Page 20

Chapter 20

EZEKIEL

“N ow that they’re out of my hair, let’s get down to business, shall we?” Ursa says, sauntering to my side of the cave, leaning against the stone wall opposite me. I only need her to take one more step, and I’ll rip her ass to fucking shreds.

“I’ve heard about you, you know,” she claims, but I don’t bother replying. I don’t care for a single word that falls from her mouth.

I have one goal and one goal only.

Kill her, and get my fucking girl back before they hurt her.

Or worse.

I make a conscious effort to calm down, slumping against the cold stone behind me, giving Ursa the illusion that I am tired and have given up.

They’ll need to kill me before I ever give up on Airlie.

“Valerie’s whore ,” she states, the word ‘ whore’ rolling off her tongue as if it’s supposed to be some kind of an insult. She will have to do better than that if she wants to get under my skin. Nothing she can do or say will affect me.

I take a leaf out of my girl’s book, choosing to say nothing because the truth is, silence really is more infuriating, and I need to rile Ursa up if I have a chance of getting out of here.

It sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but people make horrible decisions when they’re emotional, something even I am guilty of, despite knowing better. Still, Ursa flying off the handle is what I am counting on.

I was right to think they’d know who I was if they ever laid eyes on me. They all drink the same water in these parts, connected to each other like magnets, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they're rounding up whatever's left of their soulless society to continue their dirty dealings elsewhere.

“You have nothing to say to me?” Ursa spits, and I look up, narrowing my gaze at her. She looks furious. I don’t know what I did to piss her off, but her eyes have invisible fires dancing in them.

“Look at me!” she shouts, her face turning various shades of red, and it’s all I can do not to smirk.

“What do you want me to say?” I question, which apparently wasn’t the response she wanted because she reaches for her belt, lifts the leather flap on the holster, and pulls out her pocket knife.

Good.

That will make retrieving it a whole lot easier when the timing is right.

“You’ve taken everything from me!” My brows furrow, and I don’t bother hiding my confusion. She paces back and forth, mumbling insanities to herself, still too far away for me to get to her.

I bend over, reaching for my pants, and Ursa’s eyes flick to mine. She gives a slight nod, and I slip them on as she continues pacing.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about–”

“Bullshit! Valerie always said you were her favorite, but I don’t see it,” she points the blade at me, and that’s when I realize.

Where Valerie was tall, slender, and held onto her dwindling youth like her life depended on it, which it sort of did, Ursa is shorter and appears much more youthful, naturally so.

“How could you!” Tears start streaming down her face, and I can see all traces of commonsense fade from her dark eyes as she gives into her grief.

I need to move this along.

“Look. I don’t know who Valerie was to you, but she didn’t give a single shit about anyone but herself. She obviously didn’t think too highly of you because I am learning about you for the first time right now, and she told me almost everything,” the last part is a lie. Hence the four years I spent pretending my ass off.

“ She was my mother!” Ursa cries. I didn’t know Valerie had a daughter. And why the hell would anyone want their daughter caught up in this mess?

“I didn’t know,” is all I offer her as I continue wearing a mask of indifference.

“You didn’t know,” she says, dragging out each word derisively.

“No offense, but I stand by my previous statement. Valerie didn't care about anybody. And the fact that she allowed her own daughter to step foot on an island riddled with fucking criminals, much like herself, pretty much proves that.”

“You don’t know fucking anything about me!” she yells, taking a step closer.

Almost there.

“You're right. I don’t know anything about you. Because she never mentioned you. Not once,” I inform her casually. Her eyes fill with more tears, and she lets them fall, carving streaks of pain and sorrow down her face, ruining her make-up.

It’s just like Valerie to abandon her daughter in a place like this. She didn’t have a maternal bone in her high-maintenance body.

A knot forms deep inside my chest as thoughts of what Ursa must have endured here on Atlantara come to mind. And the woman responsible for all of it was supposed to be the one person Ursa was the safest with in this world.

Relatable.

I gave up questioning how I wound up in a trafficking ring as a young boy because no matter what scenario I came up with, they were all too painful.

Was I stolen?

Did someone take me from my mother?

And if so, did she miss me?

Or was I sold at birth?

I’ve asked myself these questions my entire life, and nothing can ever change the truth of it.

None of it matters anymore.

