lump in his throat.
When Michael’s first hand was free, he scratched his nose and groaned. “Oh my god, that feels so good.”
George paused and stared at him, his dark gaze heavy with concern.
“My nose has been itching since they strapped me into this bloody seat,” Michael said.
George nodded and continued freeing Michael from the rest of the straps.
Michael jumped out of the chair and George dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay, mate?”
A hot wave of grief rushed forward. Michael’s eyes burned, and his lip buckled as he nodded. “Yes, you got to me before anything happened.”
George straightened a little and his scowl eased. “Really?”
Michael nodded again and looked over at Julius' body as it popped and crackled on the fire. “Thanks for saving me, George.”
“I owe you this a million times over. I promise you, son, I’ll do everything within my power to keep you safe in this world.”
Silence hung between the pair before Michael finally broke it. “There’s something we need to do before we leave.”
***
The lock snapped free, the hinges groaned, and Michael stepped into the warehouse with George behind him.
The familiar lethargy of the room hit him as he looked at all of the dozing boys.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m not hanging around this time, and you boys can do whatever the fuck you like, but Julius is dead, as are most of his guards. If you want to leave this place, I would suggest you do it now.”
No one responded.
When he turned to George, the big man shrugged. “You ready to leave?”
Of the fifty or so boys in the warehouse, every one of them remained where they were. Michael looked up at George. “What are they doing? Why aren’t they moving?”
“They’ve been here too long.”
“Surely that would make them want to move more?”
The sides of George’s eyes pinched as he winced. “Sometimes, people become so accustomed to a certain way of life, especially one as brutal as the one they’ve been living, that they’re too broken to leave it.”
As he looked at the boys, Michael opened and closed his mouth several times but couldn’t find the words. He eventually sighed and turned to George again. “Let’s get out of here.”
Breakfast
In the time Michael had been away, George had found a new house to live in. It was a good thing because the old place reminded him too much of Lola. Just thinking about her made him tense. As he walked down the stairs, he stretched the tiredness from his body and winced against the shrill peep of the fire alarm.
"What time is it?" he said to George as he watched him dance around the kitchen, waving a tea towel through the air as if it would banish the smoke.
After looking out of the window at the spreading daylight, George shrugged and said, "Morning," then continued wafting the air beneath the alarm.
It had been a week since George had rescued him from the warehouse, and the aches and pains from his time there still tugged at various parts of his body. They’d diminished for sure but not completely vanished. A few more days and they should be gone for good.
Before he stepped off the bottom stair, Michael held onto the banister and rolled his hips from side to side. One of the boys in the warehouse had hit him so hard in the back, he had a deeper pain there than anywhere else. As he rocked, lightning rods of pain ran both up his back and down his thigh.
George gave up on the fire alarm and stared at Michael. "You okay, son?"
Michael nodded. He didn’t have it in him to shout over the annoying noise.
The house used to belong to a family of four; a mum, dad, son, and daughter. George had called it a nuclear family—whatever that was supposed to mean—and whenever Michael looked at the family photos on the walls, he expected them all to glow green. When he told George that, the big man said he’d watched too much Scooby Doo. He missed Scooby Doo.
The boy of the family was named Connor; or so it said on the schoolbooks that he’d left behind in his room. Although he was an academic year older than Michael, they were of a similar size. His clothes weren’t a perfect fit, but they were good enough and a damn sight better than a pink tracksuit. Whenever Michael looked out into the back garden, he saw the dark stain on the small patio from