Rogue (Dead Man's Ink #2) (21 page)

The next three seconds are a blur. I tear the t-shirt away from my head, which leaves me completely naked. Better naked than blind, though. I thrust my elbows backward, slamming them into Raphael’s body, contacting with his side and his arm. He doesn’t let go, though. If anything, his grip grows even tighter.
 

“GET THE FUCK OFF ME! LET ME GO!”

“I won’t be letting you go, princess. Not this time. This time you’re mine. Struggle, bitch. Fight me. Come on…make me believe it.” I can’t see his face but I can hear the sneer in his voice. He’s loving the fight almost as much as he hates me. Because he does. He
despises
me. He’s the sort of man who hates all women, purely because of their sex. I know nothing I say is going to get me out of this situation. I’m going to have to fight my way out of it, and I’m going to have to be smart about it, too.
 

I’m gripped by panic and fear, but somehow my brain is still working. Through everything that’s happening, feeling trapped and ultimately terrified, I manage to form one coherent thought:
stop giving him what he wants.
 

I fall limp in his arms.
 

“Que—?”
He’s shocked at my response. Me deciding to play possum was the last thing he must have expected. I’m sure he knows that’s exactly what I’m doing too, but now he has to do something with me. He has to put me down or spin me around or…or
something
. I know it, and he knows it, too.
 

“You think you’re so smart, huh,
Puta.
So fucking smart. You always think you’re one step ahead of me. Well, you’re not.” I realize he’s right when he quickly shifts his hold and wraps one of his arms around my neck, applying pressure. Fuck. He’s going to try and choke me out.
 

“Don’t worry, princess. You’ll be asleep soon. I’ll have so much fun with you while you’re sleeping. And when you wake up, you’ll be all tied up and begging me to knock you out again. Won’t you? Won’t you, you little fucking slut.” He braces his muscles, tightening everything as he pulls back, applying even more pressure against my windpipe. My head is already spinning. Pinpricks of light dance in my vision, floating around like drunken flies. My arms feel weak; they feel
 
them as I scramble at his arms, trying to prise them free.
 

That’s not going to work. Too weak. Too dizzy. No strength. Can’t…
 

I reach further back, fingernails clawing at the ripped material of his shirt, searching for…searching for god knows what. My heels hammer against the floorboards as Raphael lifts me higher, putting even more pressure on my neck. I have seconds. Mere seconds to get out of this, or it will all be over. I will pass out, and I will never want to wake up again, knowing what he will have done to me while I am out cold. My fingers suddenly hit something fleshy, something soft. His face.
 

I keep scrambling, scratching, trying to claw at him, but it’s not working. It’s not working. Raphael starts to laugh again—a maniacal cackle that sounds unhinged. I’m on the verge of losing consciousness, but the madness in that laughter gives me the strength for one last push. One last grapple at his skin.

I feel something wet and moist underneath my fingertip, and I know this is it, my final chance. Raphael tries to swing his head around, to move away from my hand, but I butt my own head backward, cracking my skull against what feels like his nose, and then my index finger is digging into that soft area of flesh I touched a second ago.
 

Not bone. Not cheek. Not chin. No. My finger is digging right into his eyeball, and Raphael is screaming.
 

I know I’ve done some serious damage when he drops me like a hot coal and clutches both hands to his face. The world is suddenly in Technicolor; my head feels like it’s splitting apart from the brightness and loudness of it. Blood thumps through my veins, charging full tilt as I try and crawl away from him.
 

“
PERRA DE MIERDA!”
Raphael stumbles into the wall next to him and then punches it, leaving a smear of blood on the plasterwork. I can’t tell if it’s from the action of actually hitting the wall or if it’s from his eye. A river of blood runs down his face, and his left eyelid is swollen shut, puffy and oozing fluid. With only one eye open, he sees me on the floor and lets out a howl that chills me to my very core.
 

I should have moved quicker. I should have been on my feet and running as soon as he let me go. I couldn’t breathe, though. I could barely see straight myself.
 

