Page 57 of Queen of Ruin

I’m blind and I’m going to die before I ever find out what the fuck is going⁠—

Something clicks and the room is suddenly bathed in soft yellow light, illuminating everything around me. The sudden brightness forces me to briefly close my eyes, but when I open them, I’m in an ordinary-looking bedroom with pillows and blankets trailing a path to where I’m huddled at the wall near a wooden dresser with one blanket still trapped around my legs.

Not blind.

Not stuck.

Just lost in the darkness.

I swallow hard and slowly push myself into a seated position, then work to free my leg from the blanket. It falls away with two twists, and I breathe a deep, yet trembling, sigh of relief.

“Finished?” rumbles a deep voice that feels more like vibrations than actual speech.

Given the sheer bulk of the man standing in the opposite corner of the room, it’s a wonder he went unnoticed for so long. He’s almost as broad as he is tall, with short, black hair kept in tight waves across his head while a few small curls drift down across his forehead. Huge muscles bulge from his crossed arms and he regards me with eyes as grey as a murky moon.

Ego tells me I could take him.

Reality warns me that he’d turn me to paste in one punch.

That doesn’t make me back down and after I free myself from the blanket, I bounce to my feet. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Now is not the time for talking,” the man rumbles. “Now is the time for listening.”

“Bullshit,” I snap. “You fuckers ran us off the road. Are you fucking insane? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? And yeah, I know it was you because I recognize you. You were the bastard taking up my entire doorway a couple of days ago. Yeah, I saw you. Motherfucker. Think you can chase me across the city and try to kill me and my girl and then walk away? Not a fucking chance, because you pissed me the fuck off and honestly, I’m pretty fucking tired of being hounded like a dog!”

The man doesn’t move.

He doesn’t even appear to breathe.

He just stands there like a shadow come to life, blocking my route to the door and watching me like I’m some kind of specimen.

It makes my skin crawl and the prickly sweat streaking down my back quickly soaks into my shirt.

“So,” I say before the silence can drag on too long. “How about you turn the fuck around and walk out of here and don’t come back until you bring my girl, huh? How about that?”

I’ve never been much of a confrontational man, but the idea that someone like this, or anyone like him, could be holding Valentina somewhere is enough to unlock the territorial urge that comes with my aching desire to see her and make sure she’s alive.

“Diego Pérez,” the man says slowly. “Thirty-three years old. Older brother, Malcom. Died when you were fifteen. Your legal guardian and only surviving relative. You turned to drugs, heroin, mostly. Spent the next thirteen years of your life so high, it’s a wonder you’ve got any backbone left to stand there and speak to me like you have any power here.”

The man pushes off the wall and somehow grows a couple of inches taller and bulkier as he approaches.

“Nearly died from a drug overdose on September nineteenth, took that as a wake up call. Been clean five years. Bar manager. Ex, now. Regularly attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings at the Kelvin Community Center, a twenty-minute walk from your apartment.”

My heart pounds faster and faster until it’s a blur of sensation in my chest and there’s barely any space left for me to suck air into my lungs. He stops a foot away from me and despite the distance, the warmth radiating from him is smothering.

“So you know a couple of things about me,” I snap, lifting my chin defiantly. “I don’t give a shit. It changes nothing. My life is an open book.”

The burly man’s expression doesn’t change until he lunges forward and slams his fist into the wall near my head. Plaster crumbles from the impact as if the wall were made of sawdust, and I can’t contain my flinch as he leans in close.

“Criminal,” he growls. “Kidnapper. And fuck knows what else.”

Kidnapper?

So these people are connected to Valentina. Given the condition she was in when she fled into my car, and the fact that one of them said the exact same thing to me as the cop who tried to kill me, I have to keep my mouth shut.

They tortured her. They cut her up and hurt her to the point that she was that angry, trembling mess in my car, and now that they’ve tracked us down, God knows what they’re doing to her. They could be hurting her right now while I’m staring down this bull.

“Fuck you,” I snarl with every bit of strength I have left. “You can’t intimidate me. I know who you are. I know the kind of monsters you are. I’m not telling you a damn thing, so go on, punch that kind of hole into my face. I don’t give a shit.”