Darling Wildfire (Red Rabbit #2)

34

THERON

THREE MONTHS CAPTIVE

I knew that wasn’t the last issue we’d have with Yuri and a few weeks later things came to a head in the showers. Atlas and Nyx were drying off across the room and I was still in the shower area about to step out when everything happened in seconds.

Yuri appeared around the corner of the shower stall and shoved me into the wall, landing a solid punch to my jaw. His two men attempted to grab my arms, but I’d been waiting for this moment ever since I threatened him—and I was ready. Murderous thoughts were running through my head and for the last few weeks, I’d been itching to hurt someone. The nightmares were especially bad lately and with them came the desire to let out all of my pent up rage against Vetticus. It had to go somewhere.

I ripped one man’s arm nearly clean out of its socket, rewarded by a sharp cry of distress before I kneed him in the face. Yuri wrapped his arm around my neck. I shoved him back against the wall with my body and used Yuri as leverage to kick out at the second man after he landed a punch to my stomach.

I hardly felt the hits, and I quickly lost my control. I slammed Yuri backwards against the wall again and elbowed him in the side before launching myself forward and dislodging him over my shoulder. I straddled him and landed blow after blow to his face as the shower water rained down on us. My fury was unstoppable—it was no longer Yuri underneath me but Vetticus.

I heard a crunch and saw red as blood sprayed over me. The body underneath me went limp, but I was past stopping. I was past the point where I was in control. The rage, the adrenaline, the absolute rush of release was intoxicating. I vaguely heard yelling and hands tried to grab me. I lashed out at them and they receded until an arm snaked around my neck and bodily pulled me away.

“North—North, it’s over, man.”

Nyx was in my ear, his arm tight around my neck as my chest heaved for air. As my vision cleared, I saw the destruction before me. Yuri was a bleeding mess on the tile. His blood ran in rivers down the drain as the shower continued raining down. Atlas was crouched over him, his fingers on what was left of his neck, his face unrecognizable.

“Dead—”

Atlas said rather unnecessarily.

He looked over at me with an unreadable expression on his face.

I tapped Nyx’s arm. “I’m fine.”

He hesitated briefly before letting me go and just as I gained my feet; the guards stormed in and shoved me against the tile wall, dragging my wrists behind my back and cuffing them. The shower room went silent as the men lingered near the walls. I was pushed to the center of the room and knocked to my knees.

Vetticus walked through the door smoking a cigar. He stopped in front of me and took in the scene, his eyes trailing over Yuri’s body before they landed on mine.

“Killed a man already,”

his eyes trailed over my naked body. “With your bare hands no less.”

I glared at him. “Come a little closer, I’ll show you how I did it.”

“You’d enjoy that,”

he said dryly.

He took a puff of the cigar and exhaled, purposely sending it down into my face.

“There is a time and place for killing people around here and unfortunately in the showers is not one of them,”

he continued.

He stepped to my shoulder and pressed the lit end of his cigar into my collarbone. The moment it touched my skin, I turned and rotated my legs out, catching him behind the knees and sending him to the ground. I rolled and landed a kick to his jaw before the guards were on top of me, pinning me face down onto the cold tile. I watched Vetticus get to his feet as the guards hauled me back to my knees. He swiped at the blood on his lip from where he’d scraped it across the floor.

“You just never learn,”

he growled through clenched teeth.

I saw the glint of brass knuckles before they connected with my face. I breathed in the pain, the adrenaline still potent in my blood and lifted my face to sneer at him. His hair was out of place and there was passionate anger in his eyes. He hit me again, and I tasted blood. The next hit had me seeing red, my ears ringing as I slumped down onto the tile supporting myself on an elbow. Vetticus stopped and waited for me to look up at him. He was panting, teeth bared in contempt. I spit blood at his feet, enjoying every second of seeing him out of control.

His eyes took on an evil glint then. “Do you know how much I enjoyed your wife’s screams while I watched my men rape her?”

I froze, and my eyes narrowed. Rage, hot and overwhelming, flooded me violently. He grabbed my hair and jerked my head up towards him as I growled low in my throat.

“Pussy isn’t really my thing,”

he said, raking his eyes over me hungrily. “But blood certainly is. She looked stunning, covered in blood and my men’s come—right before I burned the whole house down around her.”

