The Cat Knew First - Claws & Guns [Book 2]

The pain came first, sharp and searing, alive beneath her ribs. Every attempt to draw air fed it until the heat spread through her chest.

Then the cold reached her. It clung to her skin through clothes soaked with sweat, grime, and a thicker wetness that smelled metallic.

Charlotte’s eyes snapped open to total darkness. No light bled through a crack, and no shape gave her a wall, a door, or a corner to measure. She heard nothing but the scrape of her own breathing.

She jerked forward, and the restraints caught her. Her wrists were shackled above her head, with the metal biting through skin already rubbed open. The pull wrenched her shoulders and drove a fresh line of pain through her ribs, but she kept the cry behind her teeth.

Her lips were split. Her jaw throbbed, her thighs ached, and bruises joined one another across her body until she could not tell where one ended. She searched the dark for an answer she did not have. Where am I?

The last clear pieces returned without order. There had been hands, voices, and a needle. The wolf bookend had been in her hand, and her nails had come away with skin beneath them. Artemis had been in the air with her claws out. Then came a boot, and the sound she made when it landed was not a cry but air forced out of her.

Charlotte had not heard her again after that.

She pulled against the shackles. The chains groaned above her, and her feet scraped for purchase on the floor. Her toes could reach just enough to steady her, never enough to take the strain from her shoulders.

Her knees folded once before she forced them straight. She would not give whoever had put her here the sight of her collapse or the sound of her screaming. The silence had the patience of a person standing on the other side of a door.

The air tasted stale and moldy, with gasoline or disinfectant burning through it. Her tongue sat thick in her mouth. When she worked it loose enough to swallow, pain drove through her ribs and settled beneath them.

Her ribs might be cracked and were bruised without question. She was awake, and she was alive. They had not taken her mind, her will, or the fury holding both together.

Charlotte lowered her forehead against the cold chain. She said nothing, cried for no one, and refused to call into the dark. They wanted her broken, and she intended to disappoint them.

Dried blood split across her knuckles when she curled her hands. Her thumb went to the base of her right ring finger out of habit and found bare skin. The pain stayed hers, along with the anger, hot and patient beneath it. She would hold both until her last breath or until she made someone bleed for them.

The lock turned with a slow, deliberate click, but Charlotte did not move when the door opened and a strip of light cut across the floor. Boots crossed the concrete, two sets, while one man whistled without a tune and the other struck a lighter.

Burned tobacco reached her first, followed by cheap cologne and the oily metal smell that had soaked the room. The smoker stepped into the light with pale eyes, greasy hair, and a jagged scar running along his jaw.

“Well, well.” He stepped into view, grinning. “Sleeping Beauty’s awake.”

The other man laughed. “Not so pretty now. Not with all that on your face.”

Charlotte kept her chin raised. Blood had dried along her lip, and every shift of weight tore at her wrists, but she did not lower her eyes for either of them.

The smoker stopped close enough for the ember of his cigarette to glow against her skin. His companion came closer and dragged two fingers down the side of her face. Sweat and old blood clung to his hand as he smeared the blood across her cheek, then put his fingers in his mouth.

“You taste like money,” he said.

Sourness rose along Charlotte’s tongue. She held his stare until he mistook stillness for surrender, then spat into his eye.

He stumbled back with a curse and wiped at his face. Charlotte drove her knee into his groin before he cleared the spit from his lashes, and he folded with a howl.

The smoker’s backhand snapped her head sideways, and light burst across her vision as her feet skidded over concrete. The chains kept her upright.

His fist struck lower, straight into her ribs. Bone ground beneath the impact, and pain ripped across her side hard enough to turn the room white. She staggered without giving him a sound.

The companion remained on the floor, groaning and cursing in Russian. The smoker leaned close enough for ash to dust the front of her ruined shirt.

“Try that again, bitch, and I’ll make sure no one wants to buy what’s left of you.”

Charlotte lifted her chin. Blood moved from her temple in a warm line down her neck, and her voice came out rough from thirst and disuse.

“You answer to somebody.”

Neither man moved. They had come looking for the place where she would crack, and she had given them blood instead. His grin had vanished, and the way he measured her now carried a reluctant, warped respect.

The smoker stepped back. “You’ll fetch a high price, sweetheart.”

The companion laughed as they left, bitter now. The door slammed, shutting her in darkness again.

