I needed to get up off of the fucking floor where it had such easy access to my throat.
With a grunt of effort, I began to make my way towards the closest chair which was by the window at the rear end of the room, furthest from the fireplace. There was another chair opposite it, a table set between them with a board game laid out on it which Brooklyn had set up and then forgotten about in favour of eating cheese.
I huffed out a deep breath as I reached the chair, looking up at the deep blue wingback from my position on the floor as it mocked me with its height.
I rolled my shoulders, my abs flexing as I fought to gain further control of my body and with a snarl of effort, I managed to lift an arm and grip the edge of the chair so that I could heave myself up.
It took far longer than I would have liked, but eventually, with no help at all from my fucking legs, I managed to heave myself onto the thing and roll over so that my ass was finally planted in the seat.
I sat there panting from the effort of getting myself into a fucking chair and my brows rose as I found Jack sitting in the chair opposite me, looking equally exhausted by the simple act of getting himself off the damn floor.
He was watching me, his grey eyes alight with something far more intelligent than Brooklyn’s claims about him would have suggested based on the treatment she believed he’d undergone in that hospital. I eyed the faint scar which skimmed his temple and narrowed my gaze on it as we silently surveyed each other.
The man was a machine. It looked like he’d done little other than work out while he was locked away in that psych facility and those two things didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Why would a man who had little brain capacity be so driven to exercise like that? I was built, but even I wasn’t close to his bulk. Not to mention his impossible height. The man must have been closer to seven foot tall than six. He was intimidating, that was for sure, or at least he would have been to a lesser man. But I was also getting the sense that there was a lot more to him than he was letting on.
The shirt he wore had been misbuttoned when Brooklyn had fastened it over his broad chest this morning and another button had fallen open while he’d been dragging himself across the floor, revealing the top of a tattoo which marked his skin. A tattoo which looked at least a little familiar to me, though with nothing but a bell on the tip of what looked like a jester’s hat on show, it was hard for me to be certain.
“So…” I said, letting the word hang there while that vicious dog of Brooklyn’s returned to savaging my boot, its eyes narrowing on us like it wasn’t wholly decided on whether or not it wanted the boot more than it wanted to attack.
Jack said nothing, his gaze moving over me slowly, studying, penetrating. He had something going on inside that head of his. Something cunning and altogether too calculating to go unnoticed. At least by me. I was a man well used to facing off against men who desired my death or worse things, and I was damn good at reading people who didn’t want to be read.
“Chess,” Jack said eventually, his eyes moving from me to the table which sat between us, the chess board all laid out and ready to go. I doubted Brooklyn would mind us stealing her game. Besides, I could do little more than lift my arm at this point, so it seemed like as good a thing as any to use to pass the time while the effects of the drugs wore off.
“Si,” I agreed, bobbing my chin at the board and indicating he should go first.
Jack lifted his hand with some difficulty, bringing a white knight into play straight off the bat and making my brow lift as I responded by advancing a pawn.
We continued in silence for a few moves, and I fought the urge to keep looking towards the clock which hung above the fireplace, the side of it a little discoloured from the smoke of the fire which Niall had let burn the corner of the room, but the hands still diligently ticking around.
They’d been gone for too long. It set me on edge and yet there was nothing I could do about it either.
Jack focused on his knights, seeming to be fixed on keeping them from my pieces until suddenly he downed one of my bishops and sent the black piece rolling from the edge of the table to the floor. There wasn’t so much as a flicker of reaction from him, but that had been no lucky move. No. There was a lot more to this giant of a man than met the eye.
“I was in a gang once,” I said slowly though that wasn’t quite the truth. The Castillo Cartel were so much more than a gang. “Though they didn’t brand me on the outside.”
Jack looked up at me, his grey eyes shifting over my face before he replied. “Lost.”
“Mmm.” I wasn’t buying that bullshit. Nothing in his expression told me he was lost on my train of thought. He knew exactly what I was referring to.
I licked my lips, making my own move and setting up a strike for his queen which I was betting he wouldn’t see coming.
“That ink on your chest is no vanity piece,” I went on. “It’s a stamp of ownership. Which means you’re a long way from home, amigo.”
“Lost,” he replied, meaning in a physical sense this time, and I shrugged.
“Not hard to find a map,” I pointed out. “If you didn’t want to stay lost, that is.”
His eyes flickered with something then and the ghost of a smile shifted around his lips, but that was all he gave me to go on. Sneaky bastardo. I was starting to see through him though.
“I’ve performed a lobotomy or two in the past,” I said as he casually took out my knight with a move that came from nowhere and I found myself down two major pieces already. “Not in a medical setting of course. But my previous employer enjoyed making people watch their loved ones live through all kinds of tortures. Especially when he was in need of information. So I looked into the procedure and did my best at replicating it.”
Jack said nothing, but his shoulders had tensed at my words. Not much, but enough.
“That scar on your temple doesn’t look much like a lobotomy scar to me,” I went on. “So why does Brooklyn insist that that’s what it is?”
“Rook,” he muttered, like even the mention of her was enough to distract him from all else and I could admit, I felt like that about her too. There was something about that wild creature which drew dangerous men in like moths to a flame, but I had to wonder what would happen when the powder keg she was creating around herself finally blew up.
“You going to give me an answer on the lobotomy?” I pushed. “Because I’d put money on that scar being from an entirely different kind of violence. Like…maybe you were skimmed with a bullet?”
Jack lifted his head, looking directly at me through the curtain of white hair which hung down into his eyes from the way he’d been leaning over the chessboard, and I could see that chasm of rage in him there. He had a whole lot of anger bottled up inside him. But then again, so did I. It was why I still hadn’t tried to claim Brooklyn the way I ached to. Why I forced myself to hold back every time she was in reach and my fingers throbbed with the desire to grip her tightly and demand she give herself to me in every dark and twisted way that I could think up.
“A little way from here, by the coast where the sun shines all day and the sea whispers sweet promises to those all around her, there’s a gang who boast tattoos like the one on your chest,” I said.
For a moment I could have sworn I saw something akin to regret in his eyes before he looked away again, his focus returning to the chessboard as he savagely took down my other bishop and moved his knight into a position that put my king at threat.