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“Ha, your fancy education also teaches you Spanish,” he grumbles. “Do you know why you’re going to die?”

“Please enlighten me,” I gasp, blinking furiously. Fuck, there must be like eight of him. My ears are also ringing, a sure fire way to get stabbed because I didn’t hear something Tiny Dick had to say.

“Your father won’t stop fucking with my business,” Tiny Dick roars. If I can keep thinking of him like this, I won’t burst into tears. I can be strong. I can make it through. “I thought if I wasn’t in Portland, he wouldn’t notice. I wasn’t expecting him to expand.”

I force myself to breathe through the pain, make it work for me so I won’t pass out from fear. I can’t disconnect from this or dissociate. It’ll get me killed. I’m sure of it. I have to stay in the present, something my mind typically refuses to do.

I’m known for checking out when things get hard, a throw back to previous trauma.

El Tigre is from Portland. Fuck. This means Emil has run into him before. The anger and hate doesn’t make sense otherwise. He called Emil my father, and while he isn’t, I’m not giving this man a damn bit of information. He can think whatever he wants.

“Do you remember a shooting in a fancy school parking lot?” Tiny Dick asks.

My breathing hitches, because there’s no way I wouldn’t. I didn’t have anything to do with the deaths of those men, but there’s no way they could have lived after attacking Liliana and I. My stepfather wouldn’t allow it.

He told me it had been mostly handled, but it appears that Mr. Tiny Dick is unexpected.

“Yes,” I rasp, in an effort not to be hit again. His hand is curled in a fist, and he clearly doesn’t have a problem with hitting women. “I was walking to my car. I did nothing wrong by doing that.”

“No, my brother was ordered to strike where it would hurt your father. The Mullen gang wanted to push into his territory, make him nervous. My brother was a white passing Latino who joined a gang to get himself some sort of respect. He was wrong. It just got him dead,” Tiny Dick grunts.

“You were Emil Reyes’ new shiny possession.

He put a target on your back the second he married your mother. Just another casualty of a drive by.”

“Maybe their shots shouldn’t have gone wide,” I say stupidly. Fuck, I didn’t mean to say that.

His meaty fist hits me again, and I have to force myself from whimpering as he allows the chair to fall on its side.

My legs are spread wide and tied to the chair’s feet.

Unfortunately, the chair crushes my right leg, causing me to scream.

My body weight is pinning it to the ground, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

“Fucking soft white girl,” he mutters, grabbing the back of the chair to lift me as if I weigh nothing. “ Sientate alli y callase.”

My chest is heaving from the pain, my eyes leaking tears down my face. My leg aches, but I choose to use it to keep from passing out.

“My little brother was everything to me,” el Tigre says. “Your father and his executioner took him from me. Stupid turf wars between two different worlds.”

From what I understand, Garret Mullen chose to attack without provocation.

He deserved to die for trying to hurt Liliana and I.

However, I keep my mouth shut, even going so far as to press my lips together.

My ears are ringing now, and I have to really concentrate to hear him.

The last thing I need is for him to beat on me some more because I wasn’t listening.

My eye is swelling shut, and my tears hurt as they escape. It figures that my body is punishing me for something I can’t control.

“I was going to pin this entire drug operation on the great Emil Reyes,” Tiny Dick says proudly.

Oops. Turns out I’m beginning to weave in and out consciousness and I’ve clearly missed some of his diatribe.

“I wanted to piss off the authorities by pumping the date rape drug into Santa Barbara and the precious college kids with their important parents.”

Not all the kids who attend UCSB are rich. It’s a ridiculous assessment from a man with a giant chip on his shoulder.

“Then I started selling to the people that I knew would use it in clubs. The cops have been trying to catch me, closing in, while I leave breadcrumbs so they’ll think it’s the great Emil,” he says. “He can join his son in prison.”

Tiny Dick’s information sources must not know that Ignacio has been hunting him and has been out of prison. Idiot.

My vision is beginning to darken, the drugs and the concussion I have are taking their toll.

“Hey bitch,” Tiny dick snaps his goddamned fingers in my face, and I have a sudden urge to bite them off. Snarling, I glare at him and his eight fucking heads.

God, I really don’t feel good.

“What do you want, Tiny Dick,” I rasp, my filter quickly unraveling.

“What did you call me, puta? ” he asks, standing to backhand me.

A knife flies through the air into the back of his hand before he can touch me, his hiss of pain turning his head toward the door.

“I think you need to learn some manners,” Liliana says as she crosses the cellar floor, her boots heavy as she moves.

Tiny Dick snarls as he pulls the knife from his hand, the blood spraying over my skin. I didn’t notice when he put his own knife away, but it’s not surprising with how out of it I am.

“You’re just in time to watch me kill your whore,” he says, tired of games. His hand raises to stab my chest, and I react instinctively, rocking backward to push the chair back. As I fly up, the seat knocks the knife out of his hand to give Liliana the ability to push him away from me.

I gasp as I hit the cold floor in the steel chair, my bruised body aching. Jeans come into my periphery with steel toe boots and I flinch, screaming. I can’t tell who this is, and my vision is fucked. Bending toward me, Jared’s worried gaze comes into view.

“Wife, it’s me. You’re okay. Come on, I got you,” he says, lifting my chair.

I feel as if I’ve been knocked around, because I have been. I’m dizzy, nausea rising to twist my stomach viciously. Gagging, I struggle to find any kind of equilibrium as Jared puts his lips to my ear.