He falls on me, grabbing hold of my ankle and dragging me across the room toward the bed. “You should not have done that, you fucking psycho,” he growls. “Are you a good catholic girl, princess? Are you?” He slaps me hard across the face, landing the blow across my ear. A high pitch whine buzzes through my head. When the sound dies down, Raphael is screaming obscenities at me, shoving his face in mine, spitting everywhere.
 

“I’m going to make you wish you’d never been born. I’m going fuck you raw. I’m going to make you hurt. You’ve brought this on yourself.” He hits me again, snapping my head around with the force of his blow. With his right hand he presses my head down into the floorboards so hard I can feel the skin above my eyebrow splitting open. It feels like my skull is about to crack open. With his other hand, Raphael begins to fumble with the belt around his waist. It doesn’t take much to imagine what’s coming next. I screw my eyes shut, trying to think, trying to figure this out. Trying to find a way out of this. It’s when I open my eyes, the sound of Raphael’s fly unzipping snapping me back to reality, that I see my salvation, though.
 

I don’t have long.
 

I reach under the bed.
 

I stretch.
 

I stretch so hard it feels like my shoulder is about to dislocate.
 

I close my fingers around cold metal.
 

And then I’m twisting as best I can with my head being pressed into the floor, and I’m stabbing and I’m stabbing and I’m stabbing.

I only stop when Raphael Dela Vega slumps over me, a heavy, dead weight, pumping long, hot jets of arterial blood all over my naked body.
 

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.”
I shove him off of me, and then I’m clambering to my feet, backing away, backing up until my shoulders hit the wall and I can go no further. Shit.
Shit!
I clamp both of my hands over my mouth, trying not to see the mess I’ve made of Raphael. I want to look away, but I can’t. My eyes are locked on the shiny pair of scissors—Winchester Gun Company—that are sticking out the side of his fucking…out the side of his fucking neck.
 

I pitch forward and brace my hands against my knees, and I throw up.
 

I don’t stop until I feel hands around me. I think for a second that it’s him. I think it’s Raphael, that I didn’t do the job properly. I start flailing, arms and legs everywhere, fighting for my life. And then I smell that smell. The one from the soft t-shirt. I smell that smell, and then I know everything will be okay.
 

Rebel crushes me to him, and the world turns black.
 

SIXTEEN

REBEL

Sophia sleeps in one of the bedrooms in the clubhouse most of the next day. When she’s awake she showers over and over again, crying continually. I stay with her. I don’t really know what to do to make her feel better. This is all my fucking fault. I allowed that motherfucker to remain alive and breathing on Widow Makers’ ground. I should have put a bullet right between his eyes the moment I saw him standing there, but I didn’t. I allowed him to live, and so in turn I allowed him to attack Sophia. She’s hurting and she’s in pain, and it’s all because of me.
 

The third time she wakes and lumbers heavily to the shower, I sit on the edge of the double bed, sheets twisted up and practically knotted from where she’s been tossing and turning, and I hold my head in my hands. There’s nothing I can do to fix this. She wanted her freedom. She didn’t want to be watched over twenty-four seven, but I shouldn’t have listened. There shouldn’t have been a moment of the day that I wasn’t by her side, especially with that piece of shit festering away in the basement.
 

I allow myself a moment of weakness, and I think about Laura. It was the same with her. I turned my back for five minutes, and then she was gone. What the fuck is wrong with me that I keep letting this happen to the people around me. They always seem to get hurt. A part of me wants to shut the club down. These people that have followed me out here into the middle of nowhere, who for some reason trust me to know what I’m doing, have misplaced their faith in me. I keep proving that, time and time again.
 

And Sophia. She has to go back to Seattle. Like,
yesterday
.
 

Just the thought of what I have to do makes me want to head directly downstairs, grab a bottle of Jack from the shelf above the bar, get on my bike and then find somewhere quiet where I can drink myself into a stupor. There was a time when I probably would have done that, but I can’t now. I have a responsibility to the woman quietly tearing herself apart in the shower.
 

