When I opened my eyes again, I was bound to a chair. My mother was locked in an iron cage. And my dear wife sat with her legs crossed, one arm draped around her little boy toy, watching as her men threw water on my mother.
"Your mother loves running her mouth, doesn't she?" May Harding's voice was silk over steel. "And you—you enjoyed stripping someone naked, didn't you?"
"Well then, let's play a little game. A wager. If you lose..." She smiled. "Your mother gets stripped bare and thrown to a crowd of lonely, desperate men."
——
The cage door swung open. A man stepped inside, grabbed my mother by the arm, and backhanded her across the face.
"Don't you dare touch her!" I roared, straining against the ropes. "May, what the hell do you want?"
May looked at me like I was the funniest thing she'd seen all day. Then her expression softened as she traced her fingers over the place where I'd broken Mark Delgado's leg. When she spoke again, her voice was ice.
"Justice for Mark, of course. Whatever you did to him that day—I'm going to pay you back double."
"Pay me back?" A bitter laugh escaped me. "So you've been in love with this pretty boy all along. Is that it?"
"Yes."
The word hit like a blade.