Chapter 39 Amber
Amber
It's not quick.
He fucking suffers, maybe worse than I did.
He doesn't know the humiliation of a truck full of people watching him be ruined, but he knows the humiliation of his friends watching.
I would have loved for his sister to be here to witness a little of his hell, since he was witness to all of hers, but I didn't want to retraumatize her. Besides, I didn't know how to sell that to Cal.
I didn't inform him that Jenko was the one who raped the girl in the truck, who told her she had to pick the next person, who dragged me out of my brother's arms and tore my clothes from me, who forced his way inside me while his friend beat my brother to death inches away from me.
I could tell the revelation wasn't a pleasant surprise for him, but I have one more.
Jenko says sorry so many times that the word starts to sound funny, like it's foreign, like I've never heard it before.
It bears no meaning to begin with, but even less when it's been sobbed and screamed and choked out for the last hour.
He was still saying sorry when Cal cut his tongue out of his mouth and threw it at Bear's head, making the big man scream into his makeshift gag, which is Browen's blood-soaked boxers.
I tried to give him the chance to swallow the testicle I mangled, but he refused, so now it just gets to sit in his mouth until he chokes on his own vomit or swallows it down.
I'm fine with either outcome.
Browen has turned into a little bitch, curled up in the fetal position at my feet as I sit cross-legged on the table they thought they’d be fucking me on top of. He's not aware enough to hear Bear's screaming or Jenko's now stunted cries and pleas.
He's dissociating, and I'll allow it for now.
The adrenaline hasn't waned. I'm still high on the rush, euphoric as I watch Cal at work. He's a goddamn beast, bent on the pain he's causing, the control he's languishing in.
I look coldly at the tongue on the floor, but it doesn't make me feel lightheaded or nauseous. I'm not the slightest bit squeamish about what we've done or what we're doing.
The ground has been soaked through with blood.
We're back in the room where Cal set everything up, this time with portable lamps in every corner, lighting the room like the film set he claimed it was.
“Babe,” I say gently once he's closed the Zippo he was holding to the severed stump of his tongue.
The speculum that held his jaw open made it easy for Cal to see exactly where to slice.
.. he simply started at the space the speculum stopped, where his tongue was tethered to the bottom of his soft palate.
Now that Cal steps away, I can see the cauterized stump, steam still curling around it.
Cal turns to me in surprise, almost like he’s forgotten I’m here.
“I'm getting hungry.” I tell him by way of explanation.
It's fucked that I'm hungry after watching my husband sever organs and drop them on the ground like carrion. I'm not a cannibal, not the least bit enticed by the blood or gore, but it's been hours since we set this plan into motion. Hours that I've been here torturing them.
Who knew being psychotic worked up such an appetite?
The sky that I can see through the holes overhead is lightening. When I laid here waiting for him to return, it looked like little stars were punched in the fabric of the night. Now, it looks exactly like what it is.
Cal hefts a sigh, like he's been waiting for me to give him permission to end this for hours.
I did say I wanted him to suffer. He sure as hell has.
Tears stream down his cheeks, the same way blood streams down Browen's.
His empty eye sockets cry blood, and his chest rattles with a sob every few minutes.
Bear's the one who's gotten off easiest. He told Cal he likes when girls scream, so we made him scream ‘like a girl’ when we shoved his friend's hairy nutsack in his mouth.
“Who do you want to go first?” He indicates each of the men with the knife we made excellent use of tonight.
“The bull.” I say coolly, watching the confusion dawn on his face as he looks where I indicate his father's old friend at my feet.
“Bull?”
“Mm.” I nod, swinging my feet. “Did you know that your dad's dear old friend was running a big-time human trafficking ring? Selling girls on the dark web?”
His brow wrinkles in confusion as he puts the pieces together.
He actually looks pretty fucking cute like that.
“Browen? He's where…”
“Where I came from?” I laugh. “Yep. You bought me from your daddy's friend. He didn't know when you offered to let him fuck me that he could have done it before, but he never visited because he only deals in women. Kids are just too much work, huh? Harder to break, isn't that right, Bull?”
At my feet, Browen whimpers just a little.
“That and the fact you wouldn't be able to control yourself around them.
That's why you never came to visit. Why you didn't care what happened there. The bull is just the figurehead. The Bear is the enforcer... although he turned out to be more bark than bite.” I laugh at the big man who turned out to be pathetic.
“And the badger over there…” I sneer. “He's a collector.”
I can see the wheels in his mind turning, the realization that all of these men have played a part in wronging me.
It was never just a stroke of luck.
I knew from the first time I laid eyes on Garrett that he was among my slavers.
Every man who lies dead or alive in this warehouse had some part to play in my misery, and they met over cards to discuss how things were going.
All their victims, they were just collateral damage... inconsequential.
It was all just a game to them.
But I took it personally.
I made my own game of manipulating my final captor, the man who kept me as his unwilling toy for months.
I played at his humanity, even when I wasn't sure it was there.
I manipulated him into playing my game. One with much higher stakes.
They played a gilded game, using their privilege and wealth to destroy, to take, and to serve their greed.
I played a carnal game, one of blood and flesh, skin and sin.
And I played it better.