“It’s me, baby. Let me work on this wire around your arms. Remember, I’m behind you,” he says, his fingers ghosting down my upper arms to give me something to ground myself with as I flounder.

Liliana has Tiny Dick pinned to the floor by his wrists with knives.

Her knee is driven into his crotch, grinding his dick into his body.

I can feel Jared working on the knots Tiny Dick made when he used barbed fucking wire to tie me up with.

Every movement Jared makes to attempt to unknot it hurts, sometimes driving the barbs further into my skin.

I need to distract myself from the pain.

More people rush into the cellar, and Elijah and Theo rush to Liliana to pin her captive’s legs down because he’s trying to kick her off.

“Don’t puke on me, Elijah,” is the only warning he has before Liliana pulls a knife from one of her many pockets in her pants before shoving it into Tiny Dick’s side.

His scream makes me feel slightly better as my chin droops to my chest.

“Hey. Querida , wake up. Rachelle,” Nacio barks as my eyes begin to close. Time is moving funny, and I’m having a hard time tracking what’s going on. “Jared, what’s taking so long?”

“Fucking bastard knotted barbed wire into her skin. Lili, make it hurt!” Jared yells in her direction. Tiny Dick’s answering scream makes my lips idly twitch in amusement.

None of this is funny. Not really.

“We need wire clippers,” Ignacio mutters.

“Hey kid,” Mr. Cruz’s voice rips through the room. I can hear something displace the air as it’s thrown, the heavy thud of it hitting Nacio’s palm.

“ Hijita , look at me,” Emil begs, on his knees in front of me. People need to stop popping out of nowhere. Flinching, my eyes widen as I see him. “It’s just me. We’ll get you out of those as soon as possible. Tell me something. Anything.”

“You killed his brother,” I wheeze, my thoughts a mess of tattered threads. “He was the school shooter when I was in high school.”

Emil’s jaw hardens as he shifts to squat in front of me. His palms squeeze my shoulders. It could be to ground me, but I think it’s to keep me still. Whatever they’re doing to get the wires undone is undoing my sanity as well. I’m trying to stay strong, but I’m close to losing my shit.

His fingers make quick work to untie my legs from the chair legs. They feel cold from the steel, and I have vicious pins and needles in my lower limbs as he releases them.

Quickly, he rubs the feeling back into them, as if he can tell by my moan of pain what was hurting me. He’s a damn good father.

“What else? Keep talking. I don’t want you to pass out.” His eyes are gentle despite the hardness of his words. He’s worried.

The words flow from me as fast as possible, tumbling out as I begin to sob. Mr. Cruz stands in the middle of the room so he can observe and listen to everything happening.

“I don’t want you to go to prison,” I finally sob out.

“Why would I go there?” Emil asks, his brows knitting. “Is that what he told you?”

“I call him Tiny Dick in my head,” I blurt out, making my stepfather sputter.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” he mutters.

“Join the club,” I whimper, feeling some of the barbs being dug out of my skin. “He’s been setting you up. Making people think you’re the one responsible for the drugs.”

“Is that why you thought it was your people dealing?” Ignacio asks behind me.

“Yes,” Emil grunts. “It was the way that the drugs were being distributed. It felt too well planned. It’s why I thought it was Maurice’s son. May he rest in peace.”

Wincing, I remember the warehouse that was blown up.

“He’s setting you up,” I breathe, feeling myself start to drift. It hurts too much, my mind is struggling to wrestle control back from me so it can protect me.

I can hear Emil saying something to Liliana, and then Tiny Dick begins to scream louder. There are actual words attached to the screams, and my body lists to the side, deciding to check out.

“Rachelle,” Emil growls, straightening me.

“Go Rachelle somewhere else,” I mumble, no longer making sense. “My head hurts.”

“I know. Your face is all bruised,” he sighs. “How’s it looking, boys? She’s about to pass out. It’s unfair to keep her awake much longer.”

“Almost,” Ignacio mutters. I can hear the wire clippers being put to work, and a shiver rushes up my spine when I wonder why Mr. Cruz had them so readily available.

“We came as soon as we could,” Jared says, his voice pulling my head up from where it’s beginning to droop again. “Liliana needed her weapons and we needed to throw on clothes. If we could have come straight over, I swear we would have.”

“I happened to be stopping by the house,” Emil sighs. “I wanted to see you, and found the worst had happened. It’s over now. You’re almost free. Do we know Tiny Dick’s actual name?”

The question is directed over his shoulder, just as Liliana drives the knife into the man in question’s pants covered dick.

“Christian Rodriguez,” Liliana replies. “The pigs are too fucking good for him.”

“We’ll drop him alive into a vat of hydrochloric acid, Liliana,” her father says easily. “Finish playing with him. You’re going to want to be there for Rachelle when you’re done.”

“You’re right,” she says. “Anything else I need to know, asshole?”

Tiny Dick tries to spit at her, leading to her kicking him in the face. She almost does the splits from where she’s crouched by him, his head snapping back.

“Cool,” she grunts, grabbing him by the hair and pulling his head forward before digging the knife that was pinning one of his hands deep between his vertebrae. “Mr. Emil, he won’t be moving any time soon. Would you like to question him?”

“ Yo lo harè ,” Mr. Cruz says, moving to interrogate him. The wire comes loose finally, and Emil lifts me up into his arms. My head hits his chest and I let the flood of voices take me away as my eyes shut.

It’s loud, and I can’t tell if they’re inside or outside of my head. I should be worried about that, but I can’t be bothered. Everything feels so heavy and it all hurts so much…