Condemned

44 | Jael

Brock drags me outside by the ankles, my face down. On the way to the parking area, he seems to pass over every protruding rock on the mountainside.

Night is upon us already and it caught me by surprise. I lost a few hours somewhere. It was midday by my guess. 

After a grunt telling me to stand, he proceeds to slam me, face first, into the unopened trunk of the Integra. I'm down and almost out, and this is for no other reason than to curb his appetite for violence. I have no doubt they picked the smallest car on the property for a reason as well. It's yet another way to make me suffer.

While I'm shaking off the static in my vision, he wrangles my hands behind me, and binds my wrists together with duct tape. My knees buckle when he jabs an elbow between my shoulder blades.

He wraps tape around my ankles as well and folds me into the trunk. Before he closes the hatch, he adds a few more pieces to my mouth and tosses the roll into the trunk for future use. Because of the blood running from my nose, the tape over my mouth will likely need replacing first.

Doesn't really matter anyway. I have nothing left to say and few who'd care to hear it.

I was given one chance. I wasn't supposed to fail, and I did. There's no contingency plan in place. What I'd have to ask for, would be too much for anyone to give. My former accomplices have their own relationships and survival to concern themselves with. 

At this point, I should just close my eyes and accept what's true. I may never see the light of another day. Death would be the easy way out, knowing what's inevitably in store for me. 

What did I do to Narcia that was so terrible? It's a long story with details I missed or couldn't piece together that have now faded with time. I was the son of a single grocery-store clerk, not the son of a general, a spy or an assassin, or a U.S. Senator. I just wasn't trained or prepared for that level of scheming and backstabbing.

It was a long, drawn-out process, but I finally told the truth about her father, the source of most of the pack's conflict, exposing him for the fraud that he was. And I was blamed for his murder, considered spineless and underhanded, done in his sleep with no witnesses. It could have been anybody, but it wasn't me. It's not my style. If I'd fought him head on, odds are, I would have won. And Pavel, her first-cousin lover, lost an eye in the confrontation about it. His own doing, really, but according to Narcia, I was supposed to die. All along, most likely. It was probably the plan the minute my strict but straightforward grandfather brought me onto the scene. If he hadn't been the one to find me first, my execution may have happened prior.   

It's one of those cases where, even if you win, you lose big. I have no doubt that Ishmael has been my shield, something he and Narcia may have agreed upon, or perhaps it was some unspoken rule. Regardless, it's been pulled. She won't even have to trouble herself, hunting me down. She can—and will—invest her time and energy wisely. It'll be as base and demeaning as possible for as long as life is sustainable. We don't die easily, and it's a trait she'd know how to exploit better than anyone. 

Ishmael has, and always will be, the lesser of two evils. That's sad, and scary as hell, especially for Sam. Like me, her bridges are all burned. She'll have no one else to turn to, and will gradually submit to his darkening, deepening demands until she breaks, like I did, and does something stupid or reckless. And dies for it. No one, in all of Ishmael's acquaintance, is truly safe, unless you are the last Fowler on this earth.

Chatter erupts outside of the car that I can't hear above my own pulse. It's loud, anywhere I've been hit. Pretty much everywhere that would be considered life-threatening. Unfortunately, I'm still here and may as well be deaf, at that.