— Chapter 62 —

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Two days.

Two days turned to three, then five, then a week.

Seven days passed and Noah was still a long way out of Boston. Nobody had heard word from him since he left. Nobody knew when he was coming back.

The nights he was gone were a prime example of why the Stray Dogs had always been so surrounded by rumors of danger and mystery. But even more so: why the name Edge was whispered so cautiously in the quiet back-alleys of Boston city.

Stray Dogs were prowling the streets like wolves.

The list of vested street racers that Chief made at the races—his bikers were hunting every last one down. Every offending biker club, every pub, every rider and motorcycle they could find. All of them were being checked against the list, and those who were caught had their motorcycles thrown together and lit ablaze. Anyone who fought in an attempt to protect what was theirs had their vests shredded apart.

There were bonfires of burning motorcycles scattered all over the city. News stations broadcasted the few they could find. The police had been mobilized to make arrests as they saw fit—but when all the evidence had been burned to cinders and the fires put out by the time they arrived, they weren't making much progress. Especially not when nobody wanted to talk.

The Stray Dogs seemed to be enjoying themselves, at least.

I wanted as little to do with it as possible.

"Thanks for coming in early today!" Jesse's cheery voice spoke to me at the end of my busy shift at her convenience store. "You're a lifesaver, dear."

I was walking out of the back room with my bag slung over my shoulder, fixing up the strands of hair that had fallen out of my tie. With a warm glance, I nodded, "Of course. Happy to help."

A news report was playing on the TV behind Jesse's head. I caught a bit of it while I was tossing some scrap paper in the trash.

"Authorities are still on the hunt for an unidentified individual responsible for the violent assault of an elementary teacher in New York City on Tuesday night," the newswoman read. "A recent spike in vicious attacks within the area has seen six other men hospitalized with extensive injuries over the course of the last week. So far, NYPD hasn't found sufficient evidence to determine whether the crimes are connected..."

Pulling me back to earth, Jesse sighed in amusement, "I would've called Han in—but he's been busy doing whatever it is that he does."

She was right. Her grandson hadn't shown his face at the store since that night. Maybe he'd decided to avoid me altogether. I wasn't complaining—after all, the less I saw of him, the better.

Jesse asked, "I'll see you... tomorrow, right?"

"Friday, actually," I smiled softly. Tomorrow was my only day off this week, and I was planning to stay home and sleep for as long as humanly possible.

"Ah, that's right!"

"See you, Jesse," I said. "Thanks for today."

She waved me off. "See you Friday, Elliot."

I pushed open the doors to the store, the sunset beaming rays of orange light to my surroundings. Pulling out my phone, I found Noah's name in my contact list for the umpteenth time this week and dialed his number.

It rang five times before the answering machine kicked in.

"We're sorry, the number you've dialed is currently unavailable or no longer in service."

My shoulders dropped. To be fair, I set myself up for disappointment. Noah hadn't answered a single call or text message in the last week, and I figured he was just too busy with his own things in New York... but still, it would've been nice to hear his soothing voice. Just once.

Part of me still didn't understand how we'd left things. But... I knew I missed him.

I miss him a lot.

I tried not to think about him so much on the bus ride home, or as I was walking back to the apartment. Absent-minded, I had my earphones in, stopping only to pick up our mail. I tripped up the stairs. Tripped through the door. I left the mail on the dresser and kicked off my heavy boots with a relieved sigh.

"Fuckass?" I called. "You home?"

No answer. No sight of the feline's tiny face.

Cold, quiet and dark, the apartment had never felt this empty. It wasn't easy to get used to.

By the time the water had come to boil for my tea, I'd slipped into a t-shirt and sweatpants, letting my hair freely scrape my shoulders. Noah liked it better out.

I steeped the teabag in the cup for a few minutes. While the flavor bled into the cup, the stack of mail came to mind, and I read through the letters blankly while sitting on top of the kitchen counter.

Water bill. Insurance Bill. New York University. Pizza Coupon.

My lungs just about deflated.

NYU. I shredded the crisp paper between my fingers—it was a thin envelope. Thin envelopes were never a good sign. Not from universities.

