Traitor

Chapter 1 - Lafe

The needling pressure banding around my head constricted my pulse. Was that my pulse or some other kind of…Fuck, I couldn’t think.
I raised my hand…
No, it was too heavy and when I tried to move, it hurt. I groaned as awareness slowly seeped into my mind.
One minute I was blissfully riding a dark wave of unconsciousness and the next my head pounded.
Then my joints and muscles were stiff and my entire body felt like one big bruise.
After what seemed like a few more minutes, the cold set in. The moldy, damp air filled my nose.
“He’s waking up.” Matías was close, but his voice was wavy, like he was speaking through water as the light rippled through it.
Someone grunted. Was that Grey? Shit, I wasn’t sure. I wanted it to be him, I just couldn’t remember why.
Their voices floated away and came back. But it seemed like more time had passed.
“You awake?” Grey asked as something nudged my leg. Probably Grey’s foot.
“No,” I croaked. My throat was dry and scratchy. I was also dehydrated.
I opened my eyes and dull yellow light highlighted the gray ceiling. Great. Just fucking great.
I’d never been inside one, but I’d been down here before. We were in the cells. It wasn’t quite a dungeon or the chambers that Maikel operated, but it was close enough. And when people came down here, it was to die.
After lots of pain.
“Water?” Damn, the raspy thread of a voice was pathetic. “And how long have we been here?”
“No water, unless you want to try and catch some of the water dripping from the ceiling over there.” I slowly turned my head to Matías. He sat in the far corner closest to the bars and faced the drip of water just outside our cell.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he continued. “Who knows what nasty stuff that water has in it.” His voice was neutral and his expression was blank. Not what I would have expected from him after being thrown in a cell.
“We’ve been here for a good twelve hours.” Grey bumped his head repeatedly against the wall where he was sitting.
The space wasn’t large. Maybe a five-by-five cell. All of our legs were tangled up, and even though I was supine, my legs were all twisted to make myself smaller.
There were no luxuries here.
Grey’s words started to filter through, and I—” Fuck!” I meant to shout, but my voice was low and gritty.
Where was Killer? What about Andre and Parker? They could have been ambushed.
“Whe—where are they?” I groaned as I clumsily pushed myself up. Grey and Matías, on either side of me, reached out and pulled me up.
“We don’t know.” Grey locked his jaw and turned away from us.
My heart skipped a beat. That was the only explanation for the feeling in my chest. It was like my heart was rolling over but in unequal patterns. I weaved and Grey shoved me back up to a sitting position.
“They’re safe.” Matías sounded so confident I wanted to beg him to tell me how he was so sure or smash his face for giving me false hope. If we’d been in here for hours, he wouldn't know that.
I patted my pockets, but my phone was missing. That meant all of our phones were missing. “How do you know that?” I tried to be firm, unyielding. But the whine in my voice was pathetic.
He sighed and closed his eyes. “Right before everything went to shit, I got a text from one of my buddies in the Dirty Dogs. They went there first. If they make it there, Javier will protect them.”
“So you say,” Grey said scathingly as his top lip peeled up. He looked like shit. The skin pinched around his eyes and his body was strung tight. A collection of bruises spattered on his body.
Hell, we all probably looked like we’d been battered by a Mack truck.
“You think I’d lie about that?” A stiff note in Matías’ voice overshadowed his question as he straightened up from the wall.
“Lie? No. But give too much credit to someone you shouldn’t trust? Hell fucking yes.” Grey met Matías’ gaze, and they started a staring battle.