Page 23

C hapter 23

Grey

Cuffs dig deep into my skin like sharp razor blades, hurting like a bitch as it tears away at my skin the moment I try to free myself. If I could wriggle my hands free from these cuffs, I could fight my way out of this, but I know it’s futile—I’ve played this game before.

It’s impossible without a key.

The musty air tugs at me as the officers lead me away from what used to be the manor, narrow trails hidden by the foliage, and the incoming fog. I’m leaving my little doll behind to seek shelter elsewhere, and the organ inside my chest caves at the thought—I know it’s better this way. I can’t let them know I’m here with someone else, even if Emilio already told them.

“Move it!” The officer shoves me forward until I’m nearly stumbling, growling at him as I step over roots and rocks to the car parked outside the yard.

He’s a burly man, with a thick mustache perched above his lips in a permanent scowl. His expression and the hard glint in his eyes scream for people to stay away; to not spare him a second glance. I don’t. Instead, I look at the officer walking diagonally from me. His head is shaved clean, and tattoos slither from under his uniform to his neck—so unlike the standards of other officers. He elbows the man beside him, whose muscles are just as pronounced despite the fabric straining to contain them; shoulder blades so sharply defined they seem like they could cut through ice.

He keeps his voice low-key. “Hey, wasn’t there another girl here?”

The man looks around the area, eyes sweeping the empty yard. “Who cares?” he grumbles. “We need to move quickly, secure the suspect, and get him back for questioning. The press will be all over this.” He mutters the words under his breath, seemingly more for himself than anyone else.

The officer beside me—who has been pushing me along—shouts, “Hey, Hal, you think we’ll get a raise after this?”

But the tattooed officer ignores him, focusing elsewhere.

I restrain myself from looking backward, desperate to see my little doll one the last time. Killing Emilio Ricci was a mistake that I’ll never be able to undo. So stupid, thinking we could get away with it in the middle of nowhere.

You’re an idiot, Grey. You’ll deserve it if you’re put in prison, or worse; back at Dankworth Institute again.

I want to physically beat myself up for the stupid fucking mistake I made. Regret lingers in every corner of my soul, pushing and tearing until it’s all I can feel. I don’t regret killing the worthless human, but hell, if it wasn’t bad timing.

I initially groan, my steps faltering, but the officer shoves me forward until my toe catches on a root sticking up. A radiating heat shoots through my foot.

“Fucking watch it,” I snap, mimicking his earlier tone.

In response, he pinches my arm with a harder force than necessary, sending another wave of pain rippling through me.

We continue walking for what feels like forever. In fact, it’s so far away that it’s no wonder we didn’t hear them coming. The other two officers lead the way, their footsteps crunching on the forest floor. As we approach, their police car emerges from the darkening light. The sun dips just beyond the horizon, leaving only the faint glow of twilight. Soon, the moon will rise, filtering its light over the eerie forest.

It’s hard to believe that Naya used to live here, captured, all because of her own mother. Parents suck, all right.

“Get him inside the car,” Hal, the shaved officer, grunts.

The officer holding me yanks open the car door and shoves me inside the cramped backseat, hard enough that my head smacks against the roof. The door slams shut behind him with a loud thud, cutting him off from view.

Déjá vu hits me like a blow to the chest as I’m forced to hunch my body in the cramped backseat. I crane my head to fit, my knees pressed tightly against my chest because there’s no room to stretch out.

It’s just like when they took me to the police station after my parents died, sealing my fate forever.

I growl, irritation and panic coursing through my bones, making me desperate to get the fuck out of here.

I can’t be trapped again.

Time crawls by, and I can hardly see anything outside the car; the tinted windows obscure my view, leaving me unable to see clearly.

As if a bone has been snapped in the still air, a sharp, resonating crack echoes behind me, outside of the vehicle. My body goes rigid, every muscle tensing as I strain to hear what’s happening, but I cannot discern anything from the outside. A voice breaks out into a cry, followed by a hard thud and grunting, yet all noises are muffled by the car. Apprehension coils tight in my chest.