Elliot Taylor,

Thank you for your recent application to study with us at New York University. Unfortunately, we regret to—

Either the letters bled together in a shapeless mass of ink after that, or the moisture in my eyes had blurred my vision. My cheeks were burning so I picked the latter.

A deep breath filled my nose. An exhale. Then another deep breath. No more moisture.

"It was a long shot," I reminded myself, discarding the letter somewhere on the marble countertop. "It was just a long shot, remember?"

I hoped that repeating the words over and over would help stop me from feeling so disappointed. It didn't. Instead, my organs wrenched themselves into knots, and I thought for sure I'd throw up.

I did.

I collapsed myself before the toilet in the bathroom and coughed up my stomach. Acid burned my throat. I hadn't eaten all day; I didn't know what I was throwing up.

Time went fast on the cold floor of that tiled bathroom. I thought about Mrs. Ledger, the dean who'd interviewed me. I thought about her offer and tried to stop my chin from trembling... tried to stop my nails from digging into my palms.

Accept the short straw.

But I couldn't bring myself to accept the short straw. Another deep breath filled my lungs.

A rattling sound beyond the door to the bathroom tore me from my thoughts. A heavy thud shook the floorboards.

A crash followed quickly after.

I groaned to myself and washed my mouth out in the sink. Chains and Shooter were in the apartment again, I figured.

"Damn it, Chains," I sighed, pulling open the door. "I thought I told you weeks ago to give me back the key—"

Not Chains. Not Shooter.

Three figures stood in the house—as still as stone at the sound of my voice. Three men, dressed in black. Three guns. Three black ski masks, wholes cut for the eyes and lips. One metal baseball bat.

One petrified Elliot.

"Oh, fucking shit," I heard one hiss. His voice I would recognize anywhere—Marcus Danes. "I thought you said nobody would be home."

You being the man standing at the kitchen counter, who must have been throwing cabinets open while I'd been in the bathroom. Snacks and pans were all over the place.

"Did we get the right apartment?" The third one complained. He was the shortest, lankiest—ginger hair stuck out from beneath his mask. There was a metal bat against his shoulder.

I knew that voice too.

The man in the kitchen broke the silence. His eyes were boring holes into my head. I knew those eyes. "It's the right apartment."

Terror squeezed the air out of my lungs.

Han.

He tore his mask off and confirmed my suspicions. Those piercing eyes of his finally lifted off me and landed on his fellow intruders. I still couldn't breathe.

"Plan hasn't changed," he said, tattooed arms propping him up on the marble counter. "You know what we're here for. Trash the place if you must."

The other two seemed all too eager to follow that order.

With hilarity in his wheezy laugh, the ginger-haired intruder from before slammed his metal bat through the TV. I jumped six feet in the air. Glass shattered. The metal casing caved in on itself and hit the wall.

A gun was stuck to my face.

The second gun to my head in a week.

I stood in the hall and watched them with my hands in the air, unable to splutter words through my lips. Marcus ripped holes in the fabric of the couch, tearing the cushions open as if he'd find something. He didn't find anything. Or maybe he was just doing it for fun.

My mouth felt so dry—like I'd swallowed a bucket of sand. There was only one question on my mind, a question that I stammered out while my body trembled from head to toe.

"Are you going to kill me?"

Han walked over to me, the gun still aimed at my head. I expected him to answer. I got a backhand to my face instead.

It didn't hurt as much as my father's violence did, but the impact still split my lip open again nonetheless. The force was enough to knock me to the ground. "On your knees," he ordered. "Try anything and that wall behind you gets a fresh paint job."

My breath hitched in my throat. He's going to kill me.

Marcus dug around in the empty vases at the corner of the apartment. When he didn't find anything, he threw them over his shoulder like they were nothing, and every crash made me flinch. Fear dripped down my temples, down my chin.

"Hey, hey—" the ginger-haired man laughed to his buddy— "throw that this way."

I know that voice.

It was Ash, the same biker I'd met the first time Noah had invited me to Crave. Ash, Ash, Ash—it echoed in my head until the name lost shape.

Marcus grinned and tossed a vase to him. Ash slammed it out of mid-air with the bat, ceramic exploding in a cloud of dust. I cupped my mouth with my hands and tried not to scream.

