I think it's time I dedicated one of my chapters to the lovely SkyDancer. You probably found her story before you did mine because it's been on the front page since its inception, but if you haven't read it yet, shame on you. It's called Living Highschool to its Fullest. She's an amazing writer, plus she's hilarious. And I LOVE her comments. And she forgives easily...as long as you can promise her some spontaneous human combustion.
Anton caught me around the waist, pulling me to his side.
“I wish you hadn’t…immobilized me when it all began. That really hurt,” he said as we began a halting circuit around the room. My knotted muscles screamed in protest, but we slowly worked the stiffness out of them. On our third lap, he abruptly let go with one of his hands, and fished his phone back out of his pocket. Then he flashed his screen at me.
Someone with short dark hair lay in what appeared to be a bed like the one in this room, but had I.V.’s protruding from his arm. I didn’t dare hope that it was a photo of what I thought it was. He took the phone back, then typed something.
I’m going to get you out of here.
I raised my eyebrows at him. He typed something else.
But I’m coming with you.
Chapter 28: Cards on the Table Time
Ant’s going to get me out of here. We’re leaving. He’s coming with me.
I tried to just be relieved that I wouldn’t have to figure a way out of this mess. Ant was taking on that responsibility. But the picture he’d shown me kept coming back into my head. I couldn’t stop the hope that sparked in my chest every time I remembered the picture. I didn’t dare let it take root in case it wasn’t really him. If it wasn’t him in that bed, alive, and I allowed myself to hope, then I wouldn’t survive. I couldn’t physically withstand that same blow twice.
Ant’s going to get me out of here. We’re leaving. He’s coming with me. I tried to distract myself.
The picture intruded once again, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching toward his phone with my mummified hands, desperate to see it again. Anton must have understood the desire behind my blundering, because he brought the picture back up. I fumbled the phone from his palm, holding it in an awkward grip between my bandaged hands.
My heart fluttered against my ribs, as I looked to Anton to confirm that the Dark haired, tanned man that lie on the bed with IV’s in his arm was indeed Abe. He locked eyes with me and gave a deliberate nod. The fluttering in my heart went wild, and my breath hitched in my throat. I flung my arms around Anton’s middle without thinking.
Ant jumped when I threw myself at him, either frightened by my sudden outburst of tears, or unsure if this emotionally jacked-up girl was going attack. Once he decided it was safe he wrapped both arms around me, cradling me while I soaked his black button up shirt with my hysterics.
“Hey there. Don’t cry. Everything will be alright Jadie-bug. It’s going to be okay,” he said as he typed yet another message in his phone.
He stabilized after a few blood transfusions. Bullet didn’t hit anything vital. They were going to write him off as a lost cause, but I convinced Boss that if we saved him, it would help win your trust.
I froze when I read that. Part of me was glad that Abe’s injury wouldn’t cause permanent damage, but the other part of my brain latched onto the phrase “write him off”. They were going to write him off, as in, call him a complete loss; throw him away like a piece of garbage while he was alive, until they figured out a way to use him against me.
The joy I’d felt for those few seconds since I’d learned he was alive melted away in the face of the fury welling up in my veins. My body began to shake, shake with the desire to claw their eyes out. For the first time in my life I wished I were Edward—not the sparkly, blood sucking variety, but the Scissor Hands type—so I could do more than just hurt them.
Castration ranked pretty high on my list of options.
Even though Abe was alive, I couldn’t forget what it felt like when I believed he was dead. My feelings for the organization that could treat my brother’s life with such wanton cruelty were still the same; hate and outrage twisted together into an inferno burning me from the inside.
One of Anton’s hands began stroking my hair, and the other rubbed slow circles on my back, until my shaking stopped. After I’d calmed enough to be still, he waited a minute before writing again.
Cooperate with Boss so he’ll let you out of the restraints. I’m working on escape for us three. Have to wait until you and Abe are strong enough. Be good.
We traveled back to the gurney slowly, and stopped at the foot. A full sixty seconds transpired as we stared at the stretcher before I carefully climbed atop, readying myself for the braces. I lay back down, situating my arms and legs in the leather straps, waiting for Ant to buckle me back in. But Ant didn’t move an inch. A shiver worked down his spine as his eyes remained locked on the restraints.
He moved toward me. I thought he was finally going to do it, but instead he lifted me from the gurney and set me on the bed. Looking up at him in confusion, I was startled by the haunted look in his eyes, but he wiped that away almost immediately.
