Chapter 23 Holland
HOLLAND
The irony of the situation hadn’t escaped me.
I was this man’s prisoner, chained and naked, but I wasn’t scared of him anymore.
Once I’d removed his mask and seen it was Kip, a switch had flipped in my brain.
He’d fucked me with his cross, touched me, claimed me, and protected me.
I refused to die in this hellhole. But there was something about him.
Something dark that I was drawn to even in my predicament.
However, what I’d just seen scared the shit out of me.
When he’d started to convulse, I’d wanted to take care of him.
There was no denying it. I was as fucked up as they came.
I was attracted to Kip on an emotional and physical level.
It was as if I knew him, but that didn’t make a damn bit of sense.
The other thing that became clear when I’d thought he was going to die was that I could tell him the truth.
If I had any hope of escaping, I had to let him think I trusted him.
Oddly enough, I did. I had a feeling if he knew more about Draco, Kip would finish him off like he had Cooper.
It was simply a matter of how I framed the story.
Kip had already proven he wanted to protect me on some level even when he was furious with me.
That part I still didn’t understand, but my guess is that I would find out soon.
I cleared my throat. “I’m alive because …
” I looked at the ceiling, trying to talk past the lump in my throat.
“There was a guy that loved fucking sisters. He asked for Ally and me any time he was in town. Normally, Draco would drug us with pills, but they stopped checking our mouths to see if we’d swallowed them after a while.
Ally and I spit them out and hid them in our pillowcases instead so we could be clearheaded enough to plan an escape.
But the night before we were supposed to meet the client again, Draco’s brother, Dominic, visited us in our cell and drugged us …
with a needle in our neck. We weren’t strong enough to fight him off, and the drugs hit hard and fast.” I glanced at Kip, his jaw so tight the muscle jumped. Was he angry at me or Draco?
“Ally didn’t wake up the next day,” I said, my voice cracking with grief.
“He’d overdosed her.” I ground my teeth, fighting the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks.
I wiped my eyes and blew out a heavy sigh.
Then I slowly looked at Kip. My stare was cold, hard.
“Before we were delivered to clients, we were fed an extra sandwich. I suppose it was to keep up our energy or something, I’m not sure.
Maybe it was more psychological torture.
When his brother returned with a tray of food, he brought a glass of orange juice.
We were never allowed anything other than plastic cups and spoons. Nothing sharp. Ever.”
My nostrils flared with the memory. “Before he realized he’d fucked up, I grabbed the glass and threw it against the wall.
It shattered all over the floor, and I snatched up the biggest piece that had landed near my feet.
He lunged at me, and I tripped him. When he fell on the floor face down, I climbed on his back, jerked his head up by his hair, and slit his fucking throat.
I’ll never forget the blood that poured out of his jugular.
The son of a bitch was helpless and dead within a few minutes.
I grabbed the cell keys, unlocked the other girl’s cages, and ran for my fucking life.
” Our gazes were locked on each other, the silence in the room was music to my ears.
A corner of his mouth twitched, and I realized he was fighting off a smile.
“He’s not after me because I ran,” I whispered. “He’s after me because I killed his brother.”
The words hung in the air between us, sharp and brutal. I expected him to call me a liar. A murderer. But instead … I wasn’t sure if I’d pushed him too far—or if I’d just won him over for good.
“You slit Draco’s brother’s throat to survive. No wonder he wants you back—no wonder he’d pay through the teeth to drag you home.” His jaw clenched. “Fuck no. Over my dead body.”
All the psychology textbooks in the world couldn’t explain what I felt when he looked at me like that—like I was his, like I always had been.
“Why? Why do you give a shit? I’m chained to a wall and your prisoner,” I said. “What makes you any different than he is?”
“Because I hunt men like him. I kill men like him who hurt women and children. Even a monster has lines.”
I wanted to know more, craved more of who Kip was. What made him into the man and monster I’d seen. I suspected he wouldn’t share with me yet. Time would only tell, and from the looks of it, I had plenty.
He shifted in his chair, his attention trained on me, assessing. “You liked it, didn’t you? The blood on your hands, watching the life drain from his eyes. Has little Samantha grown up fighting the compulsion to kill others? Is that what drove you to become a psychiatrist? Bloodlust?”
