“I just owned right up to hating that poisonous brew,” Savage declared, covering the silence. “Told Blythe. Then told Anat.” He handed the monocle to Maestro. “This is a thing of beauty. Anat’s man was a fucking genius, but I’m still not certain what part of the contents were designed for. Player, you must have figured that out when you were putting it together.”
“At first, when I was working on it, I was doing so in my dreams. I was a child, building a bomb in my head when everything had gone wrong. When things get overwhelming for me, I retreat into my head and I build bombs.” He despised admitting that to the others, but he did so matter-of-factly. “I look at it like puzzles in my head. I just fit the pieces together. I focus on that instead of what is going on around me.”
“Yeah, I get that,” Mechanic said. “I tend to do the same with engines.”
“I do it with art, tattoos,” Ink admitted. “Sometimes I bring wildlife into it.”
“For me, it’s the weather, the cloud formations,” Storm said.
“Music,” Maestro said.
“Best not to say what goes on in my mind when I need to escape, not with Zyah here,” Savage said. “Suffice it to say, bombs are the better alternative.”
Czar said nothing. He looked expectantly at Player, indicating for him to continue.
Player rubbed his hand up and down Zyah’s arm. Both of them—maybe everyone in the shed—had realized, when Zyah had revealed that Anat had known Maestro was lying over the tea, that she most likely had to have known about her husband and his anniversary gift. If she could hear lies, and she’d lived with her husband all those years, how could she not know? Zyah was truly devastated. Player didn’t know what to think, and he was determined to reserve judgment.
You okay, baby? If you need to go up to the house for a break, I can handle this here. We won’t go any further, other than trying to figure things out, without waiting for you.
I can handle it, Zyah assured, cuddling closer into him. I know my grandmother. She would never be involved in anything that would harm others. The idea just threw me for a moment.
“The problem started when I was shot. I really hate to call it a brain injury.” Player despised revealing that his brain had been torn up by that bullet. “Apparently, that bullet did a lot of damage. Steele worked his magic, but the trauma was very severe. The migraines started and refused to stop. I have nightmares nearly every night.”
Now he really sounded like a pussy. He hadn’t ever wanted to talk about this to his club. He’d felt so different from them, so apart, and this just seemed to make it worse, yet when he’d admitted he built bombs in his mind in order to stop himself from thinking about what was happening to his body when he was raped, the others shared they’d done similar things. Player tightened his hold on Zyah. He’d sat next to her to comfort her, and now she was the one giving him the strength to tell the others what needed to be said.
“When I used to build illusions, playing around with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the characters for all of you when we were kids, if I did it too long, my brain couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t in full control of my talent then. I hadn’t really built it up, and sometimes I’d get tired if I entertained you too long.”
He rubbed at his temples, remembering the pounding ache that always told him he’d gone too far. “I’d get these terrible headaches. I learned to stop the moment I’d get blasted with one, but before I realized that was the warning sign, I discovered that my illusions could turn to an alternate reality very fast. The alternate was never good and would pull others into it.”
Player glanced around the shed. The others were very quiet, very focused on him. “I often built the illusion of the wall with the door so we could all slip through. I did it dozens of times, but sometimes things would go wrong. We’d be in bad shape. The first few times, I was young and it was difficult for me. I wasn’t strong enough.”
He shook his head and glanced at Czar. Zyah tightened her fingers on his skin, her mind moving in his. “Remember when I was holding the illusion of the wall with the closed door so Sorbacov and his friends had no idea all of you were escaping out the real door? That time when we were all in such bad shape? Really bad shape. Every one of us. We could barely walk. They’d nearly killed Savage and Reaper. We thought they were dead. All of us were already in the dungeon, but we went back for them. We thought Sorbacov was gone. He and his friends came back.”
Beads of sweat formed on Player’s forehead. He felt them trickle down his face and wiped at them with the back of his hand. He couldn’t look at Zyah. What if she couldn’t accept him after he admitted this to her? What if Czar couldn’t?
Maestro nodded. “We were trying to carry Savage and Reaper out. Savage was really bad. That’s when they tore the skin off him and branded those words into his back. He was slippery with blood, and any place we touched him hurt like hell. He couldn’t make a sound. Reaper had been cut and someone had played tic-tac-toe on his face with a knife. There wasn’t a place on his body that wasn’t bloody.”
Mechanic kept his gaze fixed on Player’s face. “You saved all of us that day. Alena was hurt, and I was carrying her. Ice was in bad shape. I think he’d been in the loom and they’d ripped him up. That was the day from hell. Czar, Transporter and Maestro took out one of the bastards who had tortured Savage while Demyan, Ink and Keys killed one of the ones that had gotten to Reaper. We had no idea Sorbacov and his friends were in the building.”
“They left,” Storm confirmed, “but came back for some reason.”
“They’d left Savage and Reaper for dead. Even after we went back for them, we waited to move them down to the dungeon because it was so much warmer up above,” Ink remembered. “It was a shit day. We were all in bad shape. No one had escaped being beaten and tortured. Steele tried to work on both Savage and Reaper in the hall upstairs, but he could barely see, he’d been beaten so badly. Czar, you had a broken arm. I don’t know how you managed to get through the vents like you did. We wouldn’t have survived if you hadn’t thrown up that illusion and held it, Player. And you had been in the loom that day, hadn’t you? With Ice?”
What is the loom?
Thankfully, Player hadn’t had nightmares of being tortured in the loom and shared that with Zyah. Later. If ever. He rubbed his chest. The scars on my chest and back.
She touched him right over the worst ones. He didn’t have them like some of the others did. Not like Destroyer. Destroyer had them the worst.
“We were all beat up that day,” Player admitted tiredly. “I threw the illusion up as soon as Preacher told us Sorbacov and the others had returned and Czar started trying to get everyone down to the basement. The two instructors we killed were supposed to have gone with Sorbacov and the others to dinner. The bodies were found and the alarm went out.”
He didn’t want to tell them the rest. It hurt to even think about it. It hurt to have Zyah know about it. He thought it would be bad for his brothers to know. For Czar to know. But his woman. Zyah. She was so damned compassionate. So amazing. Moments like this one showed him why he didn’t deserve her. He tried to wrap himself in her grandmother’s words. He wasn’t a coward. He wasn’t backing away from their relationship. She would have to be the one to leave him.