The Hand that Fractures (The Butcher of Crows Hollow Book 2)

Chapter 10

He hasn’t returned to my room since he threw his little fit earlier. I heard him leave as it neared twilight.

I know he’s taken my weapons, and I’m certain he took my phone, too. Either that or it’s still lying on the ground in that shed near the shovel. If so, Neo will find it. He’ll find me. Eventually.

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

But Kage was comfortable bringing and leaving me here, which doesn’t give me much confidence. When someone on the run stops running, that’s a clear sign they feel safe. This means we’re likely off-grid somewhere, far off everyone’s radar.

As I plan to get out of the cuffs, I hear the crunch of tires on gravel. Headlights drift through the room, bouncing off things as Kage returns.

When he comes in, he moves like a raging storm. He’s the opposite of Neo. Neo is complete control and calculation, whereas Kage has an evident passion and bitterness he wears on his sleeve.

The door to my room opens, and he strolls to the side of the bed in a few long strides. The scent of food wafts up my nose and has me forgetting all about the cuffs and the nature of our relationship. My mouth waters and my body comes alive. I don’t know how long I was out, but I know that the water he’d given me before I pissed him off is the only thing that’s been in my stomach for quite some time.

“The poisonous flower is hungry, is she?” he taunts, opening a burger wrapper halfway and holding it to my face.

I freeze momentarily, wondering if he’s toying with me or if he’s truly going to let me eat.

He smiles, and for a moment, the clouds of his personality open, and I glimpse the man behind them. He looks stainless and handsome—unlike a man with a treasure trove filled with fingernails in his possession.

I sit up as far as I can and lean forward, taking a healthy bite of the burger while monitoring him.

“What are you planning to do with me?” I ask after swallowing down my bite.

He lifts a drink cup to my lips, and I sip some from the proffered straw.

Sprite tickles my senses, and I nearly cough.

The food is fresh, so we can’t be far from town. The burger is still hot, billowing heat.

“Well, once you’re more amenable to staying with me, I’ll unbind you. Right now, I can’t trust you to stay put.”

Damn right.

If my hands weren’t bound and chained to the fucking headboard, he wouldn’t be alive, and he knows it.

“So, you’re just counting on Stockholm Syndrome to do your work for you?” I taunt as he bends and grabs fries from the bag he sat on the floor.

My eyes light up despite the urge to sink my teeth into his flesh and maim him for taking me.

He waves a lone fry before my face, and I nearly drool. “I think there’s a good chance you’ll get comfortable here. After all, you got used to him.”

What is his problem with Neo?

I capture the fry with my mouth, yanking it away from him and chewing it as I think of what direction to take this conversation. Men like him aren’t apt to keep talking once you touch on uncomfortable subjects. I know that from living with Neo all this time.

“What is your grudge against Neo?” I ask, hoping this isn’t what’ll make him shut down.

He looks out the window with a far-off gaze. “When I watched you two in the alley and saw how much trust you had in him to bring you back but heard how he spoke to you, I thought about how much of your potential was wasted. How much better I could treat you.”

I scoff. “So you kidnapped me?”

His eyes snap to me. “Don’t you think I know I’m an evil man? I’ve killed before now, spent years worried I’d be caught. But the thing is, when I saw you, and how at peace you are with who you are…”

“You wanted that for yourself,” I finish for him, a little disgusted with how he’s justified what he’s doing to me.

“I’ll never belong to you. He made me. He’s part of me. You don’t get to choose who I’m with. Even if he never comes for me, I’ll always be his stupid girl that you stole.”

My words sting him. He winces against them, setting the food from his hands on the nightstand.

He climbs over me, looming in an illusion of power. “And if I sully what’s his, would he take it back? Would he take back the girl who’s tainted with the copycat’s cum?”

My insides quake. I’d pushed him too far. I have chosen the wrong words. I should’ve been more careful.

No! My brain shouts logic at me. I don’t believe that it’s my fault. None of this is. He’s a psychopath who thinks he can take what belongs to others simply because he’s jealous. This is his fault.

He doesn’t understand how much I live for how Neo treats me and how much his words seep through me and cause a fire that I don’t want to run from.

