32. Jace Holloway

Chapter 32

Jace Holloway

The rope cut into my wrists. I tried pushing against them, working my fingers up through a loop, but the knots were too tight. And the cloth stuffing my mouth was making it difficult to breathe. Saliva accumulated in my mouth, dripping out and down my chin. I tried to keep calm but felt myself losing my grip. This situation had gone from dire to completely and totally fucked. I wasn’t even sure where I was. I’d been blindfolded before they escorted me out of the car, tossing me down a flight of stairs.

I didn’t break my nose or my ribs through some kind of miracle, although I did bang my head hard against a step. Hard enough for me to lose consciousness for an hour or so. It was difficult to tell just how much time had passed. When I came to, I was strapped to the chair, gagged and still blindfolded.

Theo’s father.

He was the one who’d abducted me .

It still didn’t make much sense. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Was he the man behind the blackmail ring? And how did he know Theo was Nevermore?

Was he the reason Nevermore existed?

“He’s awake, Leo.” The voice came from somewhere to my left. I craned my head but couldn’t see anything through the thick blindfold. I pulled against the ropes around my wrist, but that only made them slice deeper into my skin. It burned. A wet streak of blood dripped down my palm.

“Good.” That was Theo’s father. His name must have been Leo. He stood directly in front of me.

A thumb landed on my chin. I reeled back. I wanted to spit directly in this man’s face.

“Smile if you can,” he said. “I want to keep this as a souvenir. Maybe send it to Theo once we dump you in the Hudson. Something for him to remember you by.”

I wanted to shout, but all that came out was a muffled whimper. This wasn’t how my life was supposed to end. I’d put myself in danger hundreds of times before, but I never imagined I’d be dragged into the middle of a sadistic family rivalry, used as some kind of emotional pawn. I felt helpless.

“You know what? Let’s take off the blindfold.”

Footsteps behind me preceded a flash of bright light. I winced at the sudden shift. My eyes adjusted, blinking until the blurry shapes began to sharpen.

I was in some kind of back room. Two red velvet couches were pushed up against the brick wall, boxes of wine and beer stacked on top of them. There was a cluttered desk with a computer that had “Marielle’s” as the screensaver.

Marielle. That was Theo’s sister’s name.

“There. Now, smile with your eyes.”

Leo held up the camera. I dropped my head.

“I said—” He punched me hard across my face. My head spun. “—smile.”

I glared at him. I could taste blood in my mouth mixing with the scratchy fabric and whatever detergent they had used on the shirt stuffed in my mouth.

“Close enough.” Theo’s father took the picture. An unsubtle rage filled me. It rose up inside me like magma through a volcano only moments away from exploding. I had to get free somehow. I continued to struggle against the ropes. I wasn’t sure if I was being hopeful and delusional, but I thought I could feel it beginning to loosen.

“You know, for a detective, you really fucked this job up, didn’t you?” Theo’s father laughed and leaned against the computer desk. He wore a uniform of all black. Like his black jeans, black shirt, black watch, black necklace were all foreshadowing the arrival of the grim reaper himself. He looked like Theo, too. They had the same icy blue eyes and even the same slight crookedness in their noses. But his father looked more like a predatory cat than Theo did. He had a snake tattoo wrapping around his forearm and a couple of skulls tattooed on his neck.

“Were you even close to figuring this all out? I think I managed to put the pieces together before you did. Granted, my son made some critical errors in his crusade for revenge, but I still would have expected someone like you to at least figure out who was behind the blackmail ring.”

I tried to speak around the cloth but couldn’t get a word out.

“Gio, take that out of his mouth.”

Someone behind me untied the cloth and let it drop to the floor. I sucked in a gasping breath. My jaw was sore, both from being held open and from the punch. I flexed it. Instinctively, I tried to reach up to rub the spot that hurt, but my hands were still bound.

Hopefully, not for long. I just had to be subtle about it. There was someone behind me. I couldn’t let them on to the fact that the knots had begun to unravel.

“Now we can actually chat.” Leo crossed his arms. A scar ran along his bicep, matching the scar on his cheek. Looked like knife wounds. “So, how close were you to putting it together?”

“Close,” I lied. My throat was dry. I swallowed, but it felt like glass had been poured into my mouth.

“Right. That’s why you were dating my serial killer son up until yesterday?” Leo gave a dark laugh. Those sharp blue eyes narrowed. He reached behind him and grabbed a gun that had been resting next to the keyboard. He clicked the safety off. There was a silencer attached to the muzzle.

My gut tied itself into a knot.

How the fuck was I going to get out of this alive?

Maybe I wasn’t meant to?

“I didn’t know he was Nevermore.”

“Of course you didn’t. Or maybe, deep down, maybe you did? What did you see in him anyway? Because all I see in him is failure. A waste of a life.”

That incensed me. Which… surprised me. I thought Theo’s revelation would completely cut off any emotions that had come to develop between us. Apparently, it hadn’t because hearing Leo speak about Theo like that made me angrier than being tied down to the chair and punched. “I know what you put him through. No one should have ever gone through that kind of abuse. Especially from their own father. Your one job was to protect him. To love him. How was that so fucking difficult for you? If anyone is a waste of life, it’s your scummy ass. You fucking dick, he?—”

He pistol-whipped me before I could finish my insult. Stars burst across my vision. More blood oozed from my busted lip.

