Page 93 of Wraith

“Are you ready to prove your loyalty?” Moose says.

The gun is heavy in my hand. Cold. Real. I think about June tied to the bed in that motel room, crying into her gag, hating me. Thinking I betrayed her. Thinking I’m the monster she always feared I was.

She’s wrong.

This is love.

“I’m ready.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

June

The silence after his truck pulls away is worse than anything that came before. I can hear the engine’s growl fading into the distance, leaving me alone with the sound of my breathing through my nose — harsh, panicked, the only noise in this room that’s become my prison. The ball gag fills my mouth with the taste of silicone and my saliva, pressing my tongue flat, making it impossible to swallow properly. My jaw already aches from the strain of holding it open around the intrusion. The metal cuffs bite into my wrists where they’re stretched above my head, secured to the headboard that won’t give no matter how hard I pull. My ankles are spread wide, shackled to opposite corners of the bed frame, and his t-shirt has ridden up to expose everything that should be covered. I am helpless. Completely, utterly helpless. And Dylan — Wraith — the man I thought I loved, the man I thought had changed, just left me here to die.

I scream into the gag.

The sound comes out muffled and pathetic, barely carrying past my own ears.

I scream again anyway.

And again.

Until my throat is raw and my chest heaves with the effort of forcing air through my nose. No one comes. No one can hear me. The do-not-disturb sign hangs on the outside door handle, Dylan’s final touch before he left, and I know what that means. The housekeepers won’t come. Our room is paid for several days. No one will check on me. No one will know I’m here until it’s far too late.

I pull against the wrist cuffs with everything I have. The metal digs into my skin, biting deeper with each desperate jerk. Pain shoots through my shoulders from the angle, from being stretched above my head for what’s already been too long. I don’t care. I pull harder. The headboard is solid wood, heavy and old, the kind that’s survived decades of abuse in cheap motels. It doesn’t even creak. I arch my back, trying to get leverage, trying to find some weakness in the restraints or the bed frame. Nothing. My ankles pull against their shackles and the leg restraints hold firm, keeping me spread wide and vulnerable.

My breathing is coming too fast now.

Panic makes my chest tight, and I can’t get enough air through my nose. I force myself to slow down, to breathe in through my nose for four counts, out for four counts, the way some yoga instructor on TV once demonstrated when I couldn’t sleep. It barely helps. The panic sits in my chest like a stone.

He betrayed me.

The thought loops through my mind on repeat, wearing a groove into my consciousness. He looked me in the eye and told me he loved me, made love to me, let me dream about a future together, and then he tied me to a bed and left me here while he walked into a trap.

Because it is a trap.

I know it is.

I’m not deluded the way Dylan is. I’m not drunk on power or hungry for a VP patch. Moose will not welcome Dylan back with open arms and give him a position of authority. The Sons don’t forgive traitors. They don’t forgive men who hospitalize their brothers and protect witnesses who could bring down the entire organization. Moose is luring Dylan to some abandoned location where he’ll be outnumbered and outgunned, and then they’ll make him suffer for what he’s done. They’ll torture him. They’ll make him scream. And maybe, in his last moments, he’ll realize that the woman he claimed to love was right all along.

The thought should give me satisfaction. It doesn’t. It just makes me cry harder.

Because I still love him. Even now.

I love him, and I’m terrified for him, and I hate myself for feeling anything except rage.

I pull against the restraints again.

The cuffs have rubbed my wrists raw now.

I can feel a warmth that might be blood, or might just be skin rubbed to the point of breaking. My shoulders scream in protest. The muscles in my arms shake from the strain. I don’t stop. I can’t stop. Because if I stop fighting, if I give up, then I’m just waiting here for the inevitable.

The Sons will come for me. Once they’re done with Dylan, they’ll come here. Midnight will walk through that door with his sinister smile and his cold eyes, and this time there won’t be any reason to keep me alive. I’m a witness. I saw them torture that informant and I heard him confess everything before they shot him in the head. I know about the hog farm where they disposed of the body. I know too much.

I’m going to die in this room. On this bed. Bound and gagged and helpless while Midnight does whatever he wants to me before he finally ends it.

The sob that tears through me is muffled by the gag but I feel it in my whole body.