Chapter 14

M y eyes snap open to an overwhelming darkness, an impenetrable void that engulfs me.

Nothing.

I can't see a fucking thing.

My head pounds, my body aches, and my skin is so cold it feels like knives are peeling it from my body slowly. I try to shift my arms, but I can't move even an inch. I try again with my legs, gritting my teeth to remain silent in the darkness.

Nothing.

Panic claws at my chest as my heart races, and I realize with a jolt why I can't move. Cold, rusted shackles dig into my wrists and ankles, chaining me to a rough wall, the metal biting into my skin.

I take a shuddering breath, trying to steady myself, but my mind is racing. Instead of fresh air filling my lungs, I get decay and rot. Mold, rusted metal, and damp cement.

No.

The wall, the darkness, the smell… it's familiar. Too familiar.

Flashes of my childhood flood back. I remember this place. Vividly. Painfully .

The place where my nightmares were born.

The prison.

The memories of being brought here as a child surge to the forefront of my mind. The wet, rotting stench of decay and mold, the coldness that seemed to seep into your very soul, and the oppressive dampness that clung to everything. It all comes back to me like a torrential downpour, and I can't escape the suffocating feeling of dread.

I know this place, and I know who owns it.

My father.

My evil, sadistic fucking father.

The realization strikes like a hammer blow, and my anxiety spirals out of control. My father's sinister hideaway, the one place I vowed I'd never return to, now holds me captive once again. And if I'm here, then it means that he's the one who took me.

Fear courses through me like poison, every nerve in my body on high alert. I struggle against the shackles, the rough metal cutting deeper into my wrists, but it's fucking useless. I can't escape, and I'm far from safe. It makes it hard to breathe.

I choke on the stagnant air, holding it in my lungs, and slowly take in my pitch-black surroundings.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I wait and wait and wait….

Nothing.

Nothing but the drip of water too far to touch, to taste, to quench my thirst, but close enough to taunt. Just the way it was when I was a kid. Just the way he likes it.

The prison is the place Agustus used to take me. Not for punishments—no, he preferred to handle that shit in public places. Sometimes, at the Los Diablos club, in front of all his loyal lackeys. Sometimes, he'd just bring me to my knees in front of my mom or Maddox. Other times, he made the guys watch.

But those are the moments when he was trying to prove a point. When he was trying to force compliance into others by way of my flesh, my blood.

He saved the prison just for me.

Lessons , he called them. Trainings .

Teaching me to be a man, a successor, a King .

I scoff, rolling my eyes into the darkness. Augustus Luna is anything but a fucking king. He's a monster, the demon in all my nightmares, the Devil of the Bay, but not a king. Never that.

Yet, somehow, he snuck in beneath our radar. Somehow, he's caught us all off guard.

My mind races, and my arms flex against the restraints as I try to work through everything that's happened in the last few years. Before Ella came into our lives, he'd been making moves to take over as much of the Bay as possible, monopolizing drugs, weapons, and, eventually, human trafficking. He'd succeeded, too.

Until we convinced Matteo Grossi, a man high up in the Cosa Nostra, to break his ties to Agustus, leaving him without a weapon connection. After that, we'd torn apart his drug supplier one carefully laid move at a time. Right before shit hit the fan, we were supposed to have a meeting with the man, to form a partnership. Franco Hernandez wanted to separate himself from my father in order to protect his family, something I wholeheartedly understood.

Things had finally been falling into place. Our plan to end my father, break apart all his high-powered connections and cartel ties was finally within our grasp.

I clench my eyes shut and shake my head, anger, and disappointment battering against my organs. Fuck. I'd been so stupid, so arrogant. Ella came along, and we got distracted in all that is her . Her happiness, her love, her demons, the forces trying to steal her away from us.

No, my mind chides. Not distracted. You made a choice.

I grit my teeth, my eyes flying open but seeing nothing. We did make a choice. A choice to prioritize her, her safety, her enemies, before our own, and though there's not a damn part of me that would change that, I'd been remiss to forget about the threat right in front of us.

Always right in front of us.

Augustus went quiet, and I mistook his silence for distraction, for absence. He was never absent, just quietly moving under the radar and waiting for his perfect moment to attack.

And now…

Now he has me and probably my brothers. If anything, he's nothing but consistent, using us against one another, knowing we are our greatest weakness.

But Ella… she's the unknown variable. I vaguely remember seeing flashes of her fighting someone off, but I'd been on the verge of passing out, and Maddox, Madd had just been shot.

There was screaming and fighting, and everything after that is blank.

Everything inside me wants to rebel against the knowledge that we're separated, that I'm tethered to this wall in the midst of my own personal Hell and unable to do a damn thing about it, but I can't.

After years of being carted here for lessons in death, murder, and destruction, I know the most important thing is saving my energy for the battle I can't yet see.

Desperation fills me, shoving out the anger and hatred, as visions of Ella crying, begging for us, her fingers dripping with blood, permeate my brain, quickly followed by the sight of Maddox's body jolting with the force of the gunshot.

My eyes burn, and my heart skips a beat, then another.

"I'm not this man," I whisper, my eyes sliding shut as I force myself to breathe through it. My father's twisted agenda and his unfathomable cruelty will undoubtedly be unleashed upon me soon enough. I can't break now. Not when this has only just started.

In this pitch-black abyss, I'm left with only one certainty—I'm trapped in my worst nightmare, and there's no way out but right through the eye of the storm.