THE CRAZY GOOD SERIES - Rachel Robinson Page 0,297

head, I say, “Give me The Hamptons first.” It’s not a question.

Dax’s silence lets me know he’s considering. “Fine. I’ll send over the information as soon as you return. And, Cody? She can never know.” My heart is pumping so hard I can barely breathe.

“Yeah,” I agree. If she found out about this she would kill him and be crushed by my decision. Just as she can’t know about our deal, neither of them can know why I’m accepting it. He’s clueless.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” I whisper.

Dax, standing a few inches shorter than me, approaches. “Is that any way to treat the person who saved your life?” Dax smiles meanly. I don’t owe him anything. “Nice doing business with you. Maybe the next time I kiss my fiancée she won’t taste like revenge.”

I can’t help it. I really can’t. I break his pretty fucking nose with my fist.

“She won’t. But her lips will taste like my dick,” I say, walking out of my office and closing the door. I’ll give him the courtesy of privacy while he pulls his shit together and then proceeds to be wrapped up in my girl’s arms. The acrid tasting vomit rises from my stomach and I barely make it to the bathroom in time.

It doesn’t take three years for things and people to change. Sometimes all it takes is one second—a second in which everything shifts.

Including hearts.

_______________

If I had three words to describe my years in captivity they would be pain, darkness, and blood—heavy on the pain, and not just the physical kind. Psychologically it messed with every neuron in my fucking brain. I’m not sure how much time passed before I accepted that it was my new life. I contemplated offing myself, but V and his men rarely gave me the means or the opportunity, watching me like a hawk and draining me of all excess energy. Sure, there were days when I was released from my cell, but those days didn’t come until the end, when they were sure I was fucked up in the head enough to not want to run, or fight. Then there was the fake video that I helped make showing my death. They sent it to the U.S. media as proof that I was a goner. I made sure that video was perfect. It was a tech job similar to what I used to do for a living. Its perfection is what ensured that everyone would stop looking for me. Figuring that would be the best outcome for all involved, I worked tirelessly. When V was happy with it and was sure there were no sneaky concealed messages within, he sent it to Lainey first. It was relief and heartache at the same time. When SEALs came to rescue me, I wasn’t expecting it. It was surreal and attached was a dreamlike quality.

I wonder how quickly I can do three thousand push-ups. Six million sit-ups? How many drips would pass? The drip of water in the corner of my room is steady. It falls from a cracked, black stone in the ceiling. It’s lulling like a clock ticking or a fan blowing. The first six months the sounds of the tiny splashes of water made me murderous. It comforts me now. It’s time passing, bringing me closer to death and whatever comes after that. They brought someone else in last night. He’s wailing down the hall and I really wish he would shut the fuck up. It’s making me lose count. I’ve been able to calculate a formula for figuring out how many days pass by the drips and the guard schedule.

“Dinner, X?” my current guard asks, interrupting my count. They’ve distanced me from my real name in an attempt to convert me to their beliefs. V knows that will never happen, but still insists that I respond to the one lettered moniker. From my small bed in the corner I reply that I am indeed hungry. Hopefully he’ll bring me the good food—what the guards eat, not the slop they give the rest of us. He saunters off to the above ground kitchen and I hear him strike the wailing asshole down the hall on his way by. At least I get preferential treatment after all these years. It could always be worse, Cody. My name sounds foreign in my own mind. At this point it’s a romantic notion, really.

Three hundred and sixty-two drips before my guard gets back with the good meal.