Beyond Revenge (The Ransom Series) (9 page)

His Pain

∞

I’ve seen it in
him.

Through his
silence, beyond his strength.

He portrays to the
world

what he would have
it see,

but he holds the
truth inside.

The pain that
clenches his heart.

Eating away, piece
by piece.

Destroying that
which is beautiful.

Leaving nothing.

∞

My racing heart finally slows, but the uncontrollable
tears still spill down my face.  I’ve rubbed my wrist raw on the metal handcuff
holding me to the bed.  No matter how hard I pulled on it, there was no
reaching him, no intervening.  I was only feet away from him yet completely
helpless.

He looks so fragile sprawled out
and
unconscious on the floor.

The man who has done so much to support
me these last few weeks, the man who tried to save me from this fate, the man
who is destined to deliver my baby
,
is lifeless on the
cold cement in
the corner of the room
.

I’ve been watching the rise and fall of
his chest, confirming that he still draws breath.  Making sure he’s still
breathing is a good distraction from the large welt on his cheek and the blood
dripping down from his forehead.  He was clutching his side when the final blow
knocked him out cold.  His hand still rest
s
there.

I gasp as Jack’s head lulls to the side
to face me, but his eyes remain closed, one of them swelling considerably.  He
starts mumbling something behind the duct tape over his mouth, and in
him
showing th
e
se signs of life again
,
I breathe a small sigh of relief.

“Jack?”  No movement.  My voice turns
forceful, more out of fear than anything else.  “Jack?  Please tell me you’re
okay.”

There’s a flicker of an eye opening, more
signs of life.  He’s barely coming out of it now, reentering the conscious
world with me.  His eyes peek open more until he sees me, concern flashing over
his face as he immediately tries to sit up.

“Jack, don’t–”

He winces as his torso collapses back
down to the floor.  In the brief moment he elevated
his upper body,
I caught a glimpse of blood against the concrete.

“Your head is bleeding.”

Jack slowly
pulls the tap
e off
his mouth.
 
“Feels like everything is
bleeding,”
he
replies with a sigh.  He smiles briefly
before the expression turns into a grimace.

I pull against the handcuff again even
though I know it’s hopeless.  Jack sees me and holds up an unsteady hand to
stop me.

“I’m fine.  It’ll all be fine.  You
don’t have to worry.”

With one final
stubborn
yank against the restraint, I give up.  “You don’t look fine.  God,
that was awful, Jack.  What the hell happened?  Why did
Mark
just beat the shit out of you?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Please, just tell me.”

He seems unnecessarily hesitant about
answering my question.  “Mark connected a call before he threw me in here and
did what he did.”

I didn’t see the phone to his ear when
he came in.  He was too busy tossing his former friend to the
floor
and beating him unconscious.

Jack inhales a sharp breath as he tries
to move again,
unsteadily
pushing himself up to
sitting.  “They probably heard everything, exactly what Mark wanted them to
hear from you.”

“Oh my God.”
  He called my
parents. 
All my screaming, crying, and pleading with Mark to
stop abusing this old man in front of me had to have been interpreted wrong by
them
.  They’ll think I was the victim of Mark’s rage.

Then I remember what happened as Mark
was leaving the room, when the shock was overtaking my senses and I wasn’t sure
what the hell was going on.  Through my foggy memory
,
I remember that he pulled
a
phone out of his pocket. 
He said something about stopping a crusade.

My face lights up briefly.  “Dad’s
fighting back against Mark, isn’t he?  He’s winning
,
and Mark’s pissed about it.”

“They were doing quite well,” Jack
says, and I’m immediately confused.

“They?  Who’s they?”

Jack
attempts a smile
.  “That’s the benefit of being old.  People think we sleep all the
time
,
but we’re really just listening.”  He wipes the
blood from his forehead with the back of his hand.  “Your father and Leo.  It
sounds like they’re working together.  That’s what Mark was talking about
on
the phone
before he dragged me in here.”

I stare at him
in bewilderment
.  “Dad and Leo?”