Charlotte’s legs shook once. She locked her knees, pressed her head against the chain, and waited for the trembling to pass.

She was still standing.

The lock turned again, and light cut the floor a second time. A rough hand knotted in her hair and tore her head back. Pain burned across her scalp as a man bent close behind her.

“Still got fight, huh?”

Charlotte did not answer. Another voice entered the room before she could move, low and controlled enough to stop everything around it.

“You were told not to harm her.”

The fist in her hair went still, then released her. “You don’t give the orders,” one of the men said.

Charlotte could not see the speaker. She could only track the sudden quiet and the faint shift of weight on concrete.

The man with the controlled voice did not argue. He fired.

The flash burned through the dark, and the shot struck hard enough to numb her ears. The man who had grabbed her dropped with a red hole opening in the center of his chest.

Charlotte remained rigid against the chains. The second shot followed before her hearing returned, and the other man fell beside the first. Blood spread beneath them in a dark, sticky sheet.

Heavy footsteps crossed the room at an even pace. A hand reached toward her, and she tore away as far as the shackles allowed.

The chain above her released with a metallic grind.

She hit the floor on her knees, and the impact drove white heat through her ribs. Her palms slapped concrete, then her cheek struck dust. Copper coated her tongue while her lungs worked in short, useless pulls.

She tried to crawl without choosing a direction. Her arms folded beneath her before she gained an inch. The voice came from close beside her, quieter now.

“You’ll live.” Those were the last words she carried into the dark.

Heat pressed against Charlotte’s skin when she woke again. The air no longer tasted of mold or blood. It carried antiseptic beneath a clean floral scent she recognized after a moment. Lavender.

Light burned across her eyes when she opened them. A smooth white ceiling hovered above her, and her head rested on softness instead of concrete. A fucking pillow.

She tried to rise, and her body refused. Pain drove through her chest, arms, and abdomen, then dropped her back against the mattress with a sound she could not stop. Clean sheets dragged across bandages wrapped tight beneath them.

Two men stood in opposite corners of the room, dressed in dark suits with their arms crossed and every movement withheld. They did not speak or come near her.

The door opened on a soft creak. Low heels crossed the floor, and antiseptic sharpened the lavender.

The woman who entered wore gray slacks and a cream blouse instead of a dark suit. Her hair was pulled back, her hands were too clean for the room, and a medical kit hung from her shoulder like a purse. The smile on her face ended before it reached her eyes.

“Good,” she said, setting the kit down. “You’re awake.”

Charlotte stared at her without answering while the woman knelt beside the bed and opened the kit with practiced efficiency. Gauze, antiseptic, and gloves appeared in a neat row on the table.

“We’ll need you healed before the auction.” She said it with the calm of someone discussing an appointment. “No one wants damaged goods.”

Charlotte drove an elbow into the mattress and tried to sit. The effort tore through her side and forced her down harder than before. Her hands knotted in the sheets, and she bit into her split lip until fresh blood touched her tongue.

The woman clicked her tongue. “Don’t fight. It’ll only take longer.”

She soaked a cotton pad and pressed it to Charlotte’s side. The sting sent Charlotte’s hand toward the woman’s throat, but the arm fell short and struck the mattress.

“You’ve got cracked ribs. A bruised kidney. Three split knuckles. And a fractured orbital,” the woman said, as if reading a grocery list. “You’ll live.”

Charlotte turned her face toward the wall. The room carried no sweat, no blood, and no trace of the concrete cell. It carried only lavender.

She closed her eyes and kept still to save what strength remained for the next opening.

The antiseptic burned.

Three days later, the room they moved her to looked prepared for a guest. Warm light fell from a chandelier onto a queen-sized bed made with white sheets and a comforter tucked into perfect lines. A velvet armchair waited in the corner with a pale silk nightgown draped over its back.

Charlotte stopped inside the doorway, barefoot and bandaged. There were no chains and no guards, only the soft click of the lock behind her.

She crossed the plush rug one careful step at a time. She counted the door at seven steps from the bed without deciding to. Her eyes moved over the corners, the ceiling, the window frame, and every seam where a lens might hide. No red light pulsed, and no electrical hum broke the quiet.

She found no camera. The room had been built so it did not need to show her one.