The chances of us finding our families after being trafficked are slim to none, and with no existing record of me ever being born, it’s damn near impossible.

“She didn’t mention me because she wasn’t allowed to talk to or about me,” Ursa whispers, resting the tip of her knife against her temple.

She’s coming undone.

Surrendering to the madness that plagues our minds when both our hearts and heads have had enough.

She’s showing way too many of her cards.

I say nothing because I’m not sure I care. Ursa handed Airlie over to that scumbag like she was nothing more than dog food, sealing her fate. For that alone, there is no way I will let this woman off the hook.

“Not allowed, or didn’t care enough to bother?” I question, throwing salt in the wound, I’m sure, but I need her to unravel so that she forgets her surroundings enough to take another step closer to me.

“Stop it! I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to get inside my head. It won’t work. She spoke to me once a month. That was the deal. So whatever mind games you’re trying to play, save them!” Ursa resumes her pacing, the same worried expression refusing to leave her face, and I can almost hear her heart breaking from here.

“When was the last time you saw your mother?” I ask, but she says nothing. She doesn’t so much as look at me as she paces back and forth, still mumbling to herself.

I’m not going to get anywhere with her. Despite her wrongdoings, somewhere deep down, she’s still a girl who loved her mother, despite what kind of person she was.

None of us are good people.

We’ve all done things we didn’t want to do in the name of the ‘bigger picture.’ But in Ursa’s case, whatever she’s done, it’s probably not a scratch on me. But watching how she treated Airlie was enough to send me off the rails.

Every minute I spend with this woman is a minute too long. I have to get to Airlie. My siren is in their hands, which is why I have about a second to process what I’m about to do and get the hell over it.

“It’s funny, Valerie wasn’t allowed to have contact with you, but it didn’t stop her from having a whole ass other family,” I lie, but I’m okay with it. This is just a game of survival, nothing more, and if I have to bullshit my way out of a situation to stay alive, you bet your sweet fucking ass I’m going to.

“You're lying! You're a fucking liar!”

“Believe what you want to believe. But while she had you locked away here in Atlantara, I was out there. Playing happy families with her, Charles, and the kids,” is all I get to say before she’s charging at me.

The pocket knife clasped tightly in her grip slices the air between us, but I dodge it. I duck just in time, kicking her legs out from underneath her. She hits the ground with a smack, and I move fast to straddle her body, her hands waving out in an attempt to stab me, slicing through my skin but not fully puncturing me.

What’s another scar?

I grab her arms, pinning them above her head as she bucks and kicks beneath me, screaming obscenities, but it’s no use.

“I’m going to give you one chance, and one chance only to tell me where they’re keeping her, and if you don’t tell me, I’ll drive this knife straight through your throat,” I warn.

“Fuck you! She’s as good as dead, anyway,” she says through splatters of spit, blood and tears. “She tastes sweet, doesn’t she,” she taunts through bloodied teeth, and I notice the blood pooling on the ground beneath her head from when she hit the cave floor.

Ignoring her comment, deciding that if Airlie wants to tell me about what happened here one day, she could, but that would be her choice. I don’t think I can handle knowing otherwise.

I fight Ursa for the knife, still gripped between white-knuckled fingers, and her breaths start to rattle, growing shorter with each violent movement.

“Father Grimsby will fuck her to death as he does with all the girls who don’t fall pregnant by their nineteenth birthday,” she shouts, grunting beneath my weight.

“Oh, yeah, so why are you still breathing?” I snap back, successfully retrieving the knife from her. She fights harder beneath me, but I don’t move as I stare at her.

“Because he’s my uncle,” she grunts, and I’ve heard just about enough.

I keep my promise by driving the pocket knife deep into the side of her neck. Blood spills across my shackled hand as I glare into her dark, wide eyes. Her sputters, and movements are almost nonexistent as I watch the life drain from her face.

I wish I could say that I’m sorry, but I’m not.

These people have hurt more than enough innocent lives, and sparing anyone guilty of that would be the real tragedy.

I wrench out the pocket knife and use her shirt to wipe it clean before fleecing the keys from her belt loop.

The world is not big enough for these fuckers to hide in because I swear to their unholy God that I will find every last man or woman responsible for locking Airlie in this place.

I will avenge her.

In this life or the next.

Until every last one of them is dead.