Page 91 of Vicious

Chase was the only one who had.

I wonder if he’s looking for me.

He probably is, just to make sure I didn’t go to the cops and try to ruin his life like he’d ruined mine.

Except I’m not sure he really ruined it. I feel stronger somehow, strangely so, and even though I don’t want to, I know I have Chase to attribute that to.

“So Mom didn’t hate me,” I say more steadily. “Is there anything else you were lying about? Anything else you need to get off your chest before we die?”

Baba gives me a guilty look. “She didn’t hate you. She… Well, she might have tried to contact you once or twice, but I knew talking to her would just hurt you. Honestly, it’s for the best that she’s out of our lives. She wasn’t very supportive.”

“Once or twice,” I repeat, seeing the lie for what it is. “Did you ever think that not having her in my life might’ve hurt me more? Just once? She left you because of your gambling, didn’t she? And you were afraid you’d lose me, too, that I’d up and leave you alone.”

I see more clearly than I have in a long time, and I hate it. I fucking hate what I’m seeing of my father.

“The gambling wasn’t a problem!” Baba argues. “It was just a temporary setback. We were doing fine, weren’t we? We are doing fine, except for?—”

“Except for the fact that I got kidnapped and now we’re about to die!” I say sharply. I don’t even want to cry anymore. I just want to laugh and laugh because there’s something twisted and morbidly amusing about the whole thing. “So, you know, we’re totally fine.”

The door to the room creaks open, and Jake and one of his goons show up again. Jake gives us both an exasperated look. “You’re some of the noisiest victims I’ve ever held. But I just thought I’d let you know, the doc’s going to be here in an hour. We’ve got a few potential buyers lined up.” He walks over to a cabinet and pulls out two syringes and a rubber band. “The only thing we have to do is check your blood types so we can see who the lucky winner is today.”

“I’m AB negative,” I lie quickly. That’s the rarest one, but it also means fewer people can take my organs.

I think.

Jake laughs and walks over to me. “Yeah? That might mean there’s a premium on your organs after all. But I think I’ll double-check, just in case.”

He has to free my cuffed wrists to draw blood, and I’m ready to fight him off. But the goon grabs me roughly, and he’s twice my size.

“Let go of me!” I cry, for all the good it does me.

Jake wraps the band around my arm, then inserts the syringe into my elbow with the practiced ease of someone who’s done this too many times to count. Great. At least this part is relatively painless.

Before I can try to fight again, they cuff me back up, and I growl in frustration.

Jake smirks at me while his goon frees one of Baba’s arms—and of course my father doesn’t fight at all. It ends up not helping him, though. “Can’t find your vein, Simon.” He clucks his tongue in disapproval. “Oh well. We’ll just have to do it the messy way.”

The messy way turns out to be with a switchblade and a vial held awkwardly to his arm, my father crying out against the pain of a relatively small cut.

Jesus.

He wouldn’t be able to survive even a fraction of what Chase had done to me.

Jake slaps a bandage on top of the wound haphazardly. “All right. We’ll get these tested, and we’ll see you when the doc arrives.”

He and the goon leave again.

This time, I have nothing to say to Baba. I stare at the operating table, and I find myself wondering if they’ll bother to use sedatives or pain medication. I wonder, too, if my pain tolerance is enough to deal with this. Surely they don’t want me flailing around, where they might accidentally nick one of my valuable organs.

“Do you think it’ll hurt?” I find myself asking Baba, my voice hollow. “Dying, I mean.”

“We aren’t going to die,” Baba whispers, his voice pained. “We aren’t. We’ll get out of this.”

“How?” I ask. “You think Jake is going to have a crisis of conscience? That the doctor will stick to their oath? I don’t have a knight in shining armor.”

Or do I?

That phone call had been odd, but Jake had been quick to leave the room. What if Chase had found Baba’s phone and made the call?