I tried to get to my feet to attack him, how and with what, I didn’t have a clue, but he shoved me away and when I straightened, he hit me hard in the jaw, sending me back to the ground.

“And you know what else?”

He rasped out. “I found your secret—the one you tried to hide in the woods. To your credit, she put up a fight. For a child, it was pretty impressive. Was that your knife she was carrying?”

My blood ran cold then hot, and I got back to my knees.

No. No. Not my little girl.

I nearly choked on my despair as it battled with my inability to take a breath through the agony constricting my heart. I’d wanted to continue to think she’d been able to get away—to survive.

“If you touched her—”

I growled.

“I showed her how to properly handle a knife. I don’t think she’ll forget the lesson.”

“Fuck you! I’m going to kill you!” I raged.

Vetticus saw the moment my emotions completely overwhelmed me and he smirked, delivering the final blow. “They were twins right?”

My control snapped, and with a snarl I lunged to my feet and head butted Vetticus hard enough for his head to snap back and blood to gush from his nose. I pushed forward to come at him again, but he recovered and slammed his fist into my face, sending me into the arms of two guards who sent me crashing back to my knees. Vetticus stepped up and grabbed my hair again, forcing my head back painfully in order to look up at him. I jerked in the guards arms but they held me firm as Vetticus ran his finger across my split lip, smearing the blood.

“Your family is gone. You have nothing. I. Own. You,”

he snarled, his face so close to mine I could see the fire burning there. “You will bleed when I say you can bleed. You will kill when I say you can kill.”

He drew a knife from his belt and held it against my neck. “And you will die, when I say you can die.”

“Do it,”

I snarled, pressing forward.

For a moment I thought he might, the glitter in his black eyes took on a sinister hunger. But then he smiled and dragged the knife down my neck, cutting into my skin enough to draw blood but not enough to do any damage. I welcomed the burn of it.

“Tempting—but no, not yet,”

he said, his composure slowly sliding back into place. “And quite frankly, you don’t deserve it. You deserve to live with your failure—unable to save your family—pitiful.”

I nearly choked on my fury and pushed forward so we were nearly eye to eye as he hovered over me.

“You’re right,”

I growled viciously. “I deserve to suffer—and I will suffer…every day until the day I get to drive that knife into your fucking heart.”

“Through vengeance there will be peace,”

Vetticus purred, his eyes flashing with something dark and evil. “I will look forward to that day—if only to prove to you your hell is eternal, with or without me in it.”

He shoved me away from him and walked out of the showers. The guards yelled for everyone to get back to their cells and yanked me to my feet, personally escorting me back. Once in my cell, they uncuffed my wrists and the door locked behind them. I could feel Atlas and Nyx watching me as I pulled on sweatpants and paced the room like a caged animal, unable to sit still. I went over to the sink, throwing water on my face with shaking hands and watched the water run red as I tried to calm myself down.

I punched the wall above the sink.

Once. Twice.

A third time—until my knuckles bled—trying to find a place for all the anger to go.

“North,”

Nyx barked, breaking the spell.

My fist landed against the stone one more time before it stayed there as I leaned heavily over the sink, my emotions erratic. My skin was tight across my bones, as though my soul needed to rip myself apart to get relief from the overwhelming assault of memories and feeling of helplessness. I turned the water off and slid down the wall, drawing my knees up and resting my head in my hands.

Some time later, I heard Nyx settle next to the bars.

“Do you want to talk about them?” he asked.

I thought about it. All the good and happy times were on the tip of my tongue—eager to be spilled—but I couldn’t.

“Not here,”

I rasped. “Not in this place.”

I stayed like that for the next few hours. Nyx and Atlas talked across me but didn’t intervene. My thoughts were dark, tortured and erratic. They went from wanting to kill myself, to wanting to kill everyone else, to all the minute details of how I would torture Vetticus if—when—I got my hands on him. Once I’d exhausted all of that, my thoughts grew more clear and as the adrenaline bled away, I knew what I needed to be in order to survive here.

Powerful under the guise of being powerless.

I would survive so I could tear Vetticus apart piece by bloody fucking piece.