Chapter 32
BLADE
Four-thirty a.m. The time I’ve been waking up every single day while everyone is still asleep. I try to be as quiet as possible every morning, slipping out of bed and careful not to wake Amelia. Not that she’d wake easily after passing out last night, she’s out cold.
The house is still and silent as I make my way through the darkened halls. Some guys, and whatever girls they managed to pull last night, are passed out in the living room. I tiptoe by. Today, I don’t have to bother looking for Rhett, he’s already waiting for me at the back staircase, hands in his pockets.
Without a word, we head towards the library down the hall from the kitchen. Before Amelia started coming around, it barely had any books, but she’s filled it up, and now almost every shelf is lined with them. I helped her organize them because I couldn’t stand looking at the disarray she had the shelves in. It doesn’t matter if it’s books, clothes, or her massive stock of perfumes and lotions, she’s always fine with leaving everything thrown around until I come behind her and straighten them up.
Rhett goes to the far corner and pulls on an old leather-bound encyclopedia—something no one would ever think to touch. The mechanism clicks, and a hidden door swings open, revealing a narrow, dimly lit hallway. We step through, and the hallway leads us to a small, cellar-like space, cold and damp, with a stone wall. The air is thick with the stench of mildew and dried blood. And I swear I saw a rat scurrying away when the door opened.
In the center of the room, Skye is tied to a chair with duct tape over her mouth. Her wrists and ankles are bound tightly, her struggles having left red marks on her now ghostly-looking skin. I was going to just kill her at the motel, but this is way more fun.
We’ve been coming here at five a.m. on the dot every morning. On the mornings I work out and train, I can only stay for about an hour, but on the other days, I relish in a full session, lasting hours, or at least until Amelia wakes up.
I walk over to a chair in the corner and sit down. Rhett stands by the doorway, hesitating. I can see the conflict in his eyes, the guilt gnawing at him every time we step in here. But this is his training. If he’s going to be my henchman when I become president, he needs to be prepared to do anything, including torturing someone at a moment’s notice. And what better way to test his compliance than torturing the girl he used to fuck?
Besides, it’s partly his fault Amelia was kidnapped since he covered for her and let her go off alone.
“Go on,” I say, my voice low and commanding. “Pull the tape off.”
Rhett moves slowly, hesitating, before yanking the tape from Skye’s mouth. She screams, a raw, piercing sound that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. The sound of her suffering is like a dark symphony, each note bringing me a twisted satisfaction.
“What—what do you want me to do?” Rhett asks.
Hmm. I hadn’t thought of what I wanted him to do to her today. But I want it to be brutal. She needs to feel the weight of what she did.
“You’re gonna start by cutting off her nipple. Pick your favorite one.” Every guy has a favorite boob on girls they’ve fucked, whether they admit it or not. Skye’s eyes widen as she shakes her head, sobbing loudly. “Put the duct tape back on her mouth!” At first, her cries were music to my ears, now they’re getting annoying as fuck.
Rhett swallows hard and steps closer to her. He tears a new piece of duct tape off and grabs a knife from the table, where a row of different torture instruments lies in wait.
As he begins the grim task, I lean back in my chair, my mind drifting to last night. That was hot as fuck. The way she came on command, even though she wasn’t close yet, her body recognizing that it was mine to manipulate. And then she lost consciousness. Now, I kind of want to see what it would be like to keep going after she passes out.
The ping of the knife dropping wakes me out of my daydream. Rhett’s hand is shaking as he picks the knife back up and continues. It should tear me apart inside to do this to him, but it doesn’t. If he wants the role, he has to prove himself for the role, just like I had to.
He finishes cutting off her right nipple and holds it in his hand, visibly trying to stop himself from gagging at the sight before throwing it to the ground.
“Grab the salt and pour it on the cut,” I instruct him.
He grabs what’s left of her breast in a firm grip to keep her still, then pours salt on the wound where the nipple was. She thrashes around, and if the duct tape weren’t on, I’m sure her screams would be loud enough to somehow pierce through this soundproof room. He looks to me for what’s next.
“Now you’re gonna play a game. Put your dick down her throat, all the way to the back, and each time she sheds a tear because of it, you’re gonna stop and pour some acid on her skin. Over and over again until I say stop. Don’t be fucking gentle.”
My cock jumps as I say those words, remembering Amelia saying them to me last night. Don’t be gentle . Fuck, I have to focus. It’s hard to when all I can picture in my head right now is Amelia choking on my dick, gasping for air, begging to breathe.
Rhett sighs, and I see him ready to protest until he changes his mind and starts unzipping his pants. It doesn’t take him long before he’s ravishing the back of her throat. Skye blinks rapidly, trying to hold back her tears, but eventually, one breaks free. Rhett doesn’t stop, and I know he saw it if I did from back here.
“Hey, she just fucking let a tear slip! Do you want me to cut off your dick for trying to show her mercy? Because I can,” I snap.
He releases himself from her mouth and grabs the red plastic bottle labeled battery acid . This isn’t ordinary battery acid, it’s a specially-made concoction designed for the decomposition of skin, breaking it down slowly to prolong the agony. At first, it starts as a deep pinching sensation, then escalates to a burning heat that makes you wish for hell instead.
Skye attempts to shrink away when he gets closer, but the rope keeps her in place. With a grimace, he scrunches his eyes shut as a stream of acid leaks onto her forearm.
“Open your fucking eyes!” I can barely hear myself over the loud noises Skye is making, even through the duct tape.
He does open them though, just in time to see her skin bubble and hiss before turning red and peeling away. The smell is awful, a nauseating blend of flesh and chemicals. But it doesn’t bother me too much anymore after being exposed to it dozens of times. Her arm looks like it’s melting, the acid eating through the skin and muscle, leaving an oozing yellow pus wound.
Her screams eventually die down to muted sobs, her chest heaving as she shakes her head, which is all she really can do.
Rhett shoves his dick back in her mouth and repeats the process. Each time she sheds a new tear, he targets a new area with the acid—first her stomach, then her thigh. During the second time of fucking her mouth, he started to throw his head back and grunt. I was going to stop him, but hey, who am I to stop a man from enjoying his dick down a throat. After those three times, I get bored and tired of the smell, so I tell him to stop.
“Okay, now grab the pliers and take off a couple of her fingernails.”
My phone beeps twice, the alert Asher set up for me. It goes off every morning when the first movement is detected on the bed, letting me know when Amelia wakes up. Maybe she’s just tossing and turning because it’s still pretty early.
I pull my phone out of my pocket. Wait, it’s seven-thirty already? It feels like we just got here. They do say time flies when you’re having fun.
Fuck, she’s waking up. I wanted to be there when she opened her eyes, so I could make sure she was okay from last night. I have to wrap this up.
“Never mind, we’ll do that first thing tomorrow morning. We’re done for today.”
I think I’ll do this for another three days or so, I’m already getting bored of it, then I’ll go ahead and slit her throat.