“You can’t prove your trustworthiness if we keep you locked up. Just don’t go postal on anybody,” he said with a weak smile.
There is a hallway full of guards outside your door, each has drug tipped darts. And there are cameras out there too. Don’t do anything dumb.
“I’m not,” I cleared my throat when nothing came out, and tried again, “I won’t do anything,” I managed in a rough voice.
He just nodded without meeting my eyes. Then he tucked the blankets around my battered body. Before leaving he leaned in and deposited a kiss on my temple, just a whisper against my skin, so fast I wasn’t even sure it really happened.
Just after Anton left, I brought my hands in front of my face, wondering what damages the gauze hid. Using my teeth I unraveled the packaging to get at the wounds that lay beneath. When I saw them at first I couldn’t believe I was looking at my hands.
I don’t even remember the last time my fingernails weren’t painted, but these were mine. Scabs covered the ends where the cement tore my skin off. My purple sparkly fingernail polish chipped most of the way off, along with my actual fingernails. They were shredded, some of them past the quick. Just looking at them hurt. And my knuckles. It didn’t just feel like my hands had a round in the blender. They looked it too.
Waiting until I was recovered enough to fight again, suddenly sounded like a really good plan.
I stumbled toward the bathroom, worried about what the rest of me must look like. When I saw myself in the full length mirror I had to bite back a scream, and not just because someone had washed my makeup off.
My face didn’t even look that bad, comparatively. Sure, my right cheek had a nice set of scratches, reaching all the way up to my temple. But the rest of me was a collage of black, blue, purple, and yellow, plus the rest of the rainbow. I really did look like I’d been through a meat grinder.
The hands were probably the worst, but my forearms and thighs, which I’d used to block the hits the mobsters threw at me, were pretty freaky looking. I could even see Marv’s fingerprints on the insides of my thighs. And these stupid pajamas showed every last bump, cut, and bruise on my body.
No wonder Anton was treating me like a glass figurine.
The high point of my trip to the bathroom was my discovery of an unused toothbrush and toothpaste, which says a lot. I hate hotel toothbrushes. My stiff fingers fumbled the white, plastic, toothbrush, and then to rinse my face. As I toweled off I heard raised voices near the door to my suite.
I moved to the center of the room waiting to meet my kidnappers. Standing. Not strapped down like a mental patient, and not laying down like an invalid, my minty fresh breath making up for the indignity of the sleepwear.
“If he can….see me…worse than,” I couldn’t hear most of what was said, but I didn’t have to wonder long who might have been speaking.
The demon himself, of the Marv brand, walked through the door, followed by a glowering Anton, The Boss, and Kitty. Party in my room. Apparently.
The three unwelcome guests, plus Anton, froze in their tracks when the saw me waiting for them with my hands planted on my hips. Anton closed his eyes for a moment, as if gathering strength, then locked eyes with me, pleading with me to play my part.
I turned my eyes to the others standing in front of me, waiting for me to pull out another miraculous butt kicking performance, or to back down.
Could I do it? Restrain myself from attacking my brother’s would-be killers without the help of those three belts per limb? Could I look into their eyes and smile? Maybe I didn’t have to.
I could feel that inferno urging me to ignore my aching limbs, my abused body, and the fact that I was having trouble standing on my own. Attack. But as I looked at them I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do as much damage as I wanted, not in my current state. I wanted nothing short of their total destruction, at least for two of them.
Even though I knew that wasn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future, I looked into Olegushka’s conniving eyes and vowed to bring him down, along with the scum that does his bidding, no matter what it cost me. And right now, that price was a smile.
I held my hand out to Anton, signaling for him to come to my side. He separated himself from the others, intertwining his fingers with my scabby ones. Bless his heart.
“You,” I said in a low voice, pointing to Marv, “get out of my room, before I tear your heart out with my bare hands.”
I looked him in the eye, allowing a saccharine smile to sweep my face. He began to protest, but my smile unbalanced him, cutting him off midsentence.
“As far as I’m concerned, you better invest in some Kevlar, because nobody shoots my brother.”
Then I turned toward dear, delusional, Gushk.
“And you need some serious psychotherapy, if you think this is the way to treat your daughter,” I said gesturing toward the gurney with my freehand, just one of his many offenses.
Ant's kung fu grip was pretty much holding me upright, but I could still feel the extra squeezes he pulsed at me. Probably Morse code for, “Shut up. For the love of all that is Holy, shut up.”
But I don’t know Morse code.