Page 16 of Pain

And then I remembered. Throwing myself from the truck while it was still moving. Hitting the ground with enough momentum that it had stolen my back and broken my ankle. Trying to roll with the motion, trying to protect my head, and coming to a stop on the sidewalk.

Looking up and seeing Knight Arthur standing over me, his bike behind him and his face covered with confusion.

Begging him to take me with him and then clutching him as he drove away from that small town.

I gasped again, but this time it was quieter. A gasp of wonder. Knight had taken me to safety. I’d come to his headquarters, where one of his people had doctored me. He’d come to check on me. He’d asked me if I wanted to go back, and I’d said no.

I’d told him that I wanted revenge for what Devil had done to me—had been doing to me for a year—and Knight had smiled at me like he’d never heard anything so beautiful in his life.

My stomach had jumped in my body like I’d been waiting my entire life for a smile exactly like that one.

And maybe I had, but that was beside the point.

Mandy had shown me to a room in the headquarters—which had a real, live bed—and tucked me in, murmuring that I needed sleep more than anything else and that she’d see about getting me breakfast when I woke up.

I hadn’t slept well, though. My dreams had been peppered with dreams of Devil. Dreams that were more like memories of everything he’d done to me. Everything he’d allowed his crew to do to me. The punishments. The beatings. The episodes that bordered on rape.

Shit, no wonder I hadn’t been able to sleep, with memories like that.

My hand went out to the table beside me and I grabbed my phone, still marveling that it had somehow survived everything. Devil had never liked me to keep it when he moved me. Generally I had to leave it behind when he was sending me somewhere new, on the hope that he’d return it to me at some point. It had left me without any way to get in touch with anyone. No way to call for help if I needed it.

And he’d reveled in that. Torture didn’t have to be physical, after all.

But this time, I’d been able to grab it and slip it into my pocket before he tied me up, and it had somehow survived that launch out of the truck.

I pulled it toward me like the old friend it was, a fellow traveler who had been with me through some of the darkest times of my life, and held it to my chest.

He’d said he was having me taken to a new safe house. He’d become increasingly paranoid over the last three months, certain that someone was planning a hit on him and that it would take me out as well. That had been his excuse for moving me time and again and never telling me where I was going. Telling me, he’d said, could have given someone else even more reason to kidnap me. If I’d known where we were going to be, I might have given that information up if someone else asked for it.

Of course, he hadn’t been concerned about my safety. He’d never wanted to keep the location of any safe house secret so that I would be protected.

No, he’d been worried I would put him in danger by giving up the location he’d chosen.

And if anything had gone wrong in any of those locations, he’d blamed me. Even when his people had been in charge of transporting me and keeping me prisoner the entire time, and I’d never been out of their sight. Somehow, he’d decide, I’d communicated with someone and told them where he was staying.

Somehow, I’d sold him out. Betrayed him.

It was what had gotten Dutch killed. And I’d known for sure that it would get me killed one day—partially because there was no way for me to protect myself against it. How were you supposed to fight against something you didn’t understand? I’d never understood how he came up with the stories he created, so I’d never been able to head them off.

How do you argue with insanity? How do you anticipate ideas so twisted that no healthy mind would come up with them?

Yes, Devil would have killed me eventually. But before that... Before that, he’d been planning to torture me until I was nearly as insane as him. He’d accuse me of sleeping with someone else or ratting him out, and then he’d beat me to within an inch of my life. Or he’d bring someone else in to beat me, someone who should never have been allowed to lay hands on me.

The ultimate insult. The ultimate betrayal. Someone who should have been answering to me hitting me again and again and asking me how I liked it when someone else had the upper hand.

I still couldn’t understand how the crew had gone along with it. I’d known them for years and had taken care of many of them when they were sick or injured. They’d been my friends, my family, and yet when Devil said hurt her, they’d jumped to obey.

Why?

Because he’s their president, a voice in my head murmured chidingly. And refusing to do so would have meant their lives rather than yours.

I bit my lip and blew out, releasing the thought into the darkness around me. The voice was right, and I’d always known it. But it wasn’t any easier to deal with that here, in a warm, safe bed, than it had been on the floor of one of Devil’s safe houses.

I guess it’s probably never easy to get used to the idea that your friends will kill you if someone powerful tells them to. And if it means saving their own lives.

I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness ahead of me, wondering whether Knight’s people would do the same thing.

No, I realized, they wouldn’t. Because Knight would never put them in that sort of position. He’d never choose one of his own people and set the rest of his people against them. He’d never beat an innocent girl nearly to death or let any of his men do it.