Page 28 of Dark Knight

"Lyric Sterling was your roommate in college, and Sampson, her father's bodyguard, kidnapped you to have leverage over her. Is that right?" Dylan said slowly.

"I think so. I mean, this is all just based on what Sampson ranted about when he came to visit me in the basement room he kept me locked up in."

"But Sampson never tortured you or raped you?"

"Not really. He wasn't particularly interested in any of that. The only time he assaulted me was the day of the auction. If I had to guess, I would say that Lyric had turned away from him and maybe from the family in general, and he didn't like that. He kept saying that she was going to be his wife and he was going to start a new generation of mobsters, and this, and that, and the other. From what I could tell, he planned to just chain Lyric up and have her pop out kids."

"God, that man is disgusting," Dylan muttered.

"It's a good thing he's dead," Hudson added. I glanced at him and could see the white-knuckled grip he had on the steering wheel.

"Can I ask how you know he's dead? Like, how do you know for sure?" It occurred to me that I probably should have asked this question before we went to Welhurst, but it was too late now.

Dylan hesitated for a moment before he said, "Apparently, a few important people in our line of work received a text message with a location. When it was investigated, his body was found there along with a message to leave Lyric alone."

Morbid curiosity had a hold of me, and I couldn't let the topic go. "Was he just executed?"

"No, he was tortured." Dylan's words were clipped, as though he wanted that to be the end of the conversation. I wasn't ready to stop talking about it.

"Tortured how?"

Hudson's eyes flicked on mine in the rearview mirror. "Well, aren't you a bloodthirsty little thing?"

Dylan turned toward me in his seat. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."

"He was beaten, obviously. He’d had both ears cut off, his fingers, toes, and nose were broken, teeth were missing from his mouth but found on the ground around him, and the skin on the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands had been removed. There were also multiple lacerations all over his body and finally, strangulation marks on his neck. There was probably a lot of internal damage that couldn’t be seen as well."

"He deserved worse," I said quietly. Inside, I couldn't help but wonder if Lyric did it herself, not that I said that aloud. "Does anybody know what happened to Lyric?" I asked eventually, after the two of them had been silent for a long time.

"What do you mean? What happened to Lyric?" Concern laced Dylan's voice.

“According to some people in the dorm, Lyric and I both went missing. Then one day, a little while later, somebody showed up with a moving truck and cleared out the room.”

"If they cleared out the room. How did you find your shit?" Hudson asked, like he was trying to catch me in a lie.

"I had hidden it in the ceiling tiles." He glanced at me in the rearview mirror again, his eyebrows raised, seemingly having not expected me to be that cunning.

"Let's ask Theo when we get home," Dylan said as he pulled out his phone. He spent the rest of the drive texting back and forth with someone.

Part of me wondered who it was. What was he so busy talking about? Still, it was none of my business. We weren't really anything to each other except a debtor and lender.

I wondered what would happen once I paid my debt off. Would he just let me walk away? That seemed unlikely, given the fact that I knew quite a bit about them already. Plus, he made that declaration in the club about me belonging to him…that nobody should mess with me. Was that just because he saw me as his property?

Sitting in silence made my thoughts run wild. I hated it, but I couldn't exactly ramble on to these two. So I just turned things over and over again in my mind. The whole time, Lyric's disappearance sat front and center. Where was she? Was she even alive? I hoped so. I hated the idea of her tortured soul being snuffed out because of a delusional man.

15

Evie

When we got back to the house, we walked straight through to Dylan's office. He said he had texted Theo to meet us there. I wasn't sure how asking Theo for help was going to go, but apparently he was the best person to help us figure out what happened to Lyric.

I hadn't expected Theo to be waiting for us already, and based on the way his face shuttered as soon as he saw me, he clearly hadn't expected me to come with Dylan and Hudson either. For just a second, he had looked open and friendly, but a scowl now twisted his brow and mouth, making it clear that I was not welcome or considered a friend by him.

Dylan moved to sit behind the desk while Hudson leaned against the wall. Theo didn't move from his chair, so I took the one that was still empty, hoping that was okay. When nobody corrected me, I stayed where I was.

Theo's head was bowed, as though he was trying to hide his face from me, which was frustrating. I felt like if I could just catch his eye and give him a smile then it would help break down this awkward wall that existed between us. His bleached hair with the dark roots was the only thing I could really see. The pale white strands seemed to dance in an invisible wind until I realized he was sitting under an air conditioning vent.

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