Entombed In Sin (Graveyard Games Duet #2)

29. Beatrix

29

BEATRIX

B arney Witt. Rooney Monroe. George Amery. Patrick Hunt. Trevor Michaels. Sebastian Heins.

I can see each of their faces, whether my eyes are open, trained on the white tile wall, or in the darkness behind my eyelids. I can feel their grubby, rough hands gripping my tits and the way they force their dicks between my legs. The first four were the men my mother brought home. Her horrible decisions caused misery that lasted years. The others were men in my life who the world had gifted with privilege and a lack of morals. There are so many men like them in the world.

It just happened to be my luck that I found so many so close to home.

Every agonizing moment that I spent in each of their hands replays over and over in my head with each visit I get from Ronald. It’s not just Angel Eyes staring down at me, his dick buried deep and staying there long after his release—it’s all the men in my life above me, doing the same thing.

Ronald Reed, Angel Eyes, or whatever the hell he wanted to be called, thought I would break the first time he visited. Was sure of it the second time he came down here, and overly confident during his third visit. But I’ve played this game before.

A smile pulls at the corners of my mouth. Maybe the old Beatrix Starr would’ve broken down and accepted this pathetic, miserable new chapter of her life. But I’m not that girl anymore. I’m Sagan’s Little Viper. I’m Thatcher’s Little Sister, and I’m Knox’s best fucking friend. My family is made up of sadistic men, and they’ve taught me that surviving means striking back. And that’s exactly what I plan to do. I’m getting the hell out of here, and I’m going to make sure someone bleeds as I go. Tension has the muscles in my chest clenching tight, and I feel the determination to get out of here solidifying once more.

As I lay on my side, enjoying the cool tile against my flushed naked skin, I use what’s left of my thumb’s nail to twist the rusted, loose screw that holds down an old steel plate to the tile floor. It’s a small miracle Shannon managed to convince Angel Eyes to shackle my wrists and chain me to the floor rather than leave me strapped down forever on that stupid exam table. She might be psycho enough to stand beside the table while her husband fights to get me pregnant, but at least she has the common decency to allow me to stand and move around during down times.

Lucky me.

But yesterday, as I lay on the tiled floor, curled up into a ball after her husband had come down for the third time that day, luck really had found me here in this basement. I’d discovered that the plate that connects my chains to the floor is loose. Out of the four screws holding it in place, one was missing and two were movable. I’ve worked the two loose screws nearly out of their holes—a hard tug should send them flying.

But this third screw? It’s being a pain. It’s hardly budged since I’ve started playing with it this morning. Or what I think was morning. Shannon brought down breakfast, so I can only assume it was early in the day. Without a clock or windows, who knows how much time has passed?

“Hey, Shining Starr?” Knox calls out from across the basement.

My heart flutters at the sound of his voice. God, I’m so relieved he’s not dead. My heart wouldn’t have survived the devastation. He might have one less eye, but I’ll take that any day over losing him. Knox is everything I could’ve asked for, maybe even more. A friend who has my back. Someone who will stand up for me, laugh with me, and who understands the pain from my past like no other. We may have started out on rocky footing, but everything’s changed. He’s worth surviving this for. When we get out of here, we’ll find the twins and live happily ever after. I just know it.

“Yeah, Knox?”

“Have you seen any of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies?”

It’s not the first time he’s brought up something random like this. Knox has been filling the silence, reminding me that I’m not alone. I’m sure the conversation keeps him from spiraling, too. It’s not like he’s had it much better over the past few days. While I get most of Angel Eyes’ attention, he’s been forced to watch and listen.

“I’ve seen them all,” I reply. “But the first was my favorite.”

“Really?” The skepticism in Knox’s voice is unmistakable. “I like when Will Turner turned into the cursed pirate guy in the third movie.”

My smile melts away. “But he doesn’t end up with Elizabeth. He’s forced to always be apart from her. I hated that.”

“Yeah, but he became a badass of the sea.”

