Page 87 of Pack Ruin
Everything I did down here, including my entrance to the cell, would be recorded in the electronic logs. I hoped I could make them understand what I was going to say, and get what I’d brought in to them.
The door opened with a soft click. Margarette and Bradley looked even worse than they had before. The silver chains were obviously taking a toll. Margarette’s hair was limp and hung around her eyes, and she shook incessantly.
Bradley wasn’t any better. He held her, stroking her arm gently, though even that small effort was costing him. The water bottle I’d seen before was empty, and there was no smell of food at all, only blood, silver, and urine from the pail in the corner.
“What a lovely sight. The devotion of true mates,” I gritted out with a sneer. My eyes pricked with tears, and I circled the pair, moving between them and the metal bucket. They’d used the rough toilet paper to make a flimsy barrier between their skin and the chains, along with strips of their ragged clothing, but blood still seeped through. Stopping with my back to the camera, I waited for them to look at me.
“You bastard,” Bradley muttered.
I wish,I mouthed. Bradley’s eyes widened for a moment. His hand tightened on Margarette’s arm, and she looked up at me as well.
Then I said clearly, letting the truth of my words sink in, “I had no idea you two would end up here. No idea you would put yourselves in the position to be brought so low.” I let a tear fall as I went on, knowing the camera wouldn’t capture it. Not ashamed for these two to see my pain. My grief. Margarette stifled a gasp. Bradley’s eyes warmed.
Knowing they would scent the lie, while the recordings would not, I went on. “But I’m glad I finally get to see you getting what you deserved. It was becoming impossible to pretend that I enjoyed being at your pack. That you or your shifters wouldhave anything to teach me about being ready for leadership. My parents are ten times the leaders you could ever be.” As the familiar, acrid scent of deception hit their noses, I pulled a thin package of what looked like chewing gum out of my pocket. I pretended to put a piece of gum in my mouth, then balled up the package and tossed it on the floor by Bradley’s foot.
It wasn’t trash, of course. I’d placed small strips of a special tape inside an empty pack of gum, an invention Father’s spies had come up with to help conceal silver blades.
The tape was lined with a thin coating of lead, but was flexible enough to bend. If they put it on under the cloth and toilet tissue, they shouldn’t feel the silver. I’d worn it more than once, when I’d gone on hunting trips to do jobs as the pack’s torturer. A layer stuck to the skin, and another on top of a hidden blade, and not even the keenest shifter’s nose could tell where the faint scent of silver was coming from.
It wasn’t much to give the Hilliers, but Tana came first. I tapped my wrist subtly, then lifted an eyebrow at the wrapper.
Bradley’s gaze flicked to it, and his lips parted. For a second, I thought he might thank me, but he went still. “I’m ashamed I let you past my pack’s borders, Finnick. You’re never welcome there again.” The stink of lies almost covered up the silver, and I swallowed hard.
Margarette cleared her throat and spoke, her voice raw. “We obviously didn’t teach you about honor, or what it means to be a decent Heir. I may have treated you like a son, fostered you with my own, but I never loved you, Finnick McDonnell. I never truly thought of you as my own.”
I almost sneezed from the pungent odor. I did smile a little, and saw an answering gleam in Margarette’s eyes.Be ready. Two days,I mouthed, before I muttered a few more insults, tossing the bottle of water at her as I left. I’d done what I could for them, and given them the hope and answers they needed.
Now I needed to get a few for myself.
I was only a few steps outside the room when I heard a voice inside my head.GET HER OUT!
I staggered, catching myself with one hand on the wall.What in the hell?I shook off the sense of doom that threatened to drag me under, and stalked down the hall to the room next to the one where Trevor Blackside had spent his final moments.
The window in the door of this one had been blacked out, and there hadn’t been a camera feed, at least not one that showed up on the monitors. I was almost certain it was occupied, though. The day before, I’d seen a maid coming down to the lower levels with food, then going back up, looking like she’d been attacked.
I had a feeling I knew who Mother had hidden in here, and when I pressed my fingers to the keypad and opened the door, I discovered I was right. “Hello, Callaway.”
The old Southern Alpha cursed when I entered. “Dammit, I was hopin’ you were that sweet little female they sent me yesterday. Day before yesterday? Fuck, the days are runnin’ together. What day is it?”
“Thursday.” I blinked as the door slammed shut behind me, shocked at the room. They’d given the Hilliers a bucket and silver chains. Callaway had a queen-sized mattress, a sofa, and a table with two chairs, where he sat now, holding a tablet that was emitting the unmistakable sounds of sex. There was a long table against one wall covered with snack foods of every description and cans of beer and soda.
He’d been watching porn when I came in. But now he stood, tucking his dick back into his dark blue sweatpants and crossing his arms over his burly chest. In the months since he’d vanished, he’d grown even less impressive than he had been before. He smelled sour, worse than ever.
And when his eyes rose to my face, there was a sly, feral glint in them, though he didn’t meet my gaze for more than a second. Perhaps he wasn’t able to.
“So this is where you disappeared to,” I remarked, trying to put it all together. There were no cameras in here, from what I could tell. It was as close to a comfortable hotel room as one of our cells could appear to be.
“Where I got disappeared to, ya mean,” he grumbled, wandering over to the food table and grabbing a purple bag. “Want some a these Takis?”I forced myself to shake my head politely as he popped the bag open, and began eating and talking at the same time. “Yeah, your bitch of a mother had her Enforcers on my ass before Trevor could get me out of Alabama. Threw me in here, keeps coming down and making all sortsa pretty promises about putting me back in power, but I’m startin’ to think she’s full of shit.”
A few orange pieces of chewed chip fell onto his belly. He picked the biggest piece up and ate it, then went on. “I been through your mama and your dad. Is it Junior’s turn to grill me, see if I know anything else I ain’t told them?”
“How did you know?” I pulled up to the table and forced myself not to react as his peculiar, foul odor washed over me when he did the same. “If I can get more from you than they did, maybe I can talk them into letting you move up to the main house. There’s really no reason for you to be down here, is there? The Mansion is safe enough, and you deserve so much more than this.”
“You want secrets? If you can get me outta here and the kind of set-up I deserve, I’ll give ya secrets I ain’t told nobody yet.”
I grinned conspiratorially at him and described the elaborate meals we had upstairs. “Steak, lobster, everything you could desire. And all of it presented beautifully by lovely young females.”
Halfway through my description of the maids who served in the dining room—and who I would never,everlet this piece of breathing excrement get near—he was cursing and rubbing his dick through his pants. “All right, all right. Let’s get this done. Long as you get me out of here. Swear it.”