The thought of the two most important
men in my life coming together to hurt Mark to try to help me is absolutely
overwhelming, though it’s hard to imagine them in the same room without my
dad’s hands around Leo’s throat.

Jack nods sluggishly.  “I suspect your
father realized the wealth of information Leo has about Mark’s operation.”

My mind instantly turns to thoughts of
Leo in prison, handcuffed to some metal desk in a dark room with a one-way
mirror answering all of Dad’s questions, but I try to remain positive.  “So
maybe he’s working out a deal?  Giving them information about Mark to get a
reduced sentence or something?”

“I don’t think Leo’s in prison,” Jack
says as he pushes himself up, rising
shakily
to his
feet and moving to sit next to me on the bed.  “I think they’re actually
working together.  They’re on the streets interrupting shipments and turning
Mark’s guys in to the police.”

I shake my head in disbelief.  “I can’t
even fathom that.  My dad would kill Leo if he got within two feet of him
in the outside world
.  How can they possibly be working
together?”

“For you,” Jack says simply.  “They
share a common goal.  You know they’ll both do anything to find you.”

I’ve tried not to think
about
what Leo must be feeling now and since the day I was taken from him
over
a month
ago.  He already has so much pain inside, weighed down so heavily
by the guilt he feels about his life improving the moment my dad put Mark in
prison six years ago, the event that ultimately led to the destruction of
Mark’s family and Mark’s decision to seek revenge on my dad by taking me.  It
took weeks after I chose to stay with Mark’s crew for Leo to finally realize
that I was content with my decision, that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else
in the world besides in his arms, even if we were essentially
held
captive in Mark’s headquarters.

With each passing day I’m only
compounding Leo’s pain.  He knows there’s a
chance I’m pregnant with his child.  He heard my screams over the
call that I didn’t know was
connected
when Mark threw
Jack into my room and started beating him senseless.  It’s hard for me to
contemplate this new devastation he’s experiencing on top of everything else.

I turn to Jack.  Somehow he’s managing
to smile at me, knowing that the past few moments I’ve
mentally
been in another place. 
I
notic
e
a drip of blood creeping down
the side of
his face
.  When
I reach out to wipe it
away, he stops me.

“It’s okay.  I’ll take care of it.  I’ve
been through worse than this,” he says as he puts pressure on the bleeding wound
near his hairline.

In typical Jack fashion, he’s trying to
be reassuring and wants nothing more than to take my worries away.  He’s
usually quite successful, a master at distraction.

Jack sits back against the wall on the
bed, straining to cross his legs in front of him but looking utterly relaxed
when he finally hooks his ankles together.  He’s settling in.

A slight grin reaches my lips.  “You’re
going to tell me more stories, aren’t you?”

That’s how we’ve spent most of our
increased time together
lately
, just talking while
Jack reminisces about his adventures in the multiple lifetimes’ worth of
experiences he’s had over my measly nineteen years.

“I know you love my stories,” he says,
closing his eyes for the slightest moment of rest before the tale he’s about to
tell begins.

I sit back against the wall with him,
similarly closing my eyes.

I do love them.  At this moment, Jack
and his stories are all
this baby and
I have.

His Vitality

∞

There was a time
before.

I was happy and
unchained but not truly free.

Growing but not
thriving.

Existing but not
living.

One man changed it
all for me.

He gave me life.

Something to look
forward to each day.

Someone to spend
it with.

Something worth living
for.

I am awakened.

∞

Days and weeks go by
, and
life
continue
s
much as it has
been
.  Jack visits me for at least a few hours
each
day before it’s time for his “nap” when he listens to Mark
talk
on the phone or until he’s ready for a cigar.  Mark hates the
smoke, but Jack insists that
cigars are
a necessity
for him, and old men get
very
cranky when they’re
persistent about something they want.  I’m sure Mark had no choice but to give
Jack this one luxury while he’s held here with me.

Mark’s mood has only improved
in
the month since
he called my family to make them think he was
destroying me.  From what Jack tells me from overhearing
Mark’s
conversations, it sounds like the business is back in full swing
again, that all is right in
Mark’s
twisted criminal
world and he couldn’t be happier for it.

