Page 76 of Duke

This shit? A fancy ass jet with leather seats and no legroom and nothing for me to fidget with?

I suffered in stillness and silence for about fifteen minutes before my restlessness kicked in. Plus, my arm was killing me—well, not literally, maybe that was a poor choice of phrasing…but I needed a distraction or I was gonna get cranky.

“Yo, Rayburn. I’m bored as shit, dude.” He was sitting in front of me, so I emphasized my point with a kick to the back of his seat.

He twisted in place. “I can break your other arm. That’ll give you something to focus on.”

“Nah, that’ll just piss me off.” I nodded at the wood paneled wall at the front of the cabin. “This thing have a TV?”

That earned me a chuckle from one of the operatives in the back of the jet, which was quickly stifled behind a cough as Rayburn shot a glare back that way.

“Maybe you don’t fully understand the gravity of your situation, Silver. You are only alive right now because Cain has plans for you which are best carried out with you still breathing.” He rested the barrel of his pistol on the top of his seat back, aiming it at me. “This isn’t a social call. You are a prisoner. So no, there is no fuckingTV, you fucking twat.”

“Okay, well, I’m just saying, when I get bored, I get annoying. How long is this flight, anyway?”

A long, irritated sigh. “You’re like a goddamn child, you know that?” He rubbed his forehead with a knuckle. “Couple of hours.”

“And you expect me to just sit here doing dick that whole time?” I groaned. “I’m so gonna get shot before we get there.”

Rayburn dug through a compartment hidden next to his seat and tossed me a stack of magazines:Wine Enthusiast,Cigar Afficionado,Ultimate Homes,Luxury Real Estate…the kind of boring shit only rich pretentious douche-lickers subscribe to.

But then an idea hit me.

I still had my belt on, with the empty kydex sheath threaded through it. And I had a decent sized magazine…

I whipped my belt off, zipped the sheath off, chose what seemed to be the best magazine from the selection I had, and then stuck the sheath between my jaws. After examining my broken forearm, I summoned every ounce of badass tough guy macho I-don’t-feel-pain courage I possessed, and tugged at my wrist until the shard of bone slipped back under my skin—that was part one. I managed not to scream, but there was a lot of clenched-jaw heavy breathing, which drew the attention of pretty much everyone. Rayburn, for his part, pivoted in his chair to watch, but didn’t make a move to either help or hinder me.

Part two—I prodded at my forearm, which felt super fucking awesome, trying to ascertain how the break was aligned without the benefit of an X-ray. A deep breath, repositioned the sheath in my jaws, braced my shoulder against the seat back, extended my arm out straight—I was already snarling in pain and hadn’t actually set it yet…this was going to be fun. Another bracing breath, got a good grip on my wrist with my good hand…and pulled my wrist away from my body. The pain that lanced through me then was unlike anything I’ve ever felt, including that time I was pushed off the third story of a parking garage and broke pretty much everything. I didn’t set my bones then, and when it was done to me, I was under anesthetic so I didn’t feel it. This was just…utter blinding agony so fierce I nearly passed out.

When the worst of it passed, I wiped the sweat off my forehead, took another few moments to breathe through the waves of pain, and then set theWine Enthusiastmagazine underneath my forearm and wrapped it upward around the set bone fracture. I then wrapped the belt around the magazine several times—the belt was just a knock-off para-military web piece, so I was able to tug the it tight enough that I was sure it would function to cinch the magazine tight as a makeshift brace, and then looped the excess belt material between the magazine and the belt so I could pass the bitter end through the loop to make a knot.

By time I was finished, I was breathing hard, feeling faint, and was in so much pain I felt my temper flaring.

The thing about me that might become relevant at this point is that I have a vicious bitch of a temper, but it’s one I keep tightly caged at all times, because once it’s been let loose, it’s pretty much impossible to contain my appetite for destruction until I’m either tranquilized or my rage burns itself out. The funny thing is, I’m hot headed, quick to irritation, but just as quick to let it go. I’ll throw myself into a bar brawl without a second thought, but I’ll turn around and buy the poor bloody bastards a round. That’s not my temper, that’s just my basic, essential personality. I run hot, but it cools off quickly, and my overall good humor returns. No hard feelings, kumbaya, what the fuck ever. Someone nails me in the jaw, yeah I’m gonna kick and shout and curse and then beat the ever loving hell out of the dumb motherfucker, but I haven’t lost my temper, I just don’t like being punched.

Me losing my temper is a whole different beast.

Thresh is the only person who’s ever seen me go truly berserker. Without going into detail, let’s just say I don’t deal well with two kinds of people: rapists, and those hurt kids. Well, Thresh and I got sort of involved in a scenario where there was guy who’d done both to this little girl. Nasty, vile, evil shit, and he thought we’d laugh with him when he described what he’d done. My memory of what followed is hazy at best, because I saw black. Thresh tried to haul me off, but even he couldn’t control me—he got a black eye and three teeth knocked out for his trouble. The piece of shit wasn’t recognizable as a human by the time I finished with him. Thresh hasn’t spoken of it since, and neither have I, and nor will we ever. But the knowledge is there, that the beast inside me is something that should never be let out.

But I felt it boiling, now.

The trouble I’d been through, being yanked away from Temple after what we’d shared together, the fact that the fuckers had destroyed my boss’s house, the humiliation and helplessness of being captured, and now the pain? Yeah, Evil Duke was rearing his ugly head.

I focused on breathing, then, focused on building mental bricks around the Beast’s cage, deep down inside me where he lived.

Something to focus on, at least, right?

I built those walls high and thick, focused on the pain, breathed through it.

When that stopped helping, I re-lived everything Temple and I had done together, but that started giving me wood, so that wasn’t going to work, not in a plane full of men, all of whom would kill me soon as they look at me.

Eventually, I settled into a light doze. It wasn’t really sleep, because the seething anger was still on simmer just beneath the surface, but pretending to be napping worked as well anything in terms of keeping myself from yanking one of those submachine guns away and going apeshit on this jet. Which would be a bad plan, since we were at cruising altitude and I didn’t have a ‘chute.

So thus, I napped.

But make no mistake: the Beast was awake.

12: TRANKED