“By himself, though. That’s lonely,” I mutter, still working on the screw. The thought of being forced apart from my family for years at a time… I let out a soft grunt as the pain of it weighs down on me. I push it aside. I won’t let anything crush me right now. “When we get out of this, we can get you an ill-fitting eye like that one pirate in the movies who kept losing his. Remember him? Then, whenever you want to scare someone, you could let it pop out of your eye socket.”

Knox’s laughter rings out loudly, and I can’t help but giggle along. What else can I do? I won’t mope or cry. There’s no way I’ll let our captors see how much I loathe our situation. They want that. At least Angel Eyes does. Shannon seems to be a doting wife with the desire to simply please and serve.

“I’ll be so much hotter than that guy,” Knox says after his laughter dies down.

“You’ll be the hottest one-eyed pirate ever.”

“Want to be my first mate?” he asks. I can hear the smile in his voice. It’s forced. I don’t have to look over to know that. Knox is as vain as they come. Losing his eye, his beautiful blue eye, is eating at him. I know it. “We could be pirates together this Halloween.”

My nail bends back and snaps. I hiss in pain and pull away, giving up for the moment. I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, that sounds nice,” I say, just loud enough for him to hear.

There’s a short pause. My stomach twists as I think about Knox over there. Like me, they’ve shackled his wrists and chained him to the floor. But Angel Eyes also shackled his ankles together. I guess he thought Knox could still be dangerous otherwise. He probably wasn’t wrong. I’m glad that Knox can lie down now. It’s got to be more comfortable than being forced to kneel for hours on that hard floor.

“Hey, Beatrix?”

“Yes, Knox?”

“Are you… ok?” There’s a strain in his voice, as if the question hurts him to ask but he’s forcing himself to do it, anyway.

I snort and he chuckles. The sound is full of bitterness.

“Yeah, I guess that was a stupid question,” he admits. “I just know what it’s like, you know, to be touched when you don’t want it. I hate this for you.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, teeth pressing down so hard it hurts. The pain helps keep me centered. I hold on tight to my anger, not allowing despair to well up.

“You’re missing an eye, Knox.” I roll both of mine. “It’s not like it’s just me dealing with this.”

The eye is bandaged now. Shannon had seen to that herself after Ronald finished with him. She’d come trotting down the stairs with a first aid kit in tow and patched Knox up.

“I cleaned it up the best I could so it won’t get infected,” Shannon had told Knox as he regained consciousness. “I need you to be here to support your friend during her exciting journey to motherhood. That won’t happen if this gets an infection and you get sick. I don’t think Ronald considered disinfecting his tools before he played with you.”

The way she spoke? It was like she was ok with what he was doing. A part of me resents her for supporting her husband. The other part understands it perfectly. I’m not all that different from her. Sure, I didn’t encourage my stepbrothers or their boyfriend—or is Knox our boyfriend now?—to impregnate someone. But I’d helped them kill. I’d even picked out a few of their victims myself and basked in their glorious mutilation when they struck. Even when I was scared, I couldn’t help but appreciate the art and devastation they created together. Maybe it’s the same way for Shannon?

“When I get the chance, I’ll force him to choke on his own cock,” Knox says, his voice deepening as his promise stretches across the room. “Then I’ll kill them both just for you.”

When not if . I like how he holds onto hope. He knows just as much as I do that we’ll get out of here. We haven’t discussed how we’ll escape. Who knows if they’re listening? But we’ll figure something out. Even if I get this plate out of the floor, freeing me, there’s still the fact I have to get Knox free and access the ring of keys our captors use to lock the door to the basement whenever they come and go. I don’t know how I’ll do either, but that’s ok. One step at a time. We’ll get out of here, eventually. We just can’t lose hope.

And in Knox’s case, any more body parts.

My heart twists so painfully in my chest at the thought of him hurting that I can’t stop the full-body flinch that follows.

Down here in this basement, I’ve come to realize Knox’s importance in my life. Sure, we’ve butted heads along the way since he and the others burst into my life. But recently, I’ve never felt more comfortable around someone than I did with Knox. That night in the hangar, when he’d pinned me to the wall before going off to distract the twins, something light and airy had fluttered through my chest. Fearful of getting caught by the twins, I’d been too distracted to wonder at it. Now, I know what that feeling was.