My heart is a madman trying to make sense of anything, and I desperately lean forward to see through the window, but I can’t fucking see anything.

All of a sudden, the car door opens with a yank, and in comes the shaved officer. Blood is smeared across his face, and when our eyes meet in the rearview mirror, I can’t help but notice the wild glint in his gaze. Seeing his face covered in blood, lips busted, and the gaze as crazed as a serial killer’s, makes instincts take over in me. I fight to free myself from these ridiculous goddamn cuffs in front of my stomach.

“What the fuck?” I exclaim as he buckles his seatbelt, turns the ignition key, and revs the engine to drive off. “Where are the others?” Not that I care about them, but what the fuck is going on?

I look over my shoulder, squinting to make out anything through the darkened glass of the trunk, and then I manage to see frames of bodies lying lifeless amongst the foliage. Realization hits me like puzzle pieces falling into their right places.

“You killed them?”

His hardened eyes meet mine in the mirror, his mouth drawn into a tight line of displeasure. “Shut the fuck up.”

I frantically look around the backseat, trying to find anything I can use to get free of these cuffs.

“Why did you do that?” I ask him, confusion swirling in my mind.

There were three police officers, and now only one is left. He drives out of the Grimhill perimeters, instantly ripping off his officer’s uniform jacket, revealing a normal white shirt with a badge on it.

“Haleson, Doctorate at D.I.”

It feels as if all breath has been stolen from my lungs by a vacuum. My little doll is back there, and the person I thought would take me to the police station to be questioned works for Dankworth Institute.

Oh fuck. Fuck!

My attempts to get free are futile. The cuffs won’t budge and they cut through my skin until I see small drops of blood falling.

“You can try, but you’ll never get out of them,” he says from the front seat, and there’s a smirk to his tone that has unease slithering down my spine.

The backseat has nothing I can use as a weapon, and the panic filtrates my body even more with each second that passes; I can hardly breathe.

“What the fuck happened back there?” I ask, trying to gauge a reaction from him, but he only leans over to turn on the radio.

It sparkles to life, music filtering through the space.

For each mile we drive farther away from Grimhill Manor, my heart sinks a little more, feeling the distance tearing apart that thread between me and my little doll. My heart physically soars, hurting as if someone has crushed it with a hammer.

There’s nothing I can do to escape, and when I try the backdoor—maybe I can fling myself out of the car and survive the crash—I quickly realize it’s locked.

God-fucking-damnit.

The music switches to a reporter talking, but I can’t focus on anything but how to get out of this suffocating vehicle that feels like the gateway straight to hell.

“That goddamn bitch is everywhere,” the man mutters. “Her posters are all around town.”

I tune him out, which only spurs him on, making him more agitated as he keeps talking. “Maybe I should bring her with me, too. The institute could need more innocent people to fuck up.” He laughs quietly to himself, and the sound grates on my nerves, sending shivers down my spine that I can’t ignore.

I perk my ears, straining to listen to what the reporter says, all the while keeping one eye on the fake-officer and one on my outsides, memorizing every curve and turn we make out of the forests surrounding Grimhill Manor. From what Naya told me, it’s an endless maze of woods out here; hours away from civilization, which we noticed when we traversed the path to find the damned manor.

“ The author, Everlee Mincheva, well-known for her debut Redeemed, is having her first signing in London on October 28th, at Bookhaven. Tickets are selling fast…”

I don’t hear the rest of the statement as my adrenaline spikes up within my veins; Naya’s friend from Grimhill Manor is having a signing in a week. This might be her chance to reunite again. I tuck away the information in my mind, hoping, fucking praying, that Naya will find out about this. Because even if I don’t get out of this hell I’ve found myself trapped in, at least my little doll might have a chance at survival.

Even if it’s without me.

Haleson curses under his breath as he drives through the dense forest. The car moves at a slow pace, as if he’s deliberately avoiding haste—more fearful of what’s ahead than eager to reach it. It feels as if we’ve barely covered thirty miles, the tension thickening with every turn of the wheels.

