Page 69 of Ravaged Hearts
My chin dropped to my chest. I breathed in and out. Each inhalation sent fresh fire through my shoulder.
Hope cried, and her face twisted in despair.
“I’m okay,” I said, which was dumb because obviously I wasn’t. I just didn’t know how else to offer Hope even a shred of comfort. The tears streaming down her cheeks told me I’d failed to do that anyway.
Ortega returned to the tray and picked up a power drill.
Double fuck.
“Let him go, Jorge. Please. I’ll do anything you want. Just stop this,” Hope sobbed.
Her pleas fell on deaf ears. Ortega came toward me.
My gaze remained on Hope’s grief-stricken eyes. “Don’t watch, baby. Look away.”
If she survived, I didn’t want these to be her final memories of me. Stubbornly, she shook her head as more tears cascaded down her face.
Then a high-pitched whir filled my ears, and Ortega wasted no time sending the bit into my thigh.
32
HOPE
Someone screamed so loudly my eardrums might burst.
It was me.
I was screaming.
And Jorge was plunging a goddamn power drill into Vaughn’s leg.
My beautiful dark angel growled through clenched teeth. His face contorted in agony.
“Stop!” I roared, fighting like a wild woman to break free from Sergio’s unrelenting hands.
This was a nightmare. It had to be. I must’ve fallen asleep in my room and been taken prisoner by this terrifying dream. I willed myself to wake up, longed for someone to throw cold water over my thrashing slumbering body and pull me from this horror.
Except the image before me was too vivid, the smell of Lysol in the room too pungent, and Vaughn’s labored grunts all too real.
The muscles in his sweaty, bare torso tensed so aggressively I thought he might break free of his restraints. He couldn’t, of course. And while I was forced to watch the man I loved endureunimaginable pain, something inside my chest cracked as though crushed by a boulder.
Jorge pulled the drill from Vaughn’s thigh. Blood, thick and crimson, dripped from the bit onto the concrete floor.
Silent now, Vaughn clenched his lids as his chest rose and fell with each ragged lungful.
I hated that this was happening to him. Vaughn had already suffered more than any human ought to at the hands of monsters. And now this? If he survived, what fresh scars, both mental and physical, would he be left with?
The nausea I’d been holding back surged forth, and I vomited. It drew Jorge’s attention. The sick son of a bitch laughed as he returned the drill to the trolley to retrieve his next implement—a large hunting knife.
My limbs felt powerless after the burst of energy I’d called upon. I took short, sharp breaths while staring Jorge down. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just stop hurting him, please.”
“So naive.” He shook his head in disappointment and tested the weight of the blade, passing the grip between his hands. Standing before me, Jorge stared at me with soulless eyes. “I’m not torturing him to get information. I’m torturing him to hurt you.”
Goose bumps pebbled my skin as if an arctic breeze had permeated the room’s thick concrete walls. All Jorge’s theatrics, they weren’t even about Vaughn. And now that I thought about it, this madman’s efficiency at extracting information had never been purely about brutality. It centered on his ability to understand the very thing that would break his target. He had all the control he needed once he found that weakness.
And Jorge had found mine—Vaughn.
I stiffened when he approached, casually spinning the handle of the blade in his palm. Sergio wrapped my hair around his fist and yanked back, exposing my throat.