Grievous (Scarlet Scars #2)(85)

Seven grows silent, returning to his place beside the car, as Five and I drag Aristov the rest of the way and roll him into the hole.

He lands face-up with a thud.

I grab my shovel, scooping up a pile of dirt, instantly dropping it on him. He opens his eyes, looking up at me, but he otherwise does nothing.

What can he do?

Not a goddamn thing.

I know. I know. I’ve been there.

It might’ve been a world away, but I’ve laid where he’s laying.

The pain... the pain had been intense. I can still feel an echo of it sometimes rattling around in my head. Otherwise, just like my skull, the rest of it became fractured, my memory a pile of puzzle pieces that will never completely fit together. Flashes and moments, like a fucked up flipbook out of sequence. I vividly remember my stepfather standing over me, panting and sweaty, his nose bleeding. I’d put up a fight, but it wasn’t enough. He caught me off guard, swinging the metal shovel, hitting me right in the face the second I turned around.

I laid in the hole he dug behind the house, barely clinging to consciousness as I stared up at him in the darkness. My ears were ringing, and the man was talking, but I could barely make out his words. Something, something, something... you brought this on yourself. Alarms shrieked inside my skull, but I didn’t make a sound. I didn’t beg, or cry, or curse, even as he took the bloody shovel and picked up a pile of dirt, sending it raining down on me.

I closed my eyes as they burned, coated in blood. I waited for death. I knew it was coming. I waited... and waited... and waited... as he piled on the dirt.

Something jarred me eventually as I was yanked and dragged, the pain explosive as I forced my eyes open, looking up, expecting to see my stepfather, but it was another face I found. A guy, not much older than me. People were shouting into the night, fighting going on somewhere, as he knelt down, leaning over me. “Can you hear me?”

I tried to nod.

“Can you tell me your name?” he asked. “Can you tell me anything?”

I opened my mouth, my voice a broken whisper as I tried to speak. No idea if he heard me or if he understood, but he said, “My name’s Ignazio. Just hold on, okay?”

Blackness took over then, more little flashes. It took a while for me to realize Ignazio had saved my life, pulling me out of a homemade grave and finding help.

“How long does it take?” Five asks, his question catching me off guard, drawing me out of the memory.

He’s staring down at Aristov. The hole is only about four feet deep, six and a half feet long.

“What?”

“How long does it take to die this way?” Five asks. “Hours? Days?”

“More like minutes,” I say. Buried alive. “Inhaling dirt, a thousand pounds of pressure on top of you. You’d suffocate.”

“Sounds terrifying.”

It is.

Within a few minutes, Aristov’s no longer visible. He doesn’t have an Ignazio to save him like I’d had. Less than an hour later, and the hole is again filled.

We kick stuff on top of it—leaves, tree branches, stones, making it blend in, so if anyone stumbles upon the area, it won’t stand out. We’re deep in the woods, an hour or so across the border in New Jersey, in the middle of fucking nowhere. He’ll likely go undiscovered forever.

“I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could sleep for a month,” Five says as we toss the shovels in the blood-soaked trunk, adding dirt right on top of it, a forensic team’s wet dream. “Probably could use a vacation after the night we’ve had.”

“Florida’s nice this time of year,” I tell him. “You should take the trip down.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, there’s some work on the groves that needs done.”

Five laughs, pulling out the car keys to head for the driver’s seat. “It’s not really a vacation if you’ve got me on the clock.”

I shrug, getting in the passenger seat. I’ve never taken a vacation from working, so I don’t know what that’s like. There’s always stuff that needs done. Seven climbs in the backseat, staying silent, as Five drives us back into New York under the cloak of darkness, heading straight to my house in Queens.

The rest of the guys are here, waiting. Well, except for Three. He’s still off handling things.

I dismiss everyone right away, not in the mood for company, needing some time to get my thoughts in order, but Seven lingers, standing on my front porch. As much as I’m still itching to gut him, I have to admit he’s got balls. Big balls. Maybe too big, but still... it takes balls to stand here.

“What do you want, Seven?”

“A second chance,” he says.

“Why should I give you one?”

“Because I want to make it up to you.”

I shake my head. “That’s not a good reason. I don’t care what you want. Not anymore. So if you’re looking for a second chance, come back when you’ve got a good reason as to why I should give you one. Until then...”

I wave him off.

He turns away, leaving without arguing.

My brother meets me in the foyer as soon as I’m in the house, my boots tracking dirt in along the floor.

“What happened?” he asks. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I took care of it.”