My mood,
however
, has not benefited from the recent passage of time.  It’s not just
that I miss Leo and my
parents
with every fiber of my
being, it’s
also
that I’m facing new challenges as my
body progressively changes.

As I enter
my
twelfth
week of pregnancy, my body has reached a peak in its revolt
against the tiny being growing inside me.  The nausea from morning sickness has
only increased.  I’m in and out of the bathroom so often that Mark doesn’t even
cuff me to the bed anymore.

When Jack checks on my health during
our daily meetings, I always tell him I’m feeling fine, but the truth is I’m
miserable.  I do nothing but stay locked in this basement every day, yet I feel
exhausted.  The vomiting is draining in so many ways.  Jack worries that it’s
dehydrating me too much.  He thinks I’m not getting proper nutrition because I
can hardly keep
any food
down, but I don’t know what
else
to
do.
  I’ve tried all the tricks he’s
suggested, but nothing seems to help.

He comforts me with
assurances
that this will all get better soon, that the second trimester is
much better than the first.  I’m still holding out for that.

I’m lying on the bed completely still. 
For a moment I’m enjoying the lack of nausea within me, and the moment only
improves
when I hear the key in the lock, expecting Jack to stop in to
see me.

He’s there, walking in the room with
his medical bag
,
but he’s not alone.  Mark seems in a
particularly good mood as he struts into my
basement
behind
Jack, closing the door behind him.

Jack looks uneasy.  His demeanor
transfers
to me, and I immediately sit up in the bed and scoot back against
the wall as if these men are coming for me.

Except that’s
exactly what they’re
doing.  All of this is meant for me.

“It’s okay, Morgan,” Jack says, pulling
up a chair next to me.  He manages only a half-smile.  “We’re doing a different
kind of check today.”  He motions to the pillow
,
indicating for me to lie down, and I hesitate before I comply.

Mark pulls up his own chair near my
head.  My proximity alarm is blaring within me at being only inches away from
him for longer than a few seconds.  He
’
s kept his
distance from me and kept his hands off me ever since I told him
I
thought I was
pregnant.  I’ve been grateful that he never
sticks around longer than it takes for him to set down a tray of food for me. 
Now I’m dealing with him right by my side for whatever this “check” is.  I
shiver at
his mere presence by my side.

I try to focus instead on what Jack is
doing as he pulls objects out of the medical bag that I haven’t seen before: a
tube of something I don’t recognize and a small white device with a speaker, a long
cord, and a ball-shaped end.

Jack makes sure I’m looking him in the
eyes before he speaks.  “I just need to readjust your clothes,” he says calmly.

My throat suddenly goes dry.  “Okay.”

He rolls up my shirt a few inches and
folds over the waistband of the sweatpants I’m wearing a couple times so that
my stomach and the area below my belly button are open to the air.  I wouldn’t
normally feel uncomfortable like this, but
having
Mark
sit next to me watching all of this happen puts me completely on edge.

Jack squeezes some clear gel out of the
tube onto
my lower abdomen
.  The gel is cold,
instantly causing goose bumps to break out across my skin.  Mark rubs his hand
up and down my arm to combat the chill, but his touch only makes it worse,
fueling a sudden desire within me to bolt up out of this bed and out the door.

With one stern look from Jack to Mark,
he gets the point and lets go of me.  In the absence of his touch, I feel
almost instant relief from that nightmare to focus on the other
one
developing in the device in Jack’s hand.

He turns it on, and faint
static emits from
the speaker.  He stretches the cord out to apply the ball-shaped end to the gel
on my lower belly and starts moving it around, pressing it down into my skin.

It takes a few moments
,
but Jack eventually zeroes in on what he’s looking for.  The scattered
noise turns into something regular and rhythmic.  With the slightest adjustment,
he perfects the placement so that we can hear the sound clearly, a steady and
quick pulsing that confirms the presence of additional life.

