The Hanging Garden//Book 2 in the Death on Two Legs series

2. Die Trying

"You know what would be fun, buckaroo? A little peek into the great outdoors. Just help a brother out and crack me a window or someth-"
A punch in the face cut off his plead, making the almost healed cut on his lip open again. The chair he was bound to creaked a bit as his body swayed to the right. He had grown numb to the pain by now, the torture didn't feel like torture anymore. It had become a routine, like brushing his teeth or taking a shower had once been.
Blood began to squirt out of the scabbed over cut, and he smiled. A toothy grin, it looked menacing. One of his corner teeth had cracked months ago, and now was like a rippled and sharp fang half way shorter than the rest. His teeth were yellow, now fresh blood bubbling from in between them, mixing with saliva.
"You're gonna keep doing that every time I speak, aren't ya Dan?"
Another punch. This time to his cheek. Under his eyes, deep purple patches of fading bruises had began to drain downwards. His left eye still had a red smudge on it, just a bit to the left from his iris. There was something badly wrong with that eye now- had been since that day in December he had gained consicousness.
Since the first beating.

"I've heard a lot of things about you, Madej. The first of them was that you just cannot keep your fucking mouth shut."
The man grunted with a deep voice and sat down on a metallic chair in front of Shane, who now hung his head. He felt dizzy, a concussion after concussion for six months couldn't be healthy- he was half certain that if he wouldn't get out soon, a serious brain damage would be the death of him before anything else.
"I like you, Coop. You're a cool guy..." The beaten man spoke with difficulty, blood and slaiva dripping down from his chin in a sticky flow. Bracing himself for the next punch. He hoped that Dan would hit him in the gut next instead of his head, he'd rather double over vomiting than lose his left eyesight completely.
A part of him wanted to stop talking, to be done with it for the day. But he was Shane Madej- the bigmouth. It wasn't in his nature to shut up.
He was quite sure he'd die talking.

Before that could happen, before Cooper rolled up his suit sleeve for the third punch, a beep of his phone caught his attention. He took the burner phone out of the pocket of his dress pants, and frowned at the message he had recieved.
With a fustarated sigh he straightened up his posture, put away the phone and slid a pair of dark rimmed sunglasses out of his suit's inside pocket. As he got up from the chair, neat brown shoes stepping on some of Shane's blood, he put them on to hide his eyes with a calm motion.
"No funny stuff." He grunted before turning to face the heavy iron door of the room. And Shane replied with a bloodied grin.

As the door closed with a creak and the rattle of the keys stopped, followed by footsteps that eventually faded into the hallway beyond, Shane let out a deep sigh.
He was alone about twenty hours a day- a form of torture all by itself. He had grown paranoid, talking to himself to pass time, staring at the camera in the left corner of the room, counting the blinks of the red recording light.
The ceiling lamp was dim, it was always on. He got to be free from the chair for a mere fifteen minutes a day to stretch, piss and take a shit, and after that he was tied up again by gunpoint.
He had no idea what day, or even what month it was. Without anything to make notes on, he had lost count a long time ago.

He had no idea if Ryan was alive.
He remembered that day in December vividly, losing his consicousness on the hard gravel as the last thing he heard was a gunshot, and the last thing he had felt was Ryan's ice cold hand grabbing his own, sticky with blood.
The next thing after that had been the cold touch of pilers inside of the bullethole on his chest. Just inches underneath his heart, it had shattered two of his ribs, but hadn't hit any major arteries. The chances were one in a million.

He found himself drifting back into those memories with Ryan on the few days leading up to the shootout. All the bickering, the annoyance, the extreme sexual fustaration.
God, he wished he had done something about it sooner.
But at least he got that one kiss. A single, quite childishly sloppy and soft kiss on the front seat of the car- just moments before it would all drift down the drain.
A part of him had began to accept that they would most likely never meet again. The other part was desperate- to that half, Ryan Steven Bergara was the only thing in the world worth fighting for.
He didn't know how many punches, how many concussions and cuts, how many limbs he had to lose before getting to him. But one thing was sure;
He would happily die trying.