27.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dominic

It’s 2 a.m. by the time I pull into the driveway of my family estate outside the city. The kind of cash I need for this meeting is well beyond what I have in my apartment. I need to get into the safe.

I get out of my car and start walking to the front door. On the steps, I pause, alerting. Did I hear something?

I turn, already pulling my gun from my shoulder holster. Something nails me in the neck. I wince at the hard sting. My fingers fly to the spot and find a dart. My heart leaps even though it’s already going sluggish. I pull the dart out and spin, looking for assailants. A figure moves through the darkness. I fire in the general direction, but it’s useless. The world is slipping and sliding.

I go down.

***

I explode back to consciousness, reeling back from the burn through my sinuses. Facts jumble. Those are smelling salt. I’m in a chair, tied to it. The chair tips back when I yank away from the salts. Someone catches it. It’s dark. It’s cold.

“Hello, Dominic.”

A man is crouched in front of me. We’re outside. By the pool. The cover is off, and a skin of ice sheens the surface of the water. The stone walls rear high around the patio.

I blink rapidly, trying to see the man clearly before I get hit or stabbed or shot. But the man just waits.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks.

“You’re a piece of shit.”

I can’t see him clearly in the ambient light, but I’d guess he’s around sixty. For some reason, I expected him to be handsome, but his face is shockingly ordinary. Plain. I would never notice him on the street.

He smiles. “You were never a good boy, were you? Is that why your father sent you to the Island?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m afraid that’s not how it works. But you’re too brutish for me anyway, and I prefer younger, more tender flesh. I might make an exception, though, for Rafael. He was always my favorite.”

I thrash in the chair. My wrists and ankles are bound. I can’t kick him. I can’t hit him. The chair jumps from my thrashing, but someone grabs onto it from behind. A hand clamps on my throat.

The Collector smiles again. “A real fighter. I bet you appealed to … a very particular type.”

I hate how his words make the past flash through me. But it’s not really his words. It’s the fact that I’m bound, that I’m helpless.

I see myself tied to a bed while faceless men destroy my body. I hear myself scream and cry when they hold my legs so I can’t kick. I see the black space looming, the place I used to go in my mind to escape.

I don’t even remember half of what happened on the Island because I would just … leave.

I can’t leave now. I make myself stay.

“What do you want?” I choke out around the constriction at my throat.

The Collector flicks a finger and the grip eases. “Eventually? To kill you. But first, I need you. I was disappointed when you left your building that you were alone. I had hoped you would bring Rafael. Then I could’ve killed you and isolated him. Now I have to draw him here.”

“He won’t come,” I argue, wanting it to be true even though I know—

“Oh, yes, he will. I’ve never stopped watching Rafael. He intrigues me, and he stayed so beautiful. He’d fallen off my radar a little, but he’s been searching for me for months. So I’ve been watching him—which means, more recently, I’ve been watching you. He’ll definitely come. Even without you, he might. Because deep down? Rafael is mine. He always has been.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“He was still covered in his parents’ blood when I collected him. There were bits of bone and brain in his hair. I’m the one who bathed him, fed him, made him safe. I’m the one who taught him how to stay that way. How to please. He was safer than you on the Island, because of it.”

My throat and chest are so tight I can barely breathe. I’m shaking. I’m sick. I’m so fucking helpless.

I can’t kill him, and I can’t stop him as he pulls out his phone and makes a call.