I walk numbly down the hall, take my flick knife out of my back pocket, and then I twist the lock on the bathroom door open from the outside. The room is so full of steam, I can’t see my hand in front of my face.

“Soph? It’s me. It’s Jamie.” I speak loudly, so she knows I’m there. The last thing I want to do is surprise her. “Jesus, have you even got the cold tap turned on, girl? It’s like a sauna in here.” I know why she’s scalding three layers off skin from her body, though. She feels dirty. She can still feel his hands all over her body.
 

This, sadly, is not the first time I’ve had to take care of a woman who’s been mistreated by a man. It is the first time that I’ve felt like I’m dying myself, though.
 

From behind the steamed up glass shower screen, I can make out the small shape of Sophia, curled up in the corner of the tiled shower. “Can you…can you just…”
 

She wants to ask me to go away. She’s trying to ask that of me, but she can’t seem to finish the sentence. I should be a gentleman and give her what she wants. Walk right back out the door, lock it again, and give her the space she craves. But I can’t. Instead, I open the shower door and I climb right in there with her, fully clothed. T-shirt, hoody, jeans, sneakers. I leave it all on. Me stripping off my clothes would be a shitty idea, even though I have zero intention of trying anything on with her.
 

I’m soaked the instant the stream of boiling water hits me. Sophia looks up at me, arms wrapped tightly around her body, knees drawn up to her chest, and I can tell there are tears running down her face in amongst the beads of water from the shower head. “What are you doing?” she mumbles.
 

I smile sadly down at her. My throat feels like it’s swelling fucking closed. She looks so small. So vulnerable. She stabbed Raphael eleven times before she drove those scissors into his neck, but to look at her now you wouldn’t think she was capable. I’m really fucking glad she was.
 

“Just checking in,” I say softly. She doesn’t reply. She leans her forehead against her braced arms, her body shuddering. Fuck. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never felt this…useless. Even when Laura went missing, I still felt like I had a purpose: Find her. Bring her home. Apologize. Sophia’s sitting right in front of me, though. I haven’t lost her in the same way I lost Laura. Bringing Sophia home is a different task altogether.
 

I lean against the wall and slowly slide down it, not making any sudden movements, until I’m sitting on the floor next to her. I don’t touch her. She must hate me. She must blame me. She has every right to. I told her everything would be okay, and it was anything but.
 

We sit there in silence for a long time, the water feeling hotter and hotter with every passing moment. The skin across Sophia’s shoulder blades turns from a violent scarlet to a bruised looking purple. She doesn’t seem to notice when I slowly adjust the temperature of the water from blisteringly hot to something a little more manageable.
 

We sit some more.
 

Eventually, I feel the need to break the silence. “I’m going to drive you home tomorrow,” I say slowly. “I’ll drive you myself.” She doesn’t look at me, but I can feel her tensing, though; I know she must have heard me. “It’s…for the best. I don’t want anything else happening to you. Not because of me. I can’t—I can’t tell you how sorr—”

“You don’t want me anymore.”

I stop talking, turning my head to fully look at her properly. “
What
?”

“You’re sending me away. You don’t want me anymore,” she says. It’s really hard to hear her over the constant battery of the water against the slate tiles, but I can just about make out what she’s saying.
 

“No…no, of course I want you, Sophia. Fuck, I…” My heart feels like it’s being stomped on repeatedly every time it beats. How can she think that? How can she honestly think I don’t want her anymore?
 

“I probably disgust you,” she says.
 

Oh, god. Being stabbed at Ramirez’s place hurt. Being tasered by Lowell was breathtakingly painful. But
this
pain? This pain makes me feel like I’m dying. I would hurt less right now if someone took a knife, slammed it into my chest, and twisted with all their might. “You’re crazy if you think that, sugar. You have no idea. I…
I am so fucking proud of you.”

Slowly, she raises her head, peering at me sideways, a blank look on her face. Her hair is plastered down her cheeks, her neck, her back in dark, wet streamers. “How? How can you be proud of me? He nearly…”