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I step closer to her, watching her eyes widen as I lean down and drag my tongue along it, tasting her blood. “Heart,” she warns. My hands land on her hips, dragging her closer. I push our masks up and press my lips to hers, letting her taste her blood as I back her up, only for her to hit Club. His hands bracket mine as we hold her between us, and her moans fill the air. Bloodlust runs through me and into her as she tugs at my clothes to get closer, making me hard as hell.
Diamond’s whistle cuts through the air, and we break apart to see him and Spade standing in the open gate, looking at the bodies with a grin. “I see you already had some fun. Come on. We found the warden and other guards. Let’s finish this.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
The blood on the walls creates a horrifying image. Perhaps we should have been cleaner about this so the kids don’t see it when we free them, but part of me thinks they’ve seen far worse. They already know the evils of the world. A little blood from their monsters won’t hurt them any further. It will probably make them feel better.
When Heart and Ember were busy with the guard, I peeked into the room closest to me and felt my heart drop. The boy from the cirque was in bad shape, but some of the kids here are even worse off. It’s a wonder he escaped, especially with such prisonlike doors. There has to be at least ten kids shoved into every room, each so malnourished, their bones poke through their skin. They cower away from our approach, not understanding we’re here to save them. No kid should ever have to see such evil. Those who do, well . . . I suppose they end up at the cirque, just as I did.
Unlike Heart and Spade, I didn’t come to the cirque as a child. I was already an adult shaped by evil. My card came when I helped an old woman who was being mistreated on the street by a group of rowdy teens. I didn’t know it then, didn’t understand the meaning, but Hilda always had her ways of looping someone in. She saw something in me, saw the monster behind my eyes, and offered me the key to my cage—one of my own making.
Where I come from, there aren’t opportunities for kids. You either get out or you become a part of the seedy underworld of drugs and crime. I didn’t get out. I couldn’t, not when my mother was trapped there. I did what I needed to protect her for as long as I could. She’d been owned by an asshole of a man, a pimp named Georgiano who sat at the very top of the pyramid in my city. You didn’t fuck with him, and if you were owned by him, you could never be free unless you paid to be. Five hundred thousand dollars cash. That was how much it cost to free my mother. See, she was one of his favorites. I suppose I was lucky that he allowed her to raise me despite her job as a prostitute. I guess I should have been grateful when he acted like a bit of a father and taught me how to survive.
Instead, it only filled me with anger.
I saw the way my mother was treated, so as soon as I was old enough to understand, I started saving. At seven, I was doing odd jobs here and there. By twelve, I was running drugs. When I turned nineteen, I had my own drug ring, and I saved up enough to pay the freedom cost for my mother. I’d gone to Georgiano with a shopping bag full of cash and tossed it at his feet. He only looked down at the money with raised brows.
“For my mother,” I declared, a cocky teenager who had no idea how unfair the world could be. “For her freedom.”
Georgiano looked me in the eyes, gold rings on every finger. The bastard was fond of lions and had a gold one on a chain around his neck. The idiot thought lions were the alphas of the animal kingdom. He never once realized how appropriate it was that male lions don’t do anything but sit at the top, lazy and fat, while lionesses do all the work. Still, he was large and had a whole system at his beck and call.
“I bet you saved a long time for this day,” Georgiano said, calm as usual. He lit a cigar and rolled it between his teeth. “Very well, Heath. You’ve earned it.” He gestured for someone to grab her like everything was well. I foolishly believed him. Gangs have their own code, and a deal is a deal, but Georgiano spent years holding my mother hostage, and despite her being his favorite, selfish men don’t like letting go of their belongings.
I watched them drag my mother out, her eyes bloodshot from whatever drug they gave her. Most days, she was too blissed out to know I was there. Sometimes, she looked at me and cried, apologizing for what I must face. I never blamed her. I never once thought she could control it, but I could for both of us.
“You’ve grown up well, Heath,” Georgiano said as he came down from his throne and caressed the side of my mother’s face. She didn’t jerk away because of the drugs in her system. “But there is one lesson you have yet to learn.”
I’d been foolish. I stood taller, thinking he was about to impart some knowledge I could use on the streets. “What’s that?” I asked confidently.
Georgiano looked me in the eyes. He looked me in the fucking eyes as he pulled a gun from nowhere. “Life isn’t fair, and people like you don’t get what you want.”
I had no time to react. He pulled the trigger before I could shout. I watched my mother’s body collapse to the floor, her eyes open and unseeing. My only consolation was that she didn’t feel it. She had enough drugs in her system that she never even knew. I screamed and leapt toward Georgiano, but his guards caught me.
“Throw him out,” he ordered as if it were another Tuesday. I suppose for him, it was. “Make sure he increases his percentage to me. If he can save up this money, then he has more to give.”
They threw me out and thought that would be it. They thought I’d just accept that. I never even got to bury my mother. I never knew what they did with her body. I returned three days later with every gun and blade I could find and killed my way through his compound. They nearly killed me, but in the end, I stood in the midst of their bodies, looking down at Georgiano with the joker card clutched in my hand. I’d been swaying on my feet, losing too much blood, when Diamond, Heart, and Spade came for me. I felt our connection then just as I feel it now. It’s an awareness, a life link, but I never found my mother’s body.
Now there’s another: Ember. Her link is just as bright as ours.
“Club,” Ember says. I was so lost in my memories, I didn’t even realize I’d stopped walking and now stood at the base of the stairs. “Are you okay?”
I meet her eyes and see genuine concern there. If anyone would understand, it’s her. She was an adult too, just like I was.
“This place reminds me of . . . bad memories,” I admit.
I slept in a threadbare room, tossed aside while my mother was expected to work. When she was finished for the day, then she was allowed to care for me. I’d been as malnourished as these kids, a baby struggling to survive. She hadn’t been able to breastfeed due to the drugs in her system, and I suppose she felt it would taint me in some way because of what she did before she came to see me. When I was older, she would sneak in bits of her own food to feed me. We both survived as best as we could.
Ember was a few stairs above me, but at my words, she comes back down and grips the sides of my face. Her hands are covered in blood, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not the worst thing I’ve suffered.
“Do you need a minute?” she asks, looking earnestly into my eyes. I can only see her bright, pretty eyes through her mask, eyes that never should have known the pain she has. I wish I could take away her nightmares, but if I could, she never would have found the cirque. Our nightmares are what make us who we are. They brought us together.
Nightmares are what created us, and nightmares are what feed us.
“No,” I murmur before I pull her hand from my face and lift my mask just enough to press a kiss against her bloody knuckles. “No, let’s get these kids out of here.”
She nods. “Later, you can tell me your nightmares and I’ll chase them away.”
