Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
“You will talk to us,” Edmond says, marching over to me and yanking my legs off the bed, forcing me to sit up. “Your father’s weapon cache. Where was it?”
“I told you, I don’t know! I wasn’t part of my dad’s operation. I didn’t even know about it until he brought us over to this godforsaken place–”
“You call our country godforsaken?”
“Well, I’m sorry. When you keep me in what amounts to a prison cell, I don’t really get to see the beauty.”
Roan frowns and twists his lips at me, giving me a look I haven’t really seen before. He looks at Edmond, who shrugs, then looks back to me. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a black piece of fabric, then throws it to me.
“Put on.”
I unfold the piece of cloth and realize he’s just thrown me a hood.
“You want me to put this on?” I ask.
“Or we could kill you,” Edmond replies casually.
“Right.” I nod. “Okay, then.”
It doesn’t take much more convincing than that. I slip the hood over my head, and seconds later, I feel someone’s hand beneath my arm lifting me to my feet.
“Walk,” Roan commands.
Doing my best to stay steady on my feet, I walk blindly forward at the brisk pace Roan is maintaining as he leads me out of my cell and into the larger space of the warehouse.
I can hear the change in the sound as our steps echo on the concrete. Voices speak Albanian around us, machinery moves heavy objects, and engines rev loudly as we approach what must be an exit.
“Stairs,” Roan says, guiding me down a small flight of stairs onto the gravel. “Now get into car.”
It feels so strange to be breathing fresh air again after so many months in confinement, but I only get a moment of it before I’m bending down, a hand on my back, guiding me into the back seat of a vehicle.
The door slams shut beside me, and moments later we’re pulling away.
My heart is racing.
Are they taking me away to kill me? To put my body in a freshly dug pit where no one will ever find me? To toss me into an industrial oven that will turn me into ash in seconds? To the back of a butcher shop where I’ll be shot in the head and carved into pieces and turned into cat food?
Horrifying thoughts flood through my mind, and I’m incapable of stopping them. Every time the car swerves around a turn or brakes in traffic, my heart skips a beat. My blood pressure must be through the roof.
I should have resisted back there. I shouldn’t have put on the hood. I should have put up a fight. My wrists aren’t even cuffed, for fuck’s sake. Why didn’t I put up a fight? What’s wrong with me?
But what could I have even done? I was in a warehouse full of Albanian gangsters. Even if I’d managed to get the drop on one of them, the rest of them would have beat the hell out of me and then spent the next few days slowly killing me.
I can feel myself sweating.
So this is what it feels like to be confronted with your own death.
After all these months, I guess I’d just resigned myself to the idea that I’d be living in that cell forever. Day after day, nothing was ever changing. Roan and Edmond would come in, interrogate me, get nothing out of me, and then leave. The beatings had stopped, the interrogation techniques had stopped. It was like I was just their pet prisoner who they thought they could eventually break by simply letting the passage of time do its thing. And I’d gotten used to that routine. But now that routine is over, and I’m faced with something new, and that’s terrifying me.
Roan says something in Albanian to Edmond, and the two of them laugh. I can hear the sounds of traffic around us, meaning we’re actually in the city now (whichever city that is). I don’t know where the warehouse was that they were keeping me, but I do know that I could never hear the sounds of anything outside the tiny little window in my room. I always thought I was either way far outside of town, or I was in some old industrial district that was no longer trafficked by people. Now hearing the sounds of honking horns and car engines is like hearing the sounds of alien spacecrafts outside.
Eventually, after a series of turns, the car comes to a stop, and both Roan and Edmond get out. My door opens, and I feel a hand on my arm.
“Out,” Roan barks.
I do as I’m told and stumble out of the car, nearly falling to my knees, but he catches me and supports me, holding me and helping me to my feet. There’s a very brief moment where I actually feel a moment of thanks inside as he lifts me. It confuses me deeply, but I don’t even have time to process it as I’m hauled quickly away in another direction.