It’s bittersweet hearing the rapid
fluttering of the tiny heart within me, the child who may never know his or her
true father, the innocent creature who
will
be claimed
and raised by a monster.  Tears stream down my face as I’m overwhelmed by the
joy and sadness of it, a contradiction brewing in my belly that I haven’t
really
come to terms with until this moment.  Despite all the
morning sickness and fatigue,
this pregnancy
never
truly
felt
real
until hearing the beating heart of the tiny baby inside me.

Then I think of the baby’s father. 
I’ve never given up hope that my one last night with Leo was enough to rob Mark
of his self-bred heir.  There’s no other person in this world I’d rather share
in this moment with than Leo, but instead Mark sits by my side, grinning wildly
and laughing in disbelief, almost victoriously.

Leo would be a perfect father, and we
would be happy with each other raising a child together far away from Mark and
his criminal world.  We could break the endless cycle that Leo’s so afraid of
continuing.  We could have had it all, but instead we have nothing.

Jack checks his watch as we continue to
listen to the tiny heart racing over the speaker.  “The baby’s heart rate is
good.  A strong heart,” he says looking at me and smiling for a moment.

Mark continues to stare at my belly as
Jack gets up and walks to the bathroom.  I’m distracted by
Jack
grabbing a towel and wetting it in the sink when I realize Mark’s
hand is on my belly, feeling around my skin just slightly as if waiting for a
palpable response from the tiny being inside.

I gasp as his fingers move lower and slip under the
folded waistband of my sweatpants.  My instincts scream at me to
curl up into a ball to
protect my body from him
, but I
’m too paralyzed by his wandering touch to move.

When Jack returns, he swats Mark’s hand
out of the way
and curses quietly at him
, and I’m
immediately grateful.  He takes care of cleaning up the gel from my skin and
from the end of the device.  The second he’s done, I return my shirt and pants
back to their normal places.

I feel the warmth of someone’s touch on
the side of my face
and find that
Mark’s hand is
resting there.  I cringe away in my body’s natural reaction to feeling his skin
against mine.  Mark doesn’t respond to my reaction.  He just slowly caresses
the side of my cheek with the slightest touch of his hand.

“Mark,” Jack says sternly.

He reaches for Mark’s hand, which
leaves my face for just as long as it takes for Mark’s arm to swing back and
knock Jack backward in his chair
a couple feet
.  I try
to sit up to stop this little brawl breaking out between them, but Mark holds
me back, his entire arm spread across me
from
shoulder
to shoulder.

Struggling against him, I start to
panic.  Warning signs are flying up all around me that something horrible is about
to happen, and I’ll do anything to stop it.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Mark says
calmly, returning his hand to my face with his sensual touch while continuing
to hold me down with his arm.  “I was just appreciating you, wondering what our
baby will look like.”

I swallow my unease.  This is the first
time he
’
s referred to this
child
as our baby, and he’s talking just like any other proud father
would.

Except that he isn’t the father.  He
can’t be.  I won’t let him ruin the life of this child whether he
’s
genetically the
father or not.

“I want you to write a letter,” Mark
instructs, rising up to standing, seemingly excited about this sudden idea he’s
imparting on me.  “I think I deserve to brag a little.  I’m going to be a
father again, and I want those closest to you to know it.”

The familiar feeling of dread festers
within me.  I remember my last letter to my parents, written in blood from my
fingertips during my time held captive by Mark at the prison.

“We’ll use a pen this time,” Mark adds
with a smile as he reaches the door then passes through it, closing it behind
him.

Jack and I share a con
cerned
glance.  I look at where Mark was just sitting
,
then beyond
it
to something on the
floor
, something left behind on the concrete in the center of the room. 
Its appearance in this room is definitely accidental, most likely from Mark’s
shoes, but it gives me important insight.  To Mark or anyone else it’s
completely insignificant, but
to
me it could mean
everything.

I stand up and lean over to pick it up,
holding it tightly between my fingers.

A short
piece of a
bluish-green pine needle is in my hand.  I look to Jack, and he
looks back at me with wide eyes, like I’ve just uncovered part of the whole
secret of this place that I’ve never seen beyond the
windowless basement
.

We’re not in the desert anymore.