Page 148 of Devoted

I looked up at him. Big and blunt-faced with sandy hair, he watched me with a malicious smile that took over his entire face. He had the look of someone who enjoyed hurting anyone or anything smaller than himself.

Enjoyed it immensely.

“Nothing to say?” He stepped between my legs, pushing his crotch in my face. Gabriel growled deep in his throat, the warning snarl of a predator. Another guard lifted his hand and brought down his club with a sickening crash onto Gabriel’s skull, so hard, I swore I heard bone break.

Blood splattered across my cheek, the world tilting as I lunged forward… and stopped, the chains catching.

“Leave him alone, you fucking bastards.” Tears burned up out of my eyes, coating my cheeks, pride nowhere to be found as I yanked at the chains, sending them rattling.

“Shut the fuck up, you,” my tormentor snapped. “One more word out of your mouth and I’ll have my guards break every bone in his body.”

I hung there, helpless, scraped cheek burning from the salt spray, wishing for a godsdamned miracle.

Something, anything to save us.

“Got anything else to say?” He leaned close enough I was swamped by the stench of his rancid breath, his expression curling into something cruel. “Not so high and mighty now, are you?”

I shook my head. Gabriel’s weight listed against me, a river of blood dribbling from his chin and down over my shirt. There was so much. With all this iron, he would never heal.

He could bleed to death.

The lanky guard reached down and unlocked me from the bench ring with the key from his pocket, leaving the long chain attached. I was calculating exactly how I’d sweep his legs out from under him and get those keys when a big, meaty hand closed on my arm. Then I was being hauled up, and I couldn’t fucking make my body work right. Even without my hands shackled, all this iron was wreaking havoc on my coordination.

My arms and legs felt too heavy, my brain was working too slow.

“Let me go,” I breathed, my feet folding under me as he dragged me toward the side of the speeding boat, looping the chain around his arm like a leash. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”

“Oh, I’d do far more than touch you if I had the time, but Don Giovanni wants you alive and kicking for tomorrow’s executions, so we’ll just have a bit of fun on the ride back.”

He was double my size, and the side of the boat was getting closer and closer until the spray hit me in the face, blinding me as I tried to blink salt out of my stinging eyes. There was the metallic grind of metal on metal and a chorus of raucous male laughter. Nico and Dante were cursing, shouting threats, but all I could do was brace my feet on the slippery deck as I was shoved forward.

Then the railing up against my waist and my hands were cuffed behind my back with heavy chains, and oh gods… the water was right there, the boat’s wake spreading out behind us, the surface choppy and dark and right below me and… I squeezed my eyes closed.

Don’t look down.

Don’t. Look. Down.

“Put her over.”

The guard’s order came from far away. The words didn’t make sense, not with how fast my heart was beating, but then I was flipping over, my feet leaving the deck, the world going upside down.

“Nooo,” Dante’s frantic scream tore through the roar of the engines, the rush of the bow cutting through the waves. His voice did something strange to my chest—filling it up and tearing it apart at the exact same time.

I opened my mouth to scream…

But I was already falling.

The water was shockingly cold. And hard, like concrete. I hit that surface and gasped, absolutely the wrong thing to do, just before you sank underneath, where air was a precious commodity, and then I couldn’t do anything except twist in the current as I was dragged along in the wake of the boat, the motors spinning right the fuck there, and I couldn’t swim or breathe or think or…

I sucked in a breath, my lungs flooding with seawater. Choked. Thrashed.

Drowned.

Nothing but dark and cold and suffocating water as I strained and strained to reach the surface for just one breath of air, just one…

They pulled me up.

I landed on the metal surface, gagging on the water surging up my throat, and for a moment, there was nothing except the freezing cold, the guard’s laughter, and the sound of my own coughing as I spewed everything inside me out onto the deck.