Torture (Siren Book 2) (11 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Calder

When I wake up, the darkness is gone. The lights fill my eyes with a harsh glare, and as they adjust, I can't even focus past my relief to be somewhere new. The flooring beneath me has a different texture to it, and there's no holes in the ceiling.

I groan and roll onto my side to take stock of my surroundings. I'm not alone. One of Allen's feet is in view, and barely visible behind it is a cascade of strawberry-blond waves. It takes me several minutes to get up, with the pain rippling through my back and ribs, and as I sit up, two more bodies come into view. I'll have to introduce myself eventually, but for the moment, I'm more interested in my familiar companions.

There's blood on Allen's pants, and his shirt, but it doesn't look too bad. His face is bruised, but again, nothing worse than a bar brawl. And Milla's pristine, a veritable angel in this derelict room. Her clothes are still filthy, but there's not a speck of blood on them, or a single visible bruise.

Milla's still out cold, but Allen's stirring. I lean over him as he wakes. “Thank
fuck
you're okay,” I say, and offer him a hand up.

He accepts it, and claps me on my shoulder as I help him up. “Back at you. I thought I heard screaming.”

“Yeah, probably.”
Shit
. He doesn't know about Denise. “There's a few more guys here, if you want to help wake them up. Milla's on your other side—” I can't make myself articulate it, but he guesses who's missing.

“Denise? She okay?”

I shake my head. “Sorry. She's been gone at least a few days. I saw her pass.”

His eyes widen, and when he speaks again, his voice is quiet. “How?”

“Falling, I think. We both fell, but a padded pipe cushioned my fall. She wasn't so lucky. She was there when I landed, had been for some time, and there was no way she could pull through.”

Just talking about it makes me relive it. “There was a taunt on the wall, in chalk. It was—” Every lecture about manning up stops me in my tracks. If I get any deeper into it, my emotions are gonna bleed into him, and that would just be a sucky start to this fresh hell.

He looks away. “It doesn't matter. I'll check on the others.”

As he crawls away, I turn to Milla, and pull her head into my lap. It's
deja vu
, and not a welcome one. I don't think I seriously believed the others had escaped, or were 100% alive, but even the hope... I hadn't even realized I was
carrying
that hope. And now, I'm faced with the possibility of watching that hope unequivocally die, should anything happen to them.

But it's impossible to be anxious over it:
she's here
. Lights catching on tanned skin and freckles, her hair loose and dirty, but still soft between my fingers. Her chest gently rising and falling, deep, even breaths. My hands tremble on her cheeks, her skin smooth and supple against my fingertips. I wish this was just another nightmare, but her presence means its
real
.

Her eyelids flutter and open. “Calder?” One grimy hand comes up to wipe beneath her eye, bumping against my fingers, and when her eyes pop open again they're wider.

“Yeah, it's me. You okay?”

She sits up, and I miss her weight immediately. Even the tickle of her hair against my ankle as she moved. “I'm—I'm fine, I think. You?”

I change the subject, to give her a gentler wake-up before I have to tell her about Denise. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“No. Like I said, I'm fine.” But her lips clamp shut, and her face has that still look she gets when she's concerned she's gonna snap. Obviously she's not
that
unfazed. “What's wrong?” She glares at me, and I glance away. So much for giving her a moment of calm and peace before the bad news.

“I thought you might want to clear your head first, but Denise is dead. Allen seems to be okay and there's two new guys here. I haven't said hi yet. I wanted to—” I don't know
what
I wanted to do. Make sure she was okay? Reassure myself she was real?

“I'm
fine
, then. May as well meet the new family.” She pouts sullenly, and I wonder what I said wrong.

I help her up, though she's still swaying a little, and we head toward the ass end of the room, where Allen seems to have awoken at least one of the new guys.

The man looks up as I approach, and recognition hits. “Marquel!”

His eyes widen, and he breaks into a grin. “Well this is weird as fuck. But at least I know someone here.”

“You know each other?” Allen suggests mildly, and Marquel and I both chuckle.

“We went to
school
together.”

He holds out a hand to me, and I grip it in our old secret handshake. “Roomed together, for a year, too.”

“Hunh,” Allen says, a little uneasy about that.

The second man is moving, now, and Marquel and I lower our voices while he comes to.

“So what is all this?” Marquel asks, his jovial demeanor cracking.

“I'm not sure. I don't know how long I've been here. Someone's definitely trying to kill us, though.”

“You're
shitting
me.” He laughs, in disbelief.

“No shit. I've seen a few people die already.”

He inspects my bleak face, and finally decides he better trust me. “Why?”

“I'm not sure. I've been trying to guess that, myself. It's some kind of grudge, clearly. Whoever's doing this, they leave us food and stuff while we sleep. Move us, sometimes. We got a paper with some names—” I know I should show it to him, but I'm a little terrified to find out what he knows. Last I heard, Marquel was working for my brother George, as his head staffer. George was involved more with the business than I was, before my mom suggested he would be of more use looking after our political interests.

“There was a message, too, the last room I was. Some socialist shit about needing people to catch you.” I don't want to say more than that. I don't want to tell him about Denise's blood, and Evan's wounds, and Alex's burned body.

“Fucking
weird
.” The fear is beginning to sink into Marquel, and I grimace. I hate being the bearer of bad news. Leaning forward makes my rib hurt, but it's easier to brace my elbows on my knees. He doesn't miss my careful movements. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a bit banged up.” I fidget uncomfortably, stretching to test the limits of the pain.

