Page 106 of Savage Roses
“Fuck off.”
“See,” he says, laughing. “See what I mean? You’re a cocky son of a bitch. You deserve every misfortune coming to you—and believe me, there are many. This is only the beginning,scarafaggio. By the time I’m through with you, you will be begging me. You will ask me to kill you.”
Never.
Lucius crouches in front of me. His pudgy face shines with glee studying my bruised, swollen face. “Remember what I said? I’m your god, Salvatore. You have no idea how I’m about to show you.”
“I said,” I wheeze out in my aching voice, “fuck off.”
“You’re really not going to give up the location of the tapes?”
I hawk up as much spit as I can—which isn’t much considering I’m dehydrated—and spit at his feet. “Fuck off, you fuckingmutante. Give me an opening. Give me one single chance to get free, and I’m going to make you fucking pay. Count on it.”
The cocky smile drops off Lucius’s face. The monstrous severity that replaces it reminds me of a time or two I’d really pissed him off growing up. He means business. His fat, stubby fingers stretch out and grip me by my chin. Peering into my unyielding glare, the hatred in his own stare oozes from his every huge pore.
“You’re going to regret this,” he tells me. “Just remember. I will show no mercy. Not evenwhenyou beg.”
I have no clue what the fuck he’s talking about as he lets go and stands up. His shoes echo on the concrete, a lone tapping sound that’s ominous as he walks out. The door swings shut with a decisive clang of steel.
He’s going to make me pay. Probably torture me some more. Maybe move into real gruesome, demented shit like destroying my body—he’ll want to mutilate me and turn me into a freak show like him.
But I won’t beg.
I refuse. Nothing he can do to me will make me beg for mercy.
The cold concrete bites me as I crawl to the corner opposite the toilet and huddle up for another long, freezing night.
“You won’t last long.”
The voice comes through the crack in the concrete wall to my right. The cell next to mine. Somebody’s occupying it—something I found out soon after I was placed here.
At night, in the dead silence of everything, I can hear the rasp of his snores. Sometimes, when the guards deliver him his daily ration of food, they taunt him. Though he never gives in, even allows a reason for them to mete out punishment.
His voice being raspy with a natural creak to it, he sounds like he’s got age.
“You don’t know shit,” I snap.
“I know all the shit,” he says, and then… nothing.
My ears pick up on the rasp that follows as he rolls into a snore and deep breathing. He’s fallen asleep mere seconds after issuing his prediction. I shake my head and close my eyes, trying to force myself into a sleep that doesn’t come easy.
Not even when I try to disappear into my head, where pleasant memories exist, like the one of taking Delphine for a bike ride to Rose Hill at sunset.
Instead, no matter how exhaustion sinks into me, I’m stuck in a loop of paranoia.
You won’t last long.
delphine
Ablindfold coversmy eyes and zip ties secure my wrists when I regain consciousness. I’m unsteady on my feet, swaying between two structures larger than myself—this I know because my body wilts left and connects with something hard and immovable. The same happens as I’m sent in the other direction and discover it’s equally as solid.
I might as well be a flower blowing in the wind, my stem trapped between concrete.
It’s a long time before I realize what’s happening.
Before I’m able to orient myself enough to realize I’m swaying for a reason. The ground is moving. Everything around me is being lifted up, steadily higher by the second.
It ends with adingand jerking motion that makes me stumble. The two solid entities I’m wedged between don’t let me fall. Their viselike grips seize hold of me and put me back in place in between them.