“Will they be okay? Can they get through this?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. It’s only the first day.”
CORALINE
I really didn’t know how I got to the maternity ward. I was simply walking and next thing I knew, there were babies as far as the eye could see. They were all enchanting and peaceful. Looking at them almost made me forget that the world sometimes sucked.
“They are cute, aren’t they?” Declan whispered next to me.
“Shouldn’t you be guarding Mel?”
He smiled. “Neal, Fedel, and Monte are all standing watch.”
I said nothing, and he looked at the babies.
“I keep trying to wonder what ours will look like. Liam was so happy. He was kind of high all time.”
Again, I said nothing.
“Cora—”
“What Declan?” I snapped. “You want me to give you the time of day because you sat outside my door and played music? But you wouldn’t give me the time of day even after I let you fuck me any way you pleased.”
He took my hand and kissed it before taking a step back, not speaking any longer. When I looked through the glass, a few of the babies were crying.
“See what you did?”
DECLAN
I couldn’t help but smile at her. Even now as she cursed me out, as she should have, I smiled. She had killed someone. She was in the east wing when the bombs went off, and she fought her way to the safe room. A knife right in the motherfucker’s throat. If I didn’t know better, I would say I was falling in love with her all over again. But the truth was, I had never stopped loving her. I never could. I could wait her out. I could take every jab as long as I got her in the end.
OLIVIA
Staring at my phone, I read Neal’s text message over again. It was all that was keeping me together right now.
I love you and the moment I can, I will be at your side. I’m so sorry I wasn’t before.
I tried to breathe. I tried to think. But all I could feel were the hands of those men. I almost fell out of my seat when Adriana took a seat beside me.
“You were raped once weren’t you?” she asked me, and I did, in fact, stop breathing.
“What? Why would you say—”
“Don’t insult me by lying.” She smiled sadly. “I know what a rape victim looks like, and I also know what it feels like when Melody saves you from it. She takes you and she makes you unstoppable. She gives you your power back. She brings you back to life. So the next time a guy thinks he can ever lay a hand on you, you can show him what it feels like to piss off God himself.”
With that, she left me wondering who her Harvey was and what had she done to him.
THIRTY
“I want to see your face when I kill you!
I want to see the light leave your eyes!”
~ Voldemort
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film,
J.K. Rowling
MELODY
Day 5
“Liam can be such an ass sometimes,” Coraline said as she fluffed my pillow. “You should be resting in the summer house drinking a Sex on the Beach and watching the Young and the Restless. But instead, he has us all on lockdown. Can you believe that? We’re on house arrest!”
I said nothing.
Sighing, Coraline fell onto the bed next to me. “I killed someone.”
I said nothing.
“Right, that’s probably not a big deal to you,” she whispered. “But for me it’s a huge deal. He came out of nowhere and I just reacted. Adriana told me to always carry at least two knives on me at all times, so I did. I still do. And that day I just pulled them out . . . and killed. But you know the most fucked up part?”
Again, I said nothing.
“I didn’t care,” she said. “The prick came into my home and tried to hurt me. And when I threw the blade right into his jugular, blood went everywhere. But all I could think was, ‘fuck this asshole better not have AIDS.’ That’s fucked up right? I’m a good person. I was a good person. Before, I would be freaking out, praying over him or something, and yet all I wanted to do was kick his ass because he might have just given me AIDS.”
Nothing. I said nothing.
“Mel, please speak to us. It’s been five days. At least say something. Anything,” Coraline begged me, but I couldn’t.
Shifting onto my side, I tried to go back to sleep. I just wanted the darkness. I just wanted to sleep. It was the only time I felt anything.
“We love you, Mel.” It was the last thing I heard before the darkness returned . . . thankfully.
LIAM
“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal yelled. The prisoner he was speaking to dangled from the ceiling in front of us as I cut into my steak.
“Go fuck yourselves,” the fool choked out.
Neal looked to me, and I simply nodded while taking a bite of the bloody beef in front of me.
Taking the drill from Declan, Neal held the point to the man’s collarbone.
“Last chance. Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal asked again.
Before the fool could get out his insult, Neal drilled, ripping through skin, muscle, tissue, and bone. He screamed like a pig on its way to the slaughterhouse . . . mostly because he was. Neal stopped only when we could see the drill head on the other end of the man’s body, then he pulled it out and moved to the other shoulder.
“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal shouted into his face. “I swear to God I will drill through your penis next if you don’t start speaking.”
The fool spit up all over himself as he gasped out for air. “They’re in hiding.”
“No fucking duh!” I snapped, wiping the corners of my mouth. “I want to know where they’re hiding. I have people burning your crops, bombing your labs, and killing your brothers. There will be more blood. There will be retribution. It can end with your bosses, or it can end with your whole family. Choose carefully, there are many more of you, and we have a lot of drills.”
Handing me a glass of brandy, Antonio walked past me and held up another drill to the man’s belly button.
“Where are Vance and Saige?” Neal asked one last time.
All eyes in the room were on him. “I swear to God—”
“God doesn’t come to this part of the house, so swear to me,” I told him, leaning back in my chair.
“I swear . . .”
“Kill him.” He was wasting words and didn’t know anything.
Drowning out his screams, I closed my eyes and took in the hum of the drills. They, for some reason, relaxed me. But sadly, it ended all too soon.
Antonio checked his pulse, then turned to me splattered in the man’s blood. “He’s gone, sir.”
I sighed. “When I said kill him, I meant do it slowly.”
It just went to show if you wanted someone killed right, you had to do it yourself. Declan handed me a file, I looked through it quickly before rising.
“What number is he?”
“He’s the seventh we’ve lost during questioning. Weak-ass bitches,” Declan answered, opening the door for me.
Frowning, I nodded. “Find me more. I want them all dead. I want Vance, Saige, and all the damn Valero to know I’m coming for them.”
As I left, they dragged the fool’s body away. Neal’s forte was not torture, and neither was Declan’s really. That had always been left to my father and me. We were good at it, and in a sick, fucked up way, we enjoyed it. But after what happened, something changed within them both. Neal was fueled by the rage of knowing what could have become of his wife. Declan had lost Coraline in a way. Gone was the shopaholic woman who never seemed to understand the world around her, and in her place was a murderer. She had gone through that and still didn’t want to speak with him. He took her punches, and then unleashed it on whichever poor fuck came against us. But I understood. Walking through the construction site that was now my home, I knew what would await me when I opened the door to my room.