My thoughts were racing at a mile a minute. Preparing me for the worst. I was going to die here—Noah was going to return to the apartment after his trip to New York and find me dead on the floor. He was going to find me dead—he'd have to live with the sight of my corpse scarred into his head for the rest of his life.

Noah's going to come home and find me dead. The thought repeated over and over and consumed me alive. He's going to find me dead. He's going to have my blood on his hands. He's going to hold my body in his arms and blame himself. He's going to find me dead.

I was so lightheaded that I could pass out. Han noticed, tilting my chin up with his gun. The coldness of the metal pinched my skin. His piercing eyes bore through my face, bullets of their own.

"Now, why is it that I find you here, exactly?" He asked, voice sharp at all corners. "Speak up."

I debated fighting him. I debated kicking and screaming and spitting expletives in his face. My anger said yes. My common sense pleaded no. Common sense was the smarter option by default.

"It's my ap-apartment too," I forced out, his gun still pressing beneath my chin. "I live here."

Han paused.

His shoulders shook, then his hand covered his mouth. Just like that—he was laughing. It was the first time I'd ever heard him laugh. It was heavy, deep, dry. A cruel mockery, like saltwater in the desert. It was monotone. Colorless.

I was so petrified in the moment that thin tears had formed in the corners of my eyes.

He pulled his phone from his pocket while running a hand through his hair, deep laugh now only a breathy chuckle. "It all makes sense now."

A deep, heavy sneeze echoed in the corner of the room. Marcus adjusted his mask to brush his nose, catching a breath. He sneezed again.

"Dude, what's the matter with you?" Ash snorted.

"Fucking allergies," Marcus grumbled. "They've gotta have a cat around here somewhere or something."

Ash just about folded over in laughter. "You mean to tell me Edge, a Stray Dog, keeps a cat? Oh, the world's gone mad, I tell you."

Han muttered, "Looks like that biker has a habit of taking in strays."

He turned his face, and it was only then that I caught the swollen bruises at his eye and the cut across his lower lip. Sage's words from that night echoed in my head: I'll make sure my friend here learns a lesson.

Lesson learned, from the looks of him.

"You don't have to do this," I said, pleading for some mercy. "There's no money, and we don't keep anything valuable in the apartment—there's nothing for you to take. Let me go. Please just let me go."

Han pistol-whipped the side of my jaw to shut me up.

"I would have killed that biker if Sage hadn't been there that night," he said. "Midas still wants Edge dead. Lucky he's in New York then, isn't it? Coward."

The young gunman kneeled down beside me.

"You know—it's interesting," he muttered, accent undercutting in his speech. "I did everything Midas asked. I stopped your car. I used you as leverage. I held that biker at gunpoint, because it was my job and I didn't have a choice. Then Sage showed up, ordered me to let you both go... and instead of punishing her, Midas came for me."

I tried to steady my vision for long enough to see him pull up the hem of his shirt, exposing his torso for me to witness all the bruises that marred his skin. Deep purples and browns, like the injuries at his eye and neck. Sorrow filled my stomach at the sight.

He's just a kid.

Han sucked in a sharp breath. "All of this... all of it because I didn't follow orders. So I won't fail this time. Midas says you stole from us, and I'm not leaving here empty-handed."

"Stole?" Panic settled in my veins. "We didn't steal—"

Han gripped my hair and demanded my attention, his metal weapon digging into my jaw.

A cry of pain left my lips.

"Half a million in cash was stolen from our races a few days ago," he clarified, indifferent to my struggling. "It was Sage, wasn't it? She had both duffle bags in the back and told Edge to keep them when Midas refused to pay him for winning the race."

The counterfeits—that's why they were in the apartment. That's what they were searching for. That's why they were trashing the place.

"You're wrong," I choked out. "We didn't know. You were there—Sage told us not to take the car."

"Then you and your friends are fools."

Drinking in the pain of the wounds he'd inflicted, the scar at Han's eye strained with his glare. My chin trembled, my lower lip quivered. The tip of his gun began to bite.

"We are not leaving here without those duffle bags," he uttered, putting it simply. "This will go much easier if you tell us where they are."

