a bluff,” he murmured in a whisper. “You’re lucky.”
Lucky. I’d be damned if the cute little nickname Blondie had given me could be enough of a good omen to get us all outof the feckin’ mess.
I watched him retreat through the door and turned my attention to my cuffed hands, clasping them awkwardly to say another universal prayer. We were going to need it.
“Again.”
My father’s order ripped through my heart worse than his bullets ever could. Fear, icy and relentless, sat on my spine as I watched the “hell” on my knuckles come to life before my eyes.
Carmen had the fucking audacity to grin as she drew the sharpened serrated blade back to the top of the sole of Hillary’s foot and sliced a deep gash down to the tip of her heel, matching the other foot she’d maimedjust a minute ago.
My Killer bit into her lips to stifle the scream in her throat, as tough as I’d ever seen her, but the flood of tears down her cheeks gave away her pain.
I stifled my own, the burning itch at the back of my eyelids fighting to be freed, but the relentless self-control beaten into me from birth forbade them from falling. Aaron watched with eyes as slitted as razors, but stayed silent, the stoic mask on his face as stony as mine.
She shouldn’t have been here. Neither of them should have been here, hanging in this fucking dungeon, at the mercy of a psychotic woman and my psychopathic father. Rage and redemption equally consumed me as I realized the only reason these two people were sharing this burden with me was because they cared about me. Loved me. Despite my baggage, my history and my lack of a future, they’d chosen me.
I didn’t know what to do with that level of dedication, and I didn’t know how much longer I’d be able to maintain my composure while the woman we loved was brutally tortured.
Carmen had slit the delicate skin of her wrists, just enough to bleed her out slowly and take the last of her energy reserves, knowing exactly which parts of the vein to slice to keep her alive. Hillary hadn’t uttered a word. She’d fixed her gaze on the small window above our heads with each cut. Then, Carmen had put her blade against her feet. Encrusted blood coated my Killer from head to toe, an almost lifeless warrior wrapped in silk rags.
My throat bobbed with another hard swallow at the disparaging sight, my mouth the texture of sandpaper from hours without water. Of all the horrors I’d witnessed in almost forty years, this was the worst.
“The foot is a wonderful receiver of pain,” my father mused in the background, his voice carrying over the incessant buzzing of insects hovering above Maverick’s corpse.
I spared a glimpse at my old colleague’s body, still lying on the hard concrete about ten feet away, decaying into the ground as quickly as the blowflies could eat him. I’d always shielded my agents from anything to do with my “other” life. Was he the agent Trish had been trying to turn to take my place? Was his death on my head too?
“It hurts, doesn’t it,Princesa?” Carmen cooed softly, the grin on her face at chilling odds with the grave air. Wrath swirled like a whirlpool in my gut, but still, my Killer didn’t waver.
When Hillary didn’t respond, Carmen dropped Hillary’s foot to the ground, the bloody sole dripping all over the concrete, forming a small puddle under her toes. The soft skin of her heels was ragged, like Carmen had processed her skin through a paper shredder. My beautiful Killer might never walk in a pair of sneakers again, let alone her power heels. I felt the phantom of the serrated knife cut through my chest, the pain just a fraction of what hers must be, my formidable woman cut down by a soullessperra.
“The Germans perfected this technique,” Antonio continued, as if talking about the weather. “But I particularly like Carmen’s spin on it.Eres peligrosa, mi belleza.”
Mi Belleza. My beauty. Was Carmen my father’s concubineandhis killer? Disgust rivaled the queasiness boiling in my gut. This woman was nothing more than my father’s rabid dog, desperate for his attention and his affection. She wouldn’t have either for long.
“This is what happens to you when you defy me,mi hijo. So many secrets. So much lying.” He circled our line of hanging bodies until he stood directly in front of me. The smell of his familiar sandalwood aftershave was more nauseating than the sickening scent of human flesh.
“Your secret world is a secret no longer, hmm? Two lovers mean two weaknesses. How unfortunate for them.How unfortunate for you. Death will be my greatest mercy when we are done with you.”
I refused to utter a single word—my silence a final defiance in the face of death. He winked a single brown eye at me, amused by my lack of acknowledgment, and then moved on to Hillary’s hanging body beside me. Her head lolled to the side. Her pain, exhaustion, and the aftereffects of the drugs barely kept her conscious, but her eyes were open, tiny ocean-blue slits of desolation that broke my heart.
My spine stiffened, and I struggled in the cuffs over my head when he reached out, taking her cheek in his palm. She shuddered under his touch, but without the ability to shrug out of his hold, she hung there, gaze blazing cold despite her pain.
God, I loved her so fucking much. And I’d never get to touch her again. It was the cruelest consequence of this shitty fate.
“I think we are done with you for now,bella.” Antonio removed his hand from her face and pressed it to her thigh against the torn flesh of her bullet wound. This time, she couldn’t stifle the scream of agony, the sounds piercing every nerve ending in my body with unbearable pain.
