Page 68 of Was I Ever Free

Doesn’t take a genius to understand why I’m here. Whatever I encrypted for the Black Plague was a lot more valuable to the Gravediggers than I previously believed.

I don’t think I can despise myself more than I do now.

The more I allow the reality that Lucy has been killed to take hold, the more I feel the life force slowly seep out of my body.

Lucy’s dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

And Lee is right. I only have myself to blame.

When I don’t answer, he adds, “Didn’t your daddy teach you not to stick your nose in other people’s business?”

I spit another mouthful of blood, now realizing it’s coming from a split lip, and keep my face blank, feeling empty. Nothing really fucking matters anymore. “Didn’t think to ask him for any last words of advice while strangling him in his sleep.”

Lee chuckles. “Funny.” His grin is malicious while he takes another drag, his thumb rubbing his chin as if thinking. Then he strikes. It’s so fast that I barely anticipate the blow. The heel of his boot connects with my jaw, my head snapping to the side, molars slicing open my inner cheek with the force, the taste of blood intensifying in my mouth.

Lee orders his lackey still loitering behind him to leave. He’s out of the room seconds later.

I tongue the gash while I wait for him to speak, the whole right side of my face now throbbing with every heartbeat.

“Did you think I wasn’t going to find out you were helping those club fucks up in Colorado?” he spits, his voice now low and cold.

I feel vacant. Automated. “I don’t spend much time thinking about you, Lee,” I answer flatly. I know my taunt will most likely warrant another blow, but suddenly don’t care if I live or die. What I don’t expect is him crouching in front of me, squeezing my face into his grip, and extinguishing his cigarette on the thin skin below my left eye.

My first extinct is to scream out in pain, but if suffering through a childhood full of daily beatings has taught me one fucking thing it’s this: Don’t give them the satisfaction. I shut it out as fast and effortlessly as I used to, like a light switch I simply have to flick off inside my mind’s eye. Doesn’t prevent me from smelling the putrid burning skin, or the pain radiating all the way down to my teeth. The same ones I’m clenching now while Lee stands back observing his handiwork.

We remain silent. His is calculated. Mine usually is too, but this time it’s to prevent the agony from slipping from my lips.

Finally, he says, “Are you going to give me the encryption key?”

I spit up a bit more blood but don’t answer him. Even that small movement makes my face sear in pain, and I try to hold in the wince. What does it even matter if I give Lee what he wants now?

Lucy is gone, and I’ll be buried next to her no matter if I survive this or not.

Lee lets out another dry chuckle, turning to the door. “You’ll crack,” he says while turning off the light. I listen to the steel door lock, then footsteps disappearing into the hallway.

Although I’m surrounded by darkness, I close my eyes and lean my head gingerly against the wall behind me. The chains rattle and my adrenaline spikes, fighting against the claustrophobic feeling it’s evoking inside of me.

Lucy.

I latch onto the image of her in my mind like a masochist, I replay our last few moments together and I’m left with a bleeding hole in my chest. How her eyes glimmered, resplendent and intoxicating after our first kiss. Then, like a bloated corpse floating up from the watery depths, my mind conjures up the sickening difference of what her eyes must have looked like while she was getting… when they were doing…

Before she died.

I don’t think I can survive this.

I don’t think Iwantto survive this.

There are no positive outcomes to my kidnapping.

Even if I somehow get out of this alive.

I am still dead.

At least if they kill me, I won’t have to live in a reality where she has died.

A world without Lucy is a world I don’t care to exist in.