Page 38 of Toxic
“Terrelli,” Gracin responds. “What have yougothere?”
I black out then, too overwhelmed by pain and disbelief to keep conscious. When I come to, I can actually see him when he throws a thumb over his shoulder in my direction. “This slut? She’s just the dumb cunt I convinced to help me get out of Blackthorne.” He laughs, bending forward to slap his knee. Danny snarls at Gracin’s blatant condescension. “Man, Sal must be hard up if he’s sending men after the women folk to get his work done. Tell me, Terrelli, are you that bad at your job that you can’t track down a mark without resorting to beating upwomen?”
“Tell me, King, are you such a pussy you had to run with your tail betweenyourlegs?”
Gracin clucks his tongue. “I never ran. Unlike you, I know how to do a job properly. Now, are we going to stand here all day, or are you going to give Sal a call and tell him you’re a complete fuckingfailure?”
His gaze doesn’t come to me once, not a single time since he got here. I know because I can’t take my eyes off him, and for that, I hate myself. He looks nothing like the man I knew, and yet, he’s so familiar that it makes my whole body ache. Well, even more than italreadydoes.
Danny crosses the room to the table, and the others follow after, leaving me hanging, hurting, bleeding. I’m a piece of meat. It doesn’t even surprise me when Gracin doesn’t come to me. But that’s okay. It keeps my brain busy and off the pain just to watch him as hestudiesthem.
He’s wearing a suit, and he looks even more intimidating in clean lines and expensive fabric than the prison garb. The stark color against his tan makes him seem confident, sleek, and capable. Polished and refined and dominant. He keeps his hands at his sides, loose and ready, like a gunslinger or a gladiator ready to fight to thedeath.
Danny is talking to someone on the phone, Salvatore, and I close my eyes against the pain radiating through me. When I manage to pull them open again, Gracin isclose.
His face doesn’t betray any emotion, but he looks over me once, noting the bruises on my face, the burns on my legs, and the blood all around me. He doesn’t say anything, and after his cursory once over, I’m reminded of all the reasons why I want to be as far away from him as possible. So, I turn my head away from him and wait to see what these bastards have next in storeforme.
But Gracin has otherplans.
While Danny’s on the phone and the others are taking a smoke break, he cuts me down and takes my weight because my foot is burned so badly I can’t standonit.
“The fuck are you doing?” Danny asks with one hand over thephone.
Gracin doesn’t spare him a glance. “You got the information you wanted. I’m here. You want to keep going at her?” His mouth twists, and he looks up then. “Didn’t know you were into that shit. Must be why Sal got into snuff films, huh?Kinky.”
Danny frowns and then returns to his conversation. Gracin begins massaging my shoulders to increase blood flow to the area, but I shrug him away and take a step away. Well, I try to. My legs don’t want to hold my weight and the fresh pain that ignites in my limbs makes it so I nearly end up taking a nose dive straight into theconcrete.
“Don’t,” he says, his voice harsh as he helps me back up. “You can’t fuckin’ walk, so don’tfuckin’try.”
I force my voice around the rawness in my throat. “Don’ttouchme.”
He studies me and then retreats, his hands held up as he gestures for me to continue. I glare at him and limp to the table where I ignore the things on top of it and crouch down to sit on one of the chairs. I couldn’t hide the pain lacing my features if I tried, so I don’t. I let everyone in the room know just how vulnerableIam.
“Boss wants us to take you to him,” Danny says as he hangs up the phone and comes to stand behind me. My shoulders tense at his proximity, but I made such a show of sitting down that I couldn’t move if my legs had the strength to keep meupright.
“That won’t work for me,” Gracinreplies.
“’Fraid you don’t got a choice.” Danny and his men form a line between the exitandus.
Gracin sighs as if he’s at the supermarket and the clerk won’t direct him to his favorite sparkling water.“Then I guess we have nothing to talk about,” he says and pulls outagun.
He fires four times in rapid succession, faster than I have time to realize what he’s doing. I fall unceremoniously off my chair, and the pain of the movement is so breathtaking that it causes my whole body to go numb. My arms come up to cover my head, and my eyes squeeze shut. When the shots stop, I look up and find the four men moaning and supine on theground.
I don’t even think, I just get to my aching feet and stumble for the door. Footsteps are close behind me, but I move as fast as my battered body will let me. The last thing I want is to be caught, but it’s no use. Gracin's healthy, rested, and still as quick as the snake. He reaches the door before me, barringitsway.
With one hand wrapped around my arm like a band of steel, he yanks me out after him and then scoops me up into his arms as though I hardly weigh anything. But I don’t want to go anywhere with him, so I’m scratching and clawing at every available part of him that I can reach until we get to a car and he throws me in thebackseat.
When I come up screaming and slapping at him, he deflects my arms and knocks me on the side of the head with a quick blow. One second I’m conscious, the next I’m consumed by darkness andshadows.
Isense everything throughahaze.
The movement of avehicle.
The remnants ofindescribablepain.
The presence of other peoplearoundme.
Panic threatens to swallow me whole, so I give into the darknessoncemore.