Men like him will never understand, though.

Small men.

Ones who have to do shit like this to women to feel big.

“Go ahead, fuck me with your little cock. It’ll still mean nothing. I’ll still be his!” My taunting words make him grind into me, and the heat I’d felt before in the shed is gone.

Only revulsion and a roiling in my stomach remain.

“You do not know how good it’ll be, oleander.”

I turn my face away from his putrid breath. The few bites of food are threatening to come back up the back of my throat the more he rocks his length over my center.

He’d undressed me at some point. I’m only in my bra and panties. Not nearly enough clothes to keep a rapist at bay.

He slips a hand between us and under the front of my panties, and I nearly snarl.

I tug on the cuffs chained over my head on the headboard, desperate to get free. They sting against my wrists but don’t give.

“Go ahead. I like when they fight,” he says, and it’s when I realize he’s likely not only killing the blonde women he’s been targeting but raping them too.

This is the moment I will have to choose how to go forward.

Do I grin and bear it, or do I fight tooth and nail until my wrists and body are broken?

I’ve long since been able to compartmentalize the darkest shit from affecting my psyche, so I know I’ll be able to lock this away. But will I be alright afterward?

I don’t know.

Will there be long-lasting trauma after his cum has dried and my tears have stained his sheets?

When his fingers slide through my dry cunt, I buck and thrash beneath him as much as I can.

“When I get inside you, you’ll like it. I promise,” he whispers, leaning down and nipping at my ear.

His weight presses into me, and I can’t fucking move.

“You won”t like it when I get free of these cuffs. I promise,” I counter and turn my brain off for what’s coming.

Locking my emotions down and finding a point outside the window where the snow falls wistfully, I check out of my body to survive.

Because it’s the only way I’m going to.

When he was done,he wiped me off and un-cuffed one of my hands so I could eat the rest of the food he left.

I’m disgusted with how I’m scarfing down what he gave me, but I’m starved.

Even as I chew, I sob silently. My body aches, and my spirit is broken. As much as I tried to keep myself in check, there’s only so much I can do now to protect myself.

It seemed to take so long, as if he’d never finish.

When he was done, he didn’t seem too happy about it. Like I hadn’t lived up to his expectations. I didn’t fight. Didn’t cry out. Shit, I scarcely breathed or showed signs of life. I shut down completely to get through it.

The entire time, images of Neo bursting into the room and spilling his blood over my battered flesh played over and over in my mind. And, like Kage knew that, his anger during the act only rose.

He’d slapped me over and over until it turned to full-on, closed-fist punches to the face and torso. He choked me until I was nearing death, only to bring me back.

And when it was over, he looked disgusted as he gave me food and cleaned me like I’d done something wrong.

My eye is swollen, and so is my lip from where he bit me.

My insides are roiling from the way he battered me, but there’s food in my belly now, and I can think. I inspect any way to get the other cuff off using my free hand.

I distinctly recall Neo saying something about being able to dislocate your thumb to get out of cuffs.

Toying with the idea, I move my thumb in all different directions. Inspecting both joints, I realize I’d need to dislocate the one at the top of my thumb, going into my hand.

I grab a pillow and shove it into my mouth, listening for Kage’s footsteps through the house before I try this shit.

Silence.

Biting into the pillow, I brace for impact as I shove the joint inward as hard as I can until I hear and feel a debilitating pop. Pain stings through me, causing nausea to crawl through my body.

It’s a fucking miracle that I kept silent.

But after what I’d endured in this bed, this was the least of it.

I slide my hand out of the cuff, working to shove my thumb back into the joint, which is overwhelming in terms of the pain it causes.

Twice, I feel as though I’m going to faint. But finally, a pop sounds, and the pain is almost instantly gone.

Breathing through the misery, I slowly move off the bed.

My clothes are on the floor at the end, and I slip into them. Looking around, I try to find anything that can be used as a weapon. I settle for a lamp that seems to be made of some worked iron.

I stand behind the door.

I don’t care how fucking long it takes.

When he comes back into this room, he’s mine.

He’ll pay for every grunt I had to listen to. Every time he hit me, and every single time, he shoved in my body without my permission.

And that’s before I take him home to Neo.