A knock sounded behind her. Charlotte turned as the door opened for a young woman dressed like a hotel server. The woman entered without speaking, placed a tray on the table beside the window, and left.

Charlotte waited beside the locked door. She counted to four, then four again, and kept counting until the numbers stopped meaning minutes. No one returned.

The tray held salmon, lemon rice, charred asparagus, and a glass of white wine. Steam rose from the food, clean and rich enough to wake the ache in her empty stomach.

She approached it. The first bite cramped through her stomach, but the food stayed down. She ate in small mouthfuls and left the wine where it stood. A needle had already taken her legs once, and she would not hand them an easier way to do it again.

Charlotte set down her fork and left half the meal untouched.

She walked the perimeter 3 times. The windows were sealed, the closet stood empty, and the drawers held clean clothes in her size. Every piece was soft, neutral, and useless as a weapon.

She searched the furniture, the lamps, and the molding for anything that would hold an edge. Nothing came loose, and nothing broke sharp, and the room gave her only lavender, polished wood, and the clock on the nightstand marking each second.

Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed with her hands resting in her lap. The room did not threaten her. It waited with the patient courtesy of a locked door.

The bathroom mirror was spotless, framed in brushed gold above a marble sink. Soft light spread across the glass with the careful kindness of a five-star hotel.

Charlotte reached the counter on unsteady feet and braced one hand against it. She pressed two fingers to her sternum and counted the shallow rise beneath them before she understood she was frightened. The woman in the reflection did not belong in the room.

One eye was swollen at the edge, with blue and green bruising spread across her cheekbone. Her lip was split in two places, and dried blood marked the corner of her mouth. A faded line ran from her temple to her jaw. The small scar at the edge of her right eyebrow caught the light above the swelling. Every mark on her was something they intended to have gone before the auction.

Her hair hung in tangled waves around skin gone pale and blotched beneath the damage. For several seconds, she searched the reflection for the woman who had driven her knee into a man while hanging from chains.

“You’re fine.”

Her voice sounded flat against the tile as blood flashed across her memory. A body struck concrete. Metal cut her wrists while a boot lifted Artemis from the floor and the sound of it filled the room.

Charlotte gripped the sink until the edge pressed deep into her palms and the white line on her left thumb pulled tight. Pain moved through her split knuckles, but she held on and kept her eyes on the glass.

“This is just another kind of prison,” she whispered.

The room behind her remained warm, clean, and quiet. She remembered the chains, and no soft sheet or plate of salmon could make her forget them.

The next knock was soft enough to belong outside a bedroom. Charlotte stayed beside the reinforced window, a sealed rectangle that showed nothing but stone, and let the silence answer. The door opened anyway, and a younger woman entered in pastel silk and soft shoes. She carried a tray holding a glass bottle of perfume, a folded silk robe, embroidered slippers, and a note card sealed with wax. She placed it beside the half-finished plate and straightened each item with delicate precision.

“They asked me to help you settle in.”

Charlotte turned from the window and crossed the room. She studied the perfume, the slippers, and the pale blue robe chosen to match the nightgown on the chair. The note card sat squared against the edge of the tray, and she left the wax unbroken. She lifted the bottle, set it down harder than she needed to, and went completely still.

“I’m not your doll.”

The woman neither flinched nor frowned. She straightened the bottle on the tray and folded the robe over her arm without looking up.

“We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Without waiting for an answer, she left and closed the door with the same soft click. Charlotte watched the lock until the last footstep disappeared. Then she stripped the sheets from the bed, wrapped them around her body, and settled into the far corner with her back against the wall.

The sheets were not comfort. They were the only armor the room had given her. She did not cry, beg, or surrender.

She searched her memory for the feel of Artemis’s velvet-soft fur beneath her palm. Artemis had not stayed hidden when 3 grown men came through the door. She had come off the bookcase onto a man’s shoulder and opened the side of his neck, then off the couch onto the hands holding Charlotte and left four lines from knuckle to wrist. Thrown, she had twisted in the air and raked her hind claws across a forearm before the boot caught her side and drove her into the couch.

She still heard the sound the boot forced out of her, thin and voiceless.

Charlotte did not know whether Artemis had survived the night. All she had was cold fabric pulled around her shoulders, the memory of a purr, and a debt she could not pay from inside a locked room.

She kept her eyes on the door.

They wanted her polished. She gave them steel.