Chapter 26: Hidden Heir: Chapter 26

Pain has become a familiar sensation yet nothing prepares me for the agony of having a large, thick iron nail hammered through the center of my left palm. I scream, arching my back off the water-logged stone floor in an attempt to twist away but as soon as I move, Paul drops down and presses his knee to the middle of my chest.

“Ah-ah,” he says. “What did I tell you about struggling?”

“Please,” I sob, losing myself to the hot, pulsing agony that radiates down my arm. “Please, I can’t tell you what I don’t l know!”

Paul scoffs and adjusts his position to grab my other hand. I immediately attempt to curl in on myself to hide my hand from the same agony but Paul is stronger. He wrenches my arm away from my body, shifting his knee from my chest to my wrist. Pinned down, there’s nothing I can do as he forces my hand flat, presses the tip of the second nail against my palm, and hammers it through.

Searing, burning pain rips through my hand and every instinct left inside me demands I move away from the pain but I can’t. Even the slightest movement radiates biting agony through my hands and up my forearms. There’s nothing left for me to do but cry.

The tears pour fast and hot down my raw cheeks. I’m surprised I even have any tears left to shed, considering how long I’ve been here. In the beginning, when Paul stripped me naked and beat me with a cane, I tried not to cry. I wanted to show that I was strong, and he didn’t scare me, but he wore me down pretty quickly. Torture is nothing like I’ve seen in the movies. I expected to be left alone in darkness, beaten a few times, and have someone yelling in my face, but it’s not like that at all.

It’s constant. Paul is always there, taking his time to slice an unknown pattern into my back until nothing exists there but fire and pain. He caresses my cheek then in the same movement, dunks my head into a bucket of ice-cold water, holding me there until I’ve taken in a lungful of liquid. He broke my wrist by stamping on it repeatedly after he threatened to fuck me with a rusty rail spike and I bit him on the neck. The only reason he hasn’t, in his words, is that he can still sell what’s between my legs if I don’t tell him what he wants to know.

I’ve been beaten, cut, drowned, locked in a frozen room then smothered under a cloth and scalding hot water, had bones broken and flesh split.

I still can’t tell him what he wants to know because I don’t know. I’ve never known.

He simply doesn’t believe me.

“Brooke,” Paul says, grasping my bruised face and digging his fingers painfully into my swollen jaw. “What part of this is not getting through to you? All you need to do is tell me where the drugs are, and all of this will stop.”

Blood floods through my mouth from where my teeth sunk into the back of my tongue the last time he punched me. I try to gather it and spit it in his face but I lack the energy. Instead, the blood drools out of my mouth and mingles with my tears.

“I keep telling you,” I say around his embedded fingers. “I don’t know.”

“And I know you’re bullshitting me,” Paul replies. He retracts his hand and grabs me by the throat, pulling me up a few inches from the floor. Doing so causes my hands to pull against the nails embedded in them, and I scream as white-hot agony sears through my palms.

“I don’t know!” I shout in his face. “I don’t know! I don’t! How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t fucking know!”

Paul snarls in disgust and releases me, the back of my head bouncing against the stone floor. I close my eyes, weeping softly as my entire body throbs.

I wish for death.

I have no idea where anyone else is. The only light in my infinite darkness is that I know Paul doesn’t have my daughter. If he did, he’d be using her against me to get his answers. I would make up so much shit and have him running in circles just to keep her safe.

“You’re making things so much more difficult on yourself,” Paul says, walking away from me. “I’ve been kind, don’t you think? I could have had every guard in this place fucking you until your hips broke but I chose not to. Because I’m a nice guy.”

I’d laugh if I had the energy.

“Of course, that’s ultimately where you’re going to end up. Because one way or another, I will get the money I’m owed.”

“Do it,” I gurgle through a mouthful of blood. “Can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“You’re so stubborn over something that is worth nothing to you,” Paul says. “Are you thinking you can sell that shit if you ever get out of here? You won’t make anywhere near seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

Opening my eyes, I look at Paul through a foggy haze. He’s obsessed with that number. A combination of the drugs stolen and what he claims is damages, rounding the total amount to seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If I’ve learned anything from Leon, that amount is pocket change, so why does he care so much?

“I’d m-make more than you,” I say, my voice trembling. “Why do you care so damn much about that particular number? Surely you make triple that in a single weekend.”

“We’re not here to talk about what I do,” Paul mutters, walking away from me. It reminds me of Ant when he wants to avoid a subject. Finally, in a single stroke of light, it hits me.

“You’re not a big fish, are you?”

“What?”

“You. I thought you were a big fish but you’re not. You’re nothing more than a minnow. You’re a fucking weasel with no future, chasing something that doesn’t exist because seven hundred and fifty thousand is a lot to you. If you were a big deal in charge, that number wouldn’t mean anything.” A wheezing laugh escapes my throat as Paul advances back to me.

He drops down onto his knees and grabs one of the nails embedded in my hands. When he twists it, my laughter turns to weakened screams of pain and I attempt to turn away from him. He grabs my jaw and brings his face close.

“You’re not laughing now, are you bitch?” he spits. “This is your last chance. I’ve been plenty fucking patient but this is the end. Tell me where you stashed the drugs, or tomorrow I’ll sell you to the highest bidder, and the last thing you’ll see before I burn your fucking eyes out is my cock, understand?”

I fight through the haze to look him in the eye.

I’m powerless.

Weak.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here.

Rescue isn’t coming. I have no idea what happened to Leon.

I can only take refuge in the fact that Tiffany is somewhere safe, miles away from here.

This is my end.