“Next time, it’ll be a bullet between your eyes instead of a pistol breaking your jaw.”

Gio laughed behind me. Another hit would have likely made me pass out. I somehow managed to hold on to consciousness, fighting the dark curtains that tried to drape across my vision. I slowly worked my thumb through a knot. The rest of the rope slacked. I wasn’t too far from freeing myself, but then what? I was outgunned and surrounded.

I had to talk myself out of this. At least buy some more time.

“What about Marielle?” I asked. “Did you despise her as much as you hate Theo?”

“Marielle was… I failed her. Theo and I always butt heads. But Marielle, no, I did love her. I wanted the best for her. I’d even come to accept her after her transition. But she started to dig around. She put too many pieces together, and she threatened to end it all.”

“Didn’t she? She killed herself. Because of you.”

Leo looked down at the ground. He affectionately stroked the gun in his hand. I half expected a tear to slide down his scarred cheek. “She didn’t kill herself.”

“Then how… You did it?”

“I didn’t kill her. I had Gio do it. She figured out what was going on with Pressure Point. And, well, it wasn’t exactly my choice, but I have someone above me who calls the shots. It doesn’t just end with me. They didn’t want Marielle bringing what she found to the police.”

My jaw dropped. It stung from where I’d been hit. I heard a pop somewhere in my face. Maybe it was broken. “You hired a hit on your own daughter. How the fuck do you fall asleep at night?”

“Like a baby. I’ve made peace with what I had to do. Was I happy about it? No. Like I said, I loved Em. She was bright, caring. She was daddy’s girl. But she was too smart. Too close to the truth.”

This guy made me want to pound his face into the concrete. What a piece of fucking shit. He’d thrown one child to the wayside and had another one murdered. He made me physically sick. Except there was nothing I could do. I was at his mercy. He could end me as easily as he did his daughter. And with that silencer attached to his pistol, no one would be any the wiser. I’d show up floating on the Hudson River days later. Maybe someone at Stonewall would be able to figure out what happened, but the odds were stacked against them. I could tell Leo Valdoni was an expert at covering his tracks.

“So what’s the end goal here?” I asked. Gio had moved so that he stood to my left, no longer directly behind me. That allowed me more room to maneuver my fingers and try to work out the knots.

If I had to die, then I’d do it fighting.

“The end goal is tying up another loose end while adding another knife into my son’s traitorous back.”

“Why do you hate him? What did he do that made you turn against your own flesh and blood?”

“Because he reminded me too much of myself. Because he wouldn’t conform how I needed him to. Because I hated myself, and I hated him. And because everyone around me seemed to love him more than anything else. It infuriated me. I took out my pain on him, and I turned any speck of compassion I had for him into cold hatred.”

A knot came completely loose. I froze. Did they notice?

“They say abuse is a cycle. Hurt people hurt people, after all. Well, I was hurt. A lot. My uncle abused me. In many ways. Pain became a reward for me. It also became a goal of mine. Inflicting pain made me happy, and so I directed all that to Theo.”

“He didn’t deserve that.”

“Really? The man going around killing people and implanting wings into their backs didn’t deserve that kind of treatment? Huh. Interesting.”

“He didn’t,” I repeated.

Leo lifted the gun. He aimed it directly at my forehead. His wicked smile felt as lethal as the bullet that waited in the chamber, ready to explode outward and end me.

I’d dealt with fantasizing about death for much of my life. It had become a struggle for me, one that I had been able to overcome through hard work, therapy, and medication. It was a years-long fight to stop wanting to die. To wake up and find a reason to keep going.

And now, suddenly, I was faced with death, and I wanted nothing but to survive. The old Jace would have welcomed this. It would have been an easy way out. But this new Jace wanted to keep living. This new Jace understood there was beauty in life, found in the nooks and crannies of even the worst days. There was always something to hope for, a better day to work toward.

I didn’t want this to be my end. Not when I felt like I was just beginning.

There was so much more left to do, to see. And yes, a large part of me wanted to keep exploring what I’d formed with Theo. I realized that even with his truth laid bare, I could see there was someone worth loving, someone who could be saved, forgiven. Same as I was saved. Everyone had a redemption arc, and I wanted to be there to help Theo realize his.

Maybe that was wrong of me. Maybe it was being in the presence of the grim reaper that muddled my thoughts and muted my conscience. I wasn’t sure.

But one thing I was sure of was:

I didn’t want to die.

Leo thumbed the trigger. “Well, let’s see if my son deserves finding out the love of his life was shot and killed because of—” A crash from upstairs interrupted him. He looked at the ceiling, eyes narrowed to slits. “Gio, go find out what that was about.”

Gio nodded and walked up the steps. He opened the door, closed it. I listened, but all I could hear was Leo’s heavy footsteps as he walked toward me. He smiled as he raised the gun, brought it to my mouth. He pressed the muzzle against my lips. The steel was cold, like how I imagined death’s embrace would be. He pushed it forward, opening my mouth. I could taste the metal. My jaw strained.

“This should be fun,” he said.

His arm twitched. He was seconds from pulling the trigger, seconds from blowing my brains out.

Then the door behind Leo opened, and my knight in shining armor appeared, rescuing me for a second time since I met him.

“Put the gun down, Dad.”