Trey - Shandi Boyes Page 0,73

curls her hand around my wrist in a caring manner, halting me from removing the rest of the cords while inconspicuously checking my pulse. “But you can call me anything you’d like while taking in some big breaths for me. Your heart rate is very high.”

While she wordlessly begs for me to calm down, I drift my eyes to Nero. He’s no longer on a call. “Who’s K?”

When Eight attempts to butt in, Nero waves his hand through the air, cutting him off. Once he’s joined Kendall in standing at my bedside opposite her, he asks, “How much do you remember about the past few months?”

“Clearly, not as much as I should.” I remember joining Nikolai at the club for a drink, and one of Dimitri’s goons egging Nikolai for a beating, but other than that, it’s pretty much blank. “Am I here because of the brawl?”

When Eight once again attempts to interrupt, Mikhail convinces him not to this time around. Unlike Nero, he uses his fists.

“What brawl?” Nero interrogates like a real-life motherfucking detective.

“The one near Cliché.” I scrub a hand down my face in frustration when the name of the bar we were drinking at slips my mind. I know Cliché as well as the back of my hand. It’s my regular haunt and one of the many businesses I own with Nikolai, so the watering hole next to it should be just as clear. “Umm…” My words trail off again when the scrub of my face switches to my head.

My hair is fucking gone.

I have a buzz cut.

If that isn’t bad enough, there are grooves in my skull.

“Trey, please, we need you to stay in bed,” Kendall begs when I flop my legs off the side of the hospital bed I’m waking up in before I rip off the remainder of the cords. Since the IV line is taped to my arm with industrial-strength medical tape, it, along with the bags of liquid dangling above my head, hobble into the bathroom with me.

I take a step back when I see the gaunt, lifeless face peering back at me in the mirror above the vanity. My beard is thicker and longer than usual, but my hair is completely gone. Although my skull is no longer stitched and stapled together, it’s clear it was at one stage. It looks like a fucking patchwork quilt. My eyes are lifeless, and my muscles are barely noticeable. Even my tattoos don’t look as lively as they once did.

What the fuck happened to me?

When I pivot back around to face my room, desperately needing answers, I hear Eight say, “You need to tell him who she is.”

Mikhail has him pinned to the far wall of my suite. He’s right up in his face, but it doesn’t have me missing his reply. “That’s not up to you to decide. If Nikolai wants him to know, he will tell him. Until then, keep your fucking mouth shut.”

After working my jaw side to side, I slur out, “Someone better tell me what the fuck is going on!”

With the environment hostile, Kendall slips through the cracked open door, bumping into Nikolai and a redheaded woman on her way out.

Nineteen

Sales Docket Number 12574

“Eat!”

With his annoyance higher than my starvation, Achim yanks on the chain latched to the metal collar around my neck. His tug is rough enough to pull me off the mattress my backside has barely lifted from for the longest time—I don’t know if it’s weeks or months anymore. I don’t know anything—but it doesn’t arouse a response from me. Not even a squeak parts my lips.

That annoys Achim more than anything.

“Do you want me to strap you to the bed again? To have them feed you through a nasal tube?” He wrenches my head back by fisting my hair in a cruel hold. It’s shinier than it has ever been, nourished by the care I was given my first few weeks back here.

Achim wants to build me up so he can break me all over again. He wants me to fight him like I did Vladimir in the videos he watched.

I refuse to give him the satisfaction.

I won’t even look at him. That’s how much I hate him.

He can go to hell. They all can. They can use me and abuse me. They can beat me until I am black and blue, but they’ll never see the life in my eyes. I am not K to them, nor am I Kristina. I am a number