“You think I’ll be able to see something that small?” I croak.

With a roar of rage, Paul slams my head down against the floor and a flash of white bursts across my vision. It dazes me so intensely that the pain in my hands almost fades until Paul tears the nails free, and something snaps like a band inside my hand. Numbness spreads through my fingers, and with it comes a cold curl of dread in my gut.

It will be over soon.

My body is limp as Paul leaves and guards take his place. They scrape me off the floor and I close my eyes, willing darkness to take me. In the beginning, they’d prevent me from sleeping in an attempt to drive me insane with exhaustion, but eventually, the lack of food, water, and constant pain had me passing out regularly. My only solace was in the darkness, and I silently beg for it now as I’m dragged from the room, my hair tickling my bare shoulders and my hands throbbing in time to my sluggish heartbeat.

The floor blurs and walls fade in and out of focus before I’m thrown onto a hard, dry floor. A grunt escapes me on impact and I lay there as a door slams behind me. I close my eyes.

Please let me pass out. Please.

“Br…” Something croaks beside me and I flinch, expecting another touch of pain but it doesn’t come.

“B-Brooke…”

I know that voice.

My head snaps up with alarming speed. I blink away the fog clouding my vision to look at the man heavily chained to the wall.

“Leon?”

Though he’s seated on the floor, his arms are chained to the wall above his sagging head with blood running like a river down both of his forearms. His chest is covered in a myriad of bruises, cuts, and lacerations, all of which have bled freely over his body. There’s a terrifying dark shadow over one side of his ribcage, and one leg protrudes at an odd angle, his knee and ankle swollen and dark. He’s naked, just like me, and when he lifts his head, I glimpse a head wound along his hairline that’s so deep I can see white bone.

“Oh my god…” My own pain is momentarily forgotten as I climb onto my hands and knees, only to fall flat on my face as the numbness in my left hand makes its presence known. I can’t feel the last three fingers on that hand. I glance down and my stomach roils. The fresh wounds in each palm are red and angry, leaving smears of blood on the floor as I attempt to get up once again.

“Brooke,” Leon wheezes like air passing through a paper bag. “I’m so sorry.”

“Shhh.” I hush him the best I can as I reach him, and for a moment my focus becomes the manacles around his wrists. Unfortunately, my hands are struggling to obey me and weakness pulses through my limbs with each rising beat of my heart. Torn nails and numb fingers make my attempts to free him utterly useless, and I sag against his broken body.

“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I can’t, I can’t get the⁠—”

“Your hands,” Leon croaks. “What did he do to you?”

As I slump against him, I realize I’m resting against his injured chest. There’s a voice telling me to move, that I’m likely causing him pain, but the sudden connection of skin-on-skin contact acts like the first hit of a drug. He’s warm—sort of—and familiar. The moment I’m against him, I have no energy to move anywhere else.

“He’s m-mad,” I say, swallowing down the next mouthful of blood. “Leon, I thought you were dead. Or that…”

A sudden fear goes unsaid. I had no idea what happened to Leon. But when I woke up here alone, knowing how he made his money, I feared he had shipped me off to the Irish in a rage. After all, he sold people. Why would I be any different?

“Or what?” Leon murmurs. “It’s s-so good to hear your voice. Please…”

“I thought maybe you sold me,” I whisper, turning my face into his chest. Heat radiates from his injuries in an oddly comforting way.

“Never,” he croaks. “Never you. I’d never⁠—”

“But you do,” I point out. “You sell people into shit like this, don’t you?” Lifting my head, our eyes meet and it hits me that Leon’s face is so swollen that only one eye can look at me. “Paul keeps threatening to fuck me and I⁠—”

“You r-really wanna talk about my b-business decisions right now?” Leon wheezes softly, as if trying to laugh but it doesn’t come out right.

“No,” I admit weakly. “But you wanted to hear my voice.”

“Do you think about the cows and chickens you eat?” he asks as his brows pull together in pain.

“I… no.”

“I t-trained myself to look at my family’s work the same way,” he wheezes. “Not excusing anything just… trying to explain… now we are the chickens.”

My eyes droop, his words washing over me but barely settling in my mind. I collapse down until my head is in Leon’s lap and I curl myself in. “I’m s-sorry,” I whisper weakly. “I can’t save us.”

“I’ll save us,” Leon says and it’s the strongest his voice has sounded since I arrived. “I’ll save you, Brooke.”

I cling to that promise as darkness takes me and the pain fades away into nothing.

Darkness is bliss. Maybe it’s the closeness to Leon but for the first time in however long we’ve been here, I dream of Tiffany and the estate. I watch her run around the garden chasing the ladybug she loves. She’s laughing and giggling until she darts behind a bush and I lose sight of her. Suddenly, the garden grows cold and Paul melts out of the bush with a cold smirk on his face.

“Should have told me where the drugs are,” he sneers.

I jolt awake with a weak cry, and pain wracks my body. I’m no longer next to Leon. Instead, I’m between two men who are half carrying, half dragging me through a doorway into yet another cold room. They throw me to the ground and I land hard on the stone. My shoulders are too stiff to save me from impact.

“Brooke!” Leon’s voice brings me to full consciousness and I bite hard on my tongue against the pain as I pull myself up and glance around. Leon is to my left, staring at me as he takes a blow from the butt of an assault rifle.

“I’m okay,” I murmur, blinking sluggishly.

“Are you?” comes Paul’s voice, pulling my attention to the center of the room where he stands next to another man. My eyes widen in shock when my gaze meets the eyes of the other man, my stomach twisting with sickness.

“Ant?” I gasp. “What are you doing here?”