Page 37 of Bayou Knights
I will myself to think about anything but what is happening to me. Find a happy place. I do, it’s with my family, before all this shit, with Gage. I’ll have to hold on to that memory because I don’t think I’ll get out of this alive. I actually pray for death.
“Stop crying, and start playing along” Sawyer hisses. I didn’t realize I was crying. I feel the tears fall and can’t help it. My life is over.
He slaps me once more before leaving. I breathe for a minute. One might say I should be glad to be alive, but at this point I really wish I wasn’t.
I hear the door swing open but I don’t have the strength to look or care.
“I told you not to ruin her face,” I recognize the voice of Ricardo.
“Sorry, my temper got the best of me,” I hear Sawyer sneer.
“I will have to wait until the bruises fade. Don’t do it again or I will end you,” Ricardo warns.
“Sure thing,” Sawyer snaps.
“Now, my sweet darling,” Ricardo addresses me like we’re lovers and he’s going to tell me something that I want to hear. I don’t want to listen to anything he has to say.
“You ready to sign over these things we desire? It would behoove you to do so, it will prolong your life,” he says with a sickening smile. I wish I had enough in my stomach to throw up on him.
“Just kill me,” I whisper.
“Someday, that will be arranged,” Ricardo’s eyes flare with anger before he walks out, but not before letting me know it’s going to get worse for me.
“Anything but her face,” Ricardo hisses as he walks out, leaving me with the man who was supposed to love me through thick and thin.
Sawyer looks at me and for a second I think I see the eyes I fell in love with, but when I shake my head I only see evil there. I’m doomed.
* * *
Zion
I’m getting ready to just level this whole place because I don’t have my answers. I have people breathing down my neck here. Three tourists have gone missing. We know it’s the fake club, the ones posing as Beasts. When I find all of them, they will suffer.
Capone and Diablo have yet to check in with me and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Lyra has been getting better, but we haven’t asked her anything yet. I’ve stayed away, letting her be with her father and nephew.
“You’re Zion?” I hear a voice behind me. I turn to see Lyra. She’s lost a lot of weight, but the bruises have started to heal.
“Yeah.”
“You must hate me,” she says, sliding onto a seat next to me at the bar. The prospect hands her a beer and she accepts graciously.
“I don’t hate you. I hate what you did,” I mumble.
“I do as well. Drugs are a bitch, they make you do things you’d never do and push away the people that love you,” she whispers.
“You’re going to stay in rehab this time?”
“I tried to the other times, but Sawyer was there, checking me out, feeding me lines that I was okay. I kept using and the film company used that for the show. I was the messed-up friend. I was the one always in trouble, but for some reason people loved it. I wanted to be an actress but not that way. I’ve never been like that. My mother was the one that was always pushing for me to do those kinds of things. I don’t understand how a mother could only love one of their children,” she says softly.
“I don’t understand either. Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“You said they were holding her in her basement in Texas. How do they get into the basement?”
“There is a switch on the wall that my grandpa had installed. Only he knew about it, but my mother found it and I watched as they shuffled Plum down there. It’s the only time I’ve been to my grandpa’s. You have to find her.”
