“Steady, son,” he says, smirking. “My aim ain’t so good anymore. I could get you in the balls next time.”
It feels like the veins underneath my skin are drawing taut, stretching and pulling. The current’s still coursing through me, looping over and over in excruciating waves. O’Shannessey and Sammy back out of the lobby, watching me grunt in pain, clearly sorry to be missing out on the fucking show. Assholes. As soon as we’re alone, Charlie switches off the Taser, placing the firing mechanism down next to his food. I gasp in a breath of oxygen, really appreciating for the first time how good it feels just to be able to fill your lungs.
“Don’t move again,” Charlie warns. “This thing isn’t exactly police grade, if you get me. I could fry you to death quite easily, and along with my aim, my stomach ain’t what it used to be, either. I think the stench of your cooking meat might just be enough to ruin my lunch.”
“You hurt any of them, and I’ll—”
“You’ll sit still and you’ll fucking behave! Do not test my patience, you fuck,” Charlie roars, slamming his palm down against the table. The silverware on either side of my plate of food jumps so high the fork clatters to the floor. “Now shut the fuck up and wait for Lacey and that severely stuck-up cunt to arrive. Open your mouth just once and I swear I’ll crank this thing up to its highest fucking setting.”
I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do. Sammy is going to kill Michael, and there’s literally nothing I can do to stop it. I’ll be incapacitated as soon as I move a muscle, and then what good am I to anyone? I sit in silence, glaring at Charlie down the length of the table, all the while counting the times Michael’s eluded being killed. There are at least three occasions I can recall off the top of my head. I’m hoping this will make a fourth.
O’Shannessey returns with Lacey and Sloane only a few minutes later. They’re holding on to one another, arms linked, eyes wide. Sloane’s covered in blood, her dress shredded from shoulder to hem. She looks like she’s in fucking pain. The pull to go to her, to leap out of the chair and snatch her up in my arms, is almost too strong to deny. “You okay?” I ask her, raising my eyebrows.
She nods. “Sore. But, yeah. I’m okay. Michael—”
“Will be okay, too.” The confidence in my voice goes against everything I’m feeling right now, but I need her to see everything’s going to be all right. I need my sister to see everything’s going to be all right, too. Lacey gives me a nervous look, her eyes shining the way they do when she’s about to cry.
“I’m sorry, Zeth,” she whispers. “I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay.” I shake my head. She has to know I’m not mad at her. Confused, sure, but not mad. I should have done a better fucking job of protecting her. “It doesn’t matter now, okay?”
Charlie, fucking asshole that he is, continues to twist pasta around his fork. “Why don’t you sit down, ladies? You should join us. Lacey, it’s customary for the son of the head of a family to sit at his right hand. Since I don’t have a son, you’re going to have to do.”
Neither Sloane nor Lace look inclined to sit with us, but O’Shannessey doesn’t give them much of a choice; he nudges them forward with the butt of his drawn gun. Dragging two extra chairs over for them, he sits Sloane to my right, and Lacey on my left. The whole set-up is like some fucked-up family dinner. Lacey stares down at the table, her eyes unblinking. She’s tapping her fingers to her thumb, over and over—pinkie, ring, middle, index. Index, middle, ring, pinkie. Not a good sign.
“You need to…you need to take the probes out of him,” she says, still staring at the grain of the wood.
Charlie puts his fork down. “What?”
“Take the probes out of him.” Her eyes flicker to my chest, barely long enough for her to glance at the small, metal barbs attached to wires that are digging into me. I’ve always heard the more muscle you have, the more it hurts being shocked with a Taser. I have no idea whether that’s true or not, but I can confirm it hurts like a motherfucker. My whole body feels like it’s still charged. Lacey’s fingers work quicker as she grows more anxious—I can see it building in her eyes. Like she’s an object of intense curiosity, Charlie studies her every movement with a scowl on his face.
“What the ’ell’s wrong with you now?” he snaps.
“You’re hurting him. You need to stop hurting him.”