"I don't know."

He gripped my jaw and slammed my head to the wall behind me in one swift movement. A pained scream tore itself from my bloody lips.

Marcus laughed with Ash a few paces away, a newly-lit blunt burning at his lips.

"Wrong answer," Han said. "Try again."

"I don't know!" I repeated. He pressed his gun to my forehead, the metal like acid on my skin. "Noah got rid of the money—he didn't tell me where he put it. I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know. Please don't—"

He bashed his gun into my cheek before I could finish.

My head hit the ground face-first. Any thoughts in my head collapsed, and my brain went foggy. My own heartbeat in my ears made me want to scream. A ringing sound fried my senses, like sirens that wouldn't stop. My nose bled, and the warm blood staining my skin—I hoped to God it wasn't broken.

I was seeing in vague shapes and colors, both moving in hypnotic dances while I fought so desperately to stay conscious.

Han wasn't hunkered down beside me anymore. Seconds passed, years maybe, before I heard his voice again. I tried to make sense of him in the distance, using my anger as a driver while I bled onto the floor.

He was on the phone.

Whatever he was saying was blurry and nonsensical, a jumbling of syllables and sounds that my brain couldn't comprehend. Not over the ringing in my ears and the crashing waves of my own heartbeat.

There was more banging. Ash and Marcus were destroying everything. All the picture frames, all the furniture, all the decorations and the shelves and the cabinets. It sounded like they broke a window too, only I couldn't decipher where.

The shapes began to solidify. I was disoriented, the metallic taste of blood on my lips, but I could see again. Hear again.

"You did not say he'd be here."

Han's voice.

The agony in my veins made the passing time feel like an eternity. He spoke again.

"That might not be possible. He's out cold."

A pause. Then, Han's serpentine eyes caught on the two men he'd brought in with him—he flicked his hand to them in one swift movement.

It must have been an order of some kind, because Ash threw himself over the couch between us and squatted by my prostrated figure. He prodded me a few times with his forefinger. I hissed, baring my teeth and seething in anger. There was a cruel, mean, evil grin on his lips.

Marcus stopped beside me—his worn boots by my head were all I could see of him. The smoke from his fat blunt invaded my nostrils.

Ash fisted my hair and pulled me up to kneel before them both in a flash of movement. Marcus spared no time. He laughed and put his burning blunt out on my shoulder.

The blood-curdling scream that tore itself from my lips wasn't enough to convey the pain overloading my senses.

Ragged breaths. Seething rage. Pure, unbridled terror.

He dug his fat blunt deep into the patch of skin beneath my shirt, and the torture was unlike anything I'd ever felt before. A thousand suns, a thousand fires, a thousand hot pokers, a thousand vials of acid. The stench of my own burning flesh made me gag. Marcus dabbed the burning end on me until the blunt finally snapped in half. I shrieked and shrieked and begged for mercy, but it fell on deaf ears. The damage was done.

When the blunt finally fell to the floor, I fell with it, convulsing in pain and staggered breaths and agony.

I screamed and screamed, only to find myself shutting up rather quickly when one of them kicked their foot into my ribs.

And again.

And again and again.

It only stopped once Han's voice echoed somewhere in the background. Whatever he said, it was broken in my mind. Words were missing. The sounds refused to stitch themselves together.

"Counterfeits... found them... we're leaving now."

I heard footfalls heading to the front door.

The thugs laughed into the air. One of them spoke—I figured it was Ash. "Yikes," he cackled to his friend. "Apartment 13. That's bad luck, man..."

"Someone should've warned the poor guy..."

Their combined laughter echoed and echoed until it finally disappeared.

My vision had blurred in the corners, and the pain was like television static in my head. I couldn't move, I couldn't think, I could barely get the cries of pain out of my lips. Han was still in the apartment somewhere. I couldn't see him with my bloody face pressed to the floorboards.

The vibration of his footfalls nearing closer made me squirm back, desperate to get out of the way, desperate to spare myself any more pain.

"Did you not have enough of the misery six years ago?" I heard him mutter. He scoffed and tossed some kind of empty pill bottle down near my head, crushing it with his boot. "I pity you, Taylor."