What that feeling is .

That strange feeling rises when I think of the twins, too.

Laying on this tile floor—not knowing what will happen next—has brought everything important into focus for me. That includes my feelings and how deeply they go. It’s scary to realize how much I’ve given myself to the three men who have turned my world upside down. It’s a bit unnerving, but exciting too, to be this confident about something. God, I hope one day I’ll be around to tell them how much they mean to me.

But first, Knox and I need to survive this.

“What about you?” I ask. “Are you in pain?”

Knox laughs. “Sure am, but I’ll survive, Shining Starr. Don’t you worry.”

“I’m not,” I assure him quietly. “You’re a fighter.”

“Damn right I am.”

There’s a lull in the conversation. I close my eyes and will myself not to stare at these awful white tiles or think about the next time Shannon and Ronald will come down here. The blackness behind my eyelids keeps my focus for all of ten seconds. So I try to think of other, less terrifying things to pass the time. As I drift, a conversation I had with Thatcher a few weeks ago in the funeral van replays, and curiosity gets the best of me.

“Hey, Knox?”

“Yeah, Beatrix?”

I lick my dry lips, wondering if I really want to know the answer to my question. “Um, well, I was talking to Thatcher a while back and he told me something about you and, ah, I’m curious to know if it was true?”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“He… he said that you took a toe from him—is that true?”

There’s a short pause before Knox barks out a loud laugh. The happy sound makes me smile. It’s a small one but it feels good to wear it right now.

“Yup,” Knox confirms. “Sagan’s, too.”

“Why?” I ask, morbidly curious.

Knox snickers. “Because I wanted them to be a part of me. I took a toe specifically because it’s easy to live without one of those, and it’s the least obvious type of mutilation.”

“What do you mean by ‘be a part of me’? That seems very… Hannibal Lector-y to me.”

“It’s exactly like that,” Knox promises.

“Wait,” I gasp, my eyes flying open. “Are you telling me you ate their toes? Seriously?”

Knox chuckles. “ Seriously . And before you ask why, I’ll tell you. Whenever you eat someone, you take a part of them inside you, or at least that’s what it feels like. That’s why I only pick people who clearly look like they take care of themselves. An athlete, a dancer, a gym rat… the list goes on. With Thatcher and Sagan, I had this need to connect with them deeper than we already were. They’ve been my everything from the very start—it only made sense to have them welded to my soul. So I ate something of theirs, and now, voila , I can feel them with me always . There’s a comfort in that you can’t get from anything else.”

Oh… that’s actually really sweet… in a gross, horrifying way.

“I, um, don’t think I could eat someone,” I admit. “But I can kind of see why you’d… do that… I guess.”

“Yes, you could,” Knox tells me matter-of-factly. “And before you deny it, just know, you’ve already ingested morally questionable meat.”

The blood leeches out of my face as his words sink in. “Knox, no. Tell me I haven’t eaten a human body part.”

“I would ,” Knox hedges, “but communication, open and honest, is a rule we have to uphold, so I’d be breaking that by lying to you.”

“Knox, if we survive this, I’m going to kill you,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut, pretending I didn’t just learn I was a cannibal. “Like, seriously kill you.”

Before either one of us can say anything else, I hear heavy footsteps coming toward the basement door. My heart leaps in my chest as I stiffen. There’s the click of a lock being unlatched, and it’s followed by the sound of the door opening.

“Stay strong, Shining Starr,” Knox hisses.

I say nothing. Instead, I bring my knees to my chest and stare at the wall, listening to each heavy fall of Angel Eyes’ footsteps as he comes down the stairs. The lighter set of steps that follow only confirms what Knox and I know is going to happen. I also know I won’t fight it. I can’t. If I do, they might notice during our struggle that the plate is practically no longer attached to the floor. I’m not ready to run or to strike against both of them, so for now, I just have to endure their torment.

I take a deep breath and accept my fate.