I refused to answer him. The only way that he would recognize what I felt and fought against was if he dealt with it himself.
“You don’t need to answer. I already know. But here’s the thing.”
I pulled my knees to my chest, fighting the cold that made me shiver.
“That’s not what I was asking you earlier,” he growled.
“What? You asked me how I was alive. I told you.” Maybe his seizure had affected his brain cells, because I was well aware of what he’d asked me.
He placed his elbows on his knees, his stare stabbing at my soul.
“That night. It was the night before your birthday. Your family came over. It was the first time I saw you. We didn’t talk because I was hanging out with some friends, and you and Ally stuck close together.
Later that evening, I heard a scream, so I ran into the house, but no one was there.
I heard another one and ran to the outbuilding on the property.
When I opened the door, I saw you and your sister along with my uncle and Mother.
You were fighting your parents. I rushed in, trying to help you, but then … ”
He shot out of his seat and paced the room.
“There was blood everywhere. All over me, all over the floor. Your father was slumped over a table with a bullet in his forehead. I don’t know what happened to your mother or your sister.
But you …” He massaged the crook of his arm as if soothing an old wound.
“You …” He barked out a laugh and spun on his heel, facing me.
“I … I. Killed. You. I fucking killed you with my bare hands. You were dead on the damn floor.”
My pulse hammered in my ears, drowning out his words even as they carved into me.
He was talking about me—about a night I had locked away so deep it only lived in broken flashes.
The night before my birthday? I clawed at the memory, desperate, but his face wasn’t there.
His voice wasn’t there. Nothing about him was familiar.
What I did remember was my father’s heavy hand on my arm, Ally’s fingernails digging into my palm as we hid behind her, and my mother’s frantic whisper—Run.
And then … the echo of a gunshot. The metallic tang in the air. Someone slumped forward.
A bullet in their forehead.
I didn’t know if I had seen it or if my mind had painted it after the fact, but the weight of it crushed the air from my chest.
I pursed my lips. “That’s not what I remember.
I barely remember a guy my age being in that room.
I had no idea it was you. It was a blur.
I was trying to get away when I realized what was happening, and so was Ally.
When we were fighting back, my father knocked me out.
The next thing I knew, Ally and I were locked up in a dirty cell.
You didn’t kill me. In fact, you never touched me, Kip. ”
He placed his palms on the side of his head and yelled, “I know what I saw. There was blood all over my hands. Your blood.”
“It had to have been someone else. It wasn’t me,” I said softly, my compassion and training kicking in. How had he carried something like that his entire life? I’d seen it in my clients, and I’d lived it myself. Someone’s past didn’t just haunt them. It built them.
It was all making sense now. His need to insert himself into my life, protect me, and why he kept demanding answers and asking if I remembered him.
“Our minds are powerful, Kip. My guess is that you couldn’t stop them from taking Ally and me, and so your memories became something you could make sense of.
You put a puzzle piece into that spot that didn’t fit, so you made it fit.
We do it all the time. Denial, PTSD, the brain protects us. You didn’t kill me.”
He scratched his arm as a storm of emotions twisted his features. “She …” he bit out. “As punishment, she forced me to relive it over and over and over. She never let me forget what I’d done.”
“Who is she?” I kept my tone soft and accepting of everything he was telling me.
He shook his head. “If it wasn’t you, then who the fuck did I kill?”
I wished I had an answer for him. “I can’t imagine what that’s been like, especially if you were trying to help whoever that poor girl was. But Kip, if Ally and I were taken from your property, then there’s a good possibility I wasn’t the only one. Maybe you saw it happen a few times and snapped.”
Kip walked toward me, his body language angry and overwhelming.
“I get it. You think you can fix me now? You feel sorry for the poor kid that killed an innocent girl with his bare hands.” He leaned down, his face mere inches from mine.
“It shaped me all right. I became a highly skilled cleaner. Do you know what that is or are you so busy pretending that bad things don’t exist in the world when you sit behind your little desk and take notes about your patients?
Maybe it gives you power over other people to know their secrets. ”