thought that killing Billy would ensure that. So, someone filled that syringe with a dose strong enough to take Billy’s life and had tried to make it look like an accidental overdose. That someone had stuck the needle into Billy’s heart.
They had murdered Billy.
Whoever that motherfucker was…I was going to murder him for it.
Twenty-Four
Kyle
“No!” I shouted as I stared at what was left of Garin, slamming my back into the chair, trying to thrash my arms and legs, even though they were bound. “How could you do this? How could you take him from me?” I dragged my gaze over to the man who was responsible for this. “I hope you die. I hope your babies come out here and eat your flesh and chew off your fucking face and—”
Breath grabbed my lips and twisted them. “And what, puta? If I’m gone, there’s no one here to take care of you. And do you know what would happen then?”
He may have been holding on to my lips, but I kept on screaming. I screamed because they had put us in this prison and had done horrible, sadistic things to us. I screamed because we were still in here, and I knew I was never getting out. I screamed because Breath had tortured Garin to death and taken away the one man I loved.
And I screamed, “Garin,” again and again because I just wanted him to lift his head and look at me, but I knew he wouldn’t. “Open your eyes, Garin.” My words were so muffled, but that didn’t stop me. “Come back to me. You can’t leave me, not after all this. Garin…”
“Do you see his flesh?” Breath spoke close to my ear and held me so tightly I couldn’t move. “That’s what your pussy is going to look like. Torn up and bloody in a way that can’t be fixed.”
His flesh…or what was left of it.
Breath had placed Garin in a chair, two ropes crisscrossed over his chest and tied around the metal spine of the chair. His hands and ankles were shackled. His skin had been chopped, as though a butcher had been sharpening his knife across Garin’s entire body. All of him dripped blood. I couldn’t see a piece that hadn’t been slashed. His wounds were spread open; some so deep, there was raw muscle sticking out. The blood dripped, dripped, dripped down his body, forming a pool beneath him.
A pool like the one that had gathered around Paulie.
“Why did you do this?” I seethed, glaring at the man I hated more than anything in this world. “Why did you kill him?” Killing Garin killed me. Emptied me. Destroyed me. There was no reason for me to be here anymore. “Garin didn’t know about Paulie’s murderer. Only I did. You should have killed me, not him.” I looked down at the knife that was in Breath’s hand. “Slit my throat. Do it. Get it over with. I can’t live another second.”
“I’m getting real tired of your screams, puta.” Two of his fingers slipped inside my mouth and clamped around my tongue. “If you look close enough, you’ll see his chest rising and falling.” He turned my head, so I faced Garin, and then he squeezed my tongue even harder. “Your boyfriend isn’t dead…yet,” he snarled.
He’s alive?
The tears, the screams, the anxiety, the guilt, the dread, the weight—it all lightened.
Garin…was really alive?
The sobs I wept were out of happiness as I finally saw the movement in Garin’s chest. His inhales were shallow, but he was breathing. And, suddenly, I was breathing, too. I was breathing for the both of us. I was breathing because, despite how terribly mangled he looked, my Garin was still with me.
“Levanta la cara del prisionero,” Breath barked at Beard, who I now noticed was standing in the front of the room.
Beard moved over to Garin and grabbed his hair, lifting Garin’s head so that I could finally see his face. There were slashes across his cheeks, his forehead, his nose. His lips were so beaten; they looked like hamburger meat.
“Kyle,” Garin moaned.
His voice was so soft. I almost didn’t hear him.
“I’m here, Garin.”
I tasted the tears on my lips. I tasted bile. I tasted plastic.
I tasted guilt.
Garin opened his eyes, stopping when they were just tiny slits of white. “Kyle,” he groaned. “Kyle…Kyle.”
It sounded like when he was being beaten, when Breath had made me listen to Garin whispering my name over and over. I had thought those were going to be