Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2)(80)

I find myself hoping she’ll go quickly. That he’ll be gentle. He doesn’t know what she likes.

“Perfect. Now.” Blood Honey gets to his feet and wipes his palms on his filthy pants. “Time to get this show on the road. Any last words for your thing here?”

This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

“Leo?” I push out.

She winces. Shudders.

“Leo, I love you,” I tell her. The words are foreign in my mouth and they don’t sound right; she recoils softly into the floor as if she’s been impaled by a feather. What I’d give for a gun right now. I’d figure out how to shoot the damn thing with blind luck and my teeth.

Blood Honey rolls his eyes. “Would you listen to him, Cock Sleeve? What a hero. What a guy.” He gets to his feet, bends at the waist, and then hauls her over his shoulder. She flails like a rag doll—a bound one, defeated and hopeless. The chains of her cuffs rattle as he lumbers past.

I can’t watch.

Can’t.

I’ve never tasted this kind of failure. Even when Rachel went to hospital and my mother found it, I still had money and power and use of all four f*cking limbs. Now…well, money doesn’t really matter, does it?

I roll a scream around the back of my throat, prepare to launch it, but it cracks and splinters on the way out. I can’t even make a noise. Jesus.

The door slams closed. Flies buzz louder, and in the wake of silence, a smell hits my nostrils: decomposing meat. Sunshine illuminates the wooden walls of the water villa, the cobwebs glowing in soft gold clusters and those black birds, the sharp-beaks, cawing to themselves as they land on the window ledge to peer in.

“What the f*ck are you staring at?” I croak at them.

One bird cocks his feathered skull at me, as if to say, I don’t know, *. The label fell off.

“Aeron?” yelps a small voice.

For a second, I could’ve sworn it was the bird, but then the suitcase rattles under the table and the voice comes again.

“Aeeeeeron….”

Oh, Jesus f*ck. Now, I remember.

“Ash…?”

“Aeron!” he cries. “I need to get out!”

“I know.”

The suitcase erupts in sobs. “Please let me out, let me out!”

But I can’t. I can’t do anything, and I’d rather be dead than sit here and admit it. This is what he wanted to give me, my ‘real’ father: a far worse fate than his hacked up victims. He wants to take everything and everyone, but it’s not enough to make me watch as they suffer; no, that’s far too f*cking easy for a brick wall like me.

“Aeron,” Asher weeps. “Please, please, please, please…”

“I’m coming,” I manage. “Just…just give me a sec and I’ll be right over.”

Would you have told him the truth? I thought not. Maybe I’m a little more like you than I knew.

He is jack in the box. Black box. And God, I know how that feels. Is this what empathy feels like, this feral craving to rip off your own skin?

“How long?” he wails.

“Just a moment.”

“I wet my pants,” he whimpers. “Don’t tell me off. I’m real sorry.”

“I wet my pants too, buddy.” I try to shove a laugh out but there’s nothing. Fuck all. “I won’t tell you off about anything. I promise.”

“Are you in a suitcase too?”

“No.”

“Then—” He cuts off at the sound of footsteps. “Oh noooo…”

The door behind me is flung open with a buoyant smack.

“Gentlemen! Or man. Whatever.” Blood Honey trots through in a whole new cloud sweat—fresh, and dare I say it, he’s the better-smelling body in the room. He reaches for the suitcase and pulls it up from under the table; the shape of Ash pushes through the leather, curled up like a fetus, rocking back and forth. “When I get back, Aeron, you and I are gonna have a little talk. There are things you should know, and when I’m done, you’ll have earned them.”

There’s no hiding his accent now. In his mania, all pretense has fallen away, and he’s full-on Texan. Hidey-haaaw.

Maybe I’m not worse; he just thinks I am. He doesn’t understand that my kind of power didn’t make killing much easier. Certainly not killing like this. There were always eyes, too many eyes—

“Aeron!” Ash shrieks as the suitcase passes. “You have to let me out!”

“I will!” I shout. “Hold tight in there, okay?”

“Let me out,” he sobs.

Blood Honey sighs and shakes his head at me.

“Hold tight!” I yell.

Another door slam.

Another reason to live, dragged away.

Eventually, he’ll come for me. But it’ll be too late, nothing left for me but crimson soaking into the sand outside. I did that once. I laid in a pool of my own tepid blood, and I remember how wet it felt, the hollow sensation of it oozing out. In those moments, I teetered on the edge of death. This is worse.

My nerves bunch in angry arsenals. Fucking DO something, you motherf*cking f*ck!

“I care, Tuij,” I choke out into the empty room. “Are you happy? You’d better be f*cking listening!”