Maddening impulses take control of my mind—much like they’ve done for the majority of my life. There’s no time to think, only to act, no matter the consequences. The monster slithering inside me craves the blood, the fight, and the fucking suffering. Even more so now that I’ve been separated from my little doll.

Blood surges to my cock at the thought of her all alone, vulnerable, and waiting for me to take care of her. All the while, my heart crumbles at the thought of abandoning her. I feel the distance growing between us, like scissors snapping a ribbon in half, making it irreparable.

I can’t lose her. Not when I’ve finally gotten her back.

I assess Haleson in the front seat, his eyes focused on the road before him and his interest piqued by what the radio says. It’s ironic how he seems to hate the author yet listens intently.

“Fucking hell, that you killed Ricci. Now I’ll have to contact his boss,” he mutters, still complaining, but all I can think about is whether I could suffocate him if I leaned forward, trapping his throat between my hands and the backrest of his seat.

Fuck it. I seize the moment, using my swiftness to dart my hands over the backrest to capture his throat like I imagined. He instantly thrashes in a pathetic attempt to break free, but I only squeeze harder, as if I’ll physically capsize his head from its place. They should’ve thought of handcuffing my arms behind my back instead. He chokes on his breath, clawing at the cuffs holding him in place, all the while he loses control of the car. It swerves violently to the right, and I brace myself for impact. I didn’t think this through, but then again, fuck it .

Slowly, mercilessly, all oxygen drains from him as his face turns a sickly shade of white and blue, death knocking at his door. The harsh thud of the police car colliding with a thick tree flings my head forward, slamming it against the seat before me. Despite the slow speed, the impact is jarring, and a low ringing takes root deep within my ears, gradually worsening. Blood drips from my nose—probably a burst of blood vessels colliding with the seat, and I groan.

The car is broken beyond repair.

Lightheaded, I sit still for a moment, breathing through the shock after the crash, and waiting for the ringing to disappear. Then I turn to the corpse before me.

What now?

I hope that bastard has keys to these uncomfortable cuffs somewhere. Lifting my hands from his chin, I drag them back up above his lifeless body and search for the key. At first, I can’t find it, until I do, and I unlock my own cuffs.

Without wasting another second, I crawl through the front seats, carefully avoiding the airbags that deployed when the car careened into the tree, and manage to unlock the door. I exit the vehicle, nearly losing my balance as I glance around; the woods are eerily silent, but all I can think about is getting back to Naya as soon as possible.

I fucking need her like I need my next breath of oxygen. My head pounds as I begin running as fast as I can in the opposite direction from where we drove, leaving the car and the officer behind. I push myself to the limit, every inch of me hurting yet pulsing with adrenaline.

I need my little doll.

I need to make it to her.

It feels like I’m running forever, my heart aching with each second I don’t see her.

Not for a second do I dare stop, shifting from sprinting to walking slowly, then to jogging—all to make it back to Grimhill Manor. I memorized all turns, using it to my advantage. Now, when I’ve probably been on the move for hours, my soul soars at the thought of her.

“Naya?” I scream the moment I reach the perimeters of the manor, feeling my body falling toward the ground, exhaustion gripping over me. But I don’t stop screaming her name, hoping, praying that she will be here.

I told her to leave—to run as far away from here as possible, yet there’s a small piece inside me that wishes she didn’t listen to me. That she’s still here.

I’m starting to lose all hope when I suddenly hear branches cracking in the distance, a smaller frame appearing behind the buskage. Her disheveled hair and tear-stained eyes clash with mine, until she’s sprinting toward me.

“Grey!”

She falls before me, scraping her knees on the small stones forming a path.

The world darkens, but I remember what I had to tell her.

“Everlee,” I breathe, my voice weak. “She’s…having a signing in London…”

The world tilts around as the pounding in my head becomes worse. Maybe the car crashed harder than I thought.

Relief sags Naya’s shoulders as she embraces me in her arms, tears falling down to land on my own cheeks as she kisses my forehead. As my words register, a beautiful fucking smile spreads across her lips.

Then blackness seeps into my vision.