Page 13 of Tainted Blood
It makes me so full of fear for her.
We hardly know each other, but I feel a fierce, almost violent protectiveness toward her and her baby. I’m stepping up to fulfill Santi’s role. We’re sisters now. We’re family. I’m quickly learning that a Santiago and a Carrera are so much stronger together than when they’re ripping each other apart.
Maybe if Santi and I hadn’t been fighting like cats and dogs all the time, we might have seen this hell coming.
“Shit, what’s that?”
Lola sits up in a rush, and I scramble to follow. There are loud male voices in the hallway outside, speaking a language that neither of us understand. The bolts groan in protest. The lock in the heavy wooden door turns. A beat later, a young woman with matted dark curls is being pushed into our room.
With a muffled cry, she lands on the cold flagstones as the door slams shut again.
At first, she doesn’t move. She’s dressed in a dirty white slip dress like us, but every inch of her bare skin is covered in cuts and bruises. She’s shaking like a leaf, the strands of black hair slithering free across her shoulders to reveal six jagged welts. They’re all around ten inches in length, interlacing a crimson pattern into her tan skin.
My blood turns cold.
Whip lashes.
“Who did this to you?” I whisper in horror, sliding from the bed.
She raises her face to us, and I stop dead. One cheek is swollen purple, and her lower lip is split and bleeding. There’s still a flame of defiance in her dark eyes, though... A burning hate for the men who did this to her. They may have crushed her body, but her soul is still fighting.
“Them.” It’s a single accusation spoken in perfect english, her accent cutting its teeth on New Jersey glass. Her gaze darts from me to Lola, who is sitting rooted to the mattress in shock. I watch her eyes widen slightly. “When did they bring you here?”
“Yesterday.”
She waves away my attempts to help her up. “Then tomorrow is your first auction.”
“Auction?” Lola pounces on the word as the woman slowly rises to her feet.
“It’s Sunday,” she states, wincing as she straightens up, as if that’s all the explanation we need. “It’s time for them to bid on the new girls to enter Il Labirinto.”
My stomach lurches. “What the hell is Il Labirinto?”
But I already know the answer. It’s the place I can see from our window, where your mind gets twisted up and your screams are made.
“One of you will be chosen,” she says regretfully. “It’s inevitable.”
“Why?”
“Because you are a Santiago, and you are a Carrera.” She swings her bruised gaze between us again. “That means you’re the ultimate game, and the ultimate prize... Tomorrow night, you will run in Il Labirinto, and if you’re lucky, like me, then maybe you’ll survive it.”
Chapter Three
Santi
Death is as unique as a fingerprint.
No two people exit this world the same way. Some are shoved into the next life courtesy of a bullet between the eyes, while others are cursed with a slower, more painful crawl. I’ve watched hundreds of men die, some intentionally, some by circumstance. The end comes with a set of snapping jaws, and an iron grip. It’s a sight that you either pray to forget or crave to watch again and again.
I shift my weight, another rough patch of the concrete wall digging into my spine. It might as well be a razor blade, because tonight that craving is absent. Instead, it’s being overpowered by fear.
Fear of death claiming a man I hate.
Fear for her.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling that has every muscle in my shoulders twisted up in knots.
Tilting my head from side to side, I tap the barrel of my gun against my bicep while keeping a steady gaze on the other side of the room. The basement. Legado’s dark underbelly. A place where debts are silenced by four blood stained walls. A place where, tonight, I’ve gone against every instinct to rise and ruin.