Milla appears behind me and pokes my ribcage with unyielding fingers. I bite back a yell as she probes it with absolutely
no
mercy.

“It feels like a cracked rib. You'll survive.” No sympathy either.
Thanks
, Mil.

“Yeah I figured, genius.” I can't help but snap, as the pain still ricochets through me.

Marquel grins, melting into the smooth-as-butter smile he saves for the prettiest, well,
anyone
, really. “And you are?”

“Camilla.” Hearing her full name jostles something in me, but whatever it is, I can't actually pull it into clear view. She's not smiling at
all
, though. And given her friction with Allen, I can't blame her for not wanting the attention.

“How long have you been here, gorgeous?”

She looks at me, her eyes pleading, not the confident woman I expected to shoot him down.

How can I refuse? I wade in to rescue her. “Almost as long as I have. She popped up, what, a week after me? Time's kinda meaningless here.”

Marquel doesn't seem to know how to respond. To be fair, it's a confusing situation. And he doesn't seem to recognize that his persistence
isn't
doing him any favors with her. Or with me. Normally I'd be right alongside him, but... I guess I still think of Milla as
mine
, in some capacity. His eyes are still fixed on her, though, tracing her curves as though she were naked, despite her crossed arms and pursed lips. It makes me want to pummel him, not just for treating this lightly, but also because I
know
those sweet curves by heart, almost, and I'm not about to share them.

“Knock it off, asshole,” I tell him, and flash Milla a comforting smile.

“What's wrong with a little harmless flirting?” he asks, but stops short. “Shit, you two already—” He spreads his hands out, palm down, in an obvious cut-off motion. “Say no more.”

I heave a sigh of relief, but Milla's glare only intensifies. She turns and stomps away.

“Watch out for her,” I tell Marquel. “We're all pretty fragile. You'll get there eventually, too.”

He rolls his eyes. “C'mon. You know we don't mess with each other's girls. She's fine. It must make it... easier... dealing with all this with someone clinging to you.”

It's more complex than that, and I don't think I would really say Milla's clinging to me. “Yeah, but you know nothing's happening. This—it's just too fucked up. There's nothing sexual happening here. Nothing sexual with her.”

“Sure.”

The other man is fully awake now, and as Allen moves out of the way, I get a good look at him. “George?”

Shit
.

Chapter Sixteen

Calder

I haven't spent more than ten minutes talking to my older brother in the better part of a decade. And it's an arrangement that works for the both of us. We never spent a lot of time together as kids, even, because of the age difference. It's strange thinking we'll be forced to make up for lost time here. If it wasn't such a frivolous thing to dread, all considered, I'd say I'm already dreading it.

“Cal?” He doesn't look any happier to see me, either. Still, we give each other a one-armed hug, to be brotherly.

All of it covers up for my growing unease. This thing... our family is
obviously
at the center of it. My brother and I, here, people who work for him or with him, people who work for me or with me... The creased paper with the same names as the one Mom had earlier... It's increasingly obvious. But what isn't is the
why
. No matter how I mash the pieces together in my head, it doesn't fit.

Marquel notices my drawn expression, and launches into an animated conversation with George. Obviously they're familiar enough even outside work matters, that there's some comfort in being here together.

My gaze keeps straying to Milla, sitting as far from us as possible, a sour look on her face.

Allen sticks close, looking perkier than I've seen him in quiet a while. It's funny what comfort there is in company. Even I feel it, at the edges, a protective urge to break this hellscape down, to move heaven and earth to be having these discussions in a bar, using a light, “do you remember how weird that shit was?” kind of tone.

It's like being back in school. Knowing where all the pieces of your life are, knowing who's helping you keep them together. Even when George and Marquel push me and Allen to recount
everything
since we first woke up here, the other emotions are distant. It's simply me educating them about how things're going here.

“How long's it been?” George glances at me from beneath lowered lashes, evaluating me.

“Mom's funeral.”

“
Shit
, yeah. I kept meaning to call, but I just never had
time
, with the campaign—”

I tune him out, bored out of my mind at all the crap he thinks is important. I used to be able to fake interest, but it doesn't seem like a worthwhile use of energy, for what I've seen here.

George shrugs and changes the topic, asking Allen about the bruises on his face. I can't even make myself listen to the answer.

Both of us are gonna die here
.

Eventually, Milla puts aside her nervousness to come closer, listen to the conversations. It relaxes me slightly; I hadn't even realized I was uncomfortable with her being so far away. Somehow, the others miss the point, though. George kisses her hand as he introduces himself, and she yanks it away like a snake bit her. Denise's death seems to have hit her hard; now she's one woman, imprisoned with four men—it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the source of her discomfort.

I'm not sure if she trusts me to have her back or not. But it
does
make me want to reassure her that nothing's changed since she told me she didn't trust Allen. Since I nearly fucked her. Allen seems to have been largely broken by his trials; apparently he fell, too, from a poorly anchored grate that shifted when he put his weight on it. It wasn't serious though. Just enough to prevent him from moving or exploring. He considers himself lucky, especially having just heard the details of Denise's last days. I don't think he's going to lash out at Milla; whatever rebellion he was working through in the other room seems to have vanished entirely, replaced with gratitude to be alive, and in good company.

And maybe he knows enough about who George and Marquel are to believe that if we
do
come out of this alive, any bonding here could have positive effects on his career. His smile is
entirely
too ingratiating.