CHAPTER 12 FORSAKEN
They’re all dead .
A cold, dead weight settled in Gabe’s stomach, like a whisper from a void where his world had once stood .
The words spoken to him became a muffled drone, like sounds filtered through miles of murky water.
The terrible truth didn't just sink in; it crashed over him like a tidal wave of ice and shattered glass, splintering the last shards of his sanity.
He didn't just kill them; he defiled them, ravaged their innocence, then butchered them like cattle. The image, unbidden and grotesque, clawed at the back of Gabe’s eyes.
Maddy. Savannah. Abel .
The names echoed in the cavern of his skull, each syllable a fresh stab. Gone . Violently ripped away, erased from existence as if they’d never been . The void they left behind was a screaming, gaping maw. His family. Their family. It wouldn’t survive this. How could it?
Had they found the bodies yet? The thought of Cole and the others discovering the desecrated remains of their loved ones…
Gabe’s knees threatened to buckle, a wave of nausea washing over him so potent he tasted bile.
The horror of their suffering, right now, was a tangible weight, heavier than any chain.
And Cole… oh god, Cole . The name was a fresh wound.
Cole, who carried the world on his shoulders, would shatter.
The guilt, an unimaginable, crushing weight, would bury him alive.
Abel was their baby ; their sweet, passionate, adorable baby whom they idolized.
And Savannah and Maddy… they were like everyone’s little brother and sister.
Gone . Their absence would be a constant, agonizing phantom limb for Cole.
Even if Gabe murdered these bastards right now, they would still win. They had won. The true victory wasn't his death, but the slow, agonizing destruction of Cole, the systematic obliteration of every good, pure thing in his life. And the monster had done it. He had succeeded.
Rough hands seized him, yanking his arms high above his head.
Metal shackles bit into his wrists, a searing pain that was dulled by the greater agony in his soul.
They stripped him, the cold air hitting his skin like a thousand tiny needles, but he felt nothing, only a profound, hollow emptiness.
Roland circled him, a predator surveying its prey.
His gaze was a tangible thing, crawling over Gabe’s body with a slow, lustful thoroughness that made his skin prickle despite his numbness.
“You’re not usually my type,” Roland drawled, his voice a low, sexual rasp that grated like sandpaper.
“Too much muscle, not young enough. But…” He stepped closer, his breath hot and foul on Gabe’s ear, his hand gliding over Gabe’s chest, down his rigid stomach, fingers tracing the faint line of his happy trail.
The touch was a violation, a defilement.
“… the fact that you belong to Henry, and he cherishes you so much…” A slow, sickening grin spread across his face, revealing teeth too white, too sharp.
“That makes me want to make you my new favorite fuck toy.”
Gabe looked through him, his eyes vacant, unseeing, like shattered glass.
His body was here, suspended, violated, but his mind, fractured beyond repair, had already fled.
It was back home, with his family, trapped in their own fresh, screaming hell, a hell he was powerless to save them from.
That was the true torment… the real prison.
“Don’t leave us now.” The man was checking out. Byrne smacked his face, barely garnering a response. “The fun is just beginning.”
Gabe looked through him and didn’t seem to hear his words.
That wouldn’t do. He walked over to where an old hose was attached to a rusted spigot and, with some effort, cranked the corroded handle—a dirty, rusty flood gushed from the end of the hose.
Byrne turned the spray on Gabe, dousing the man in the filthy freezing water.
“Huh!” Gabe gasped sharply as icy water struck him in the face and splashed over his naked body, pouring down his stomach and legs in rusty torrents. He futilely jerked away from the unrelenting spray, sharp, staggered breaths bursting out of him.
“Awake now?” Byrne inquired and turned off the hose.
His dad watched from the sidelines in silence, simply observing.
Gabe shivered and gasped, teeth clacking as the vicious chill invaded his body, seizing his insides, impairing his ability to breathe.
Byrne watched with dark satisfaction as the man’s stomach clenched and sucked in, his chest hitching, rising, and falling in an erratic effort to draw in breath.
The cords in his neck strained and popped with the struggle to simply breathe.
“No checking out,” Byrne said. “We’re here to have a good time, and we can’t do that if you’re not with us.”
Gabe sucked in deep, sharp breaths that looked almost painful as he shot death threats at Byrne from his baby blue depths.
“You seem upset.” Byrne smiled. “If it helps, Henry had it coming. All this… he brought on himself.” Leaning close, Byrne touched his lips to Gabe’s ear, venom seeping into his voice as he whispered, “The little fucker stole my life—my fucking birthright. He took everything from me. Now, I’m going to take everything from him. ”
Byrne pushed against him, dropping one hand to grab his thick cock as he licked the man’s face—a long, slow drag of his tongue up his cheek. Gabe turned his head away in disgust, shuddering beneath the cold.
His tongue slithered around the shell of Gabe’s ear, then probed inside.
The man flinched away again. “Henry was never supposed to be born,” Byrne hissed in his ear.
“If my daddy had kept his promise and butchered the whore… none of us would be here now.” Byrne craned his head a bit and glanced at his father across the room, an age-old resentment and rage simmering in his gut.
“But we’re going to set things right,” he whispered to Gabe while slowly stroking his cock.
“The way they should have been set right back then.”
···
The boy sat cross-legged in the wooden chair next to the pot-bellied stove, a small hunting knife in his hand as he sharpened a stick. He flicked the shavings onto the top of the red-hot stove, one at a time, and watched them burst into tiny flames and disintegrate to ashes.
He heard the truck coming from a distance away and ignored it as he continued whittling on the stick. The rig pulled up out front, shut off, and a door opened and closed, a dull echoing thud in the crisp winter morning.
The boy dragged the blade in a long stroke along the stick and tossed the coiled shaving onto the stove. The cabin door opened as the curled strip caught fire and shriveled black, the flame going out. He didn’t look at his father as the man’s eyes darted around the small space.
“Where’s Bill?”
The boy shrugged. “Don’t know.” He tossed another shaving on the stove.
“Where is he?”
Raising his eyes, the boy looked at his dad, eyes dull and emotionless. “Where are you?”
The man frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Where are you… when you’re not here?” The boy stared at him, accusingly. “Where do you go? What’re you doing?”
His father narrowed his eyes. “That’s my business. Your business is to be here—practicing. I saw the mess out front. You’re not even trying. You made a mess of Bill, too, didn’t you? I bring you up here to teach you something, and this is what you do?”
His face twitching, the boy’s eyes darkened. “Liar.”
“What?” His father stepped deeper into the cabin and slammed the door. “What did you say?”
“You’re a liar,” the boy stated calmly.
His dad closed the short space between them in two swift strides.
He wrenched the boy from the chair. The stick he’d been whittling clattered to the floor, but he kept a grip on the knife.
“You don’t ever fucking talk to me like that,” his dad hissed in his face, then slapped him hard.
The stinging impact exploded into his skull and made his eyes water, but he didn’t cry—just stared viciously into his old man’s furious eyes.
“Don’t lie, and I won’t,” the boy muttered.
The man shoved him back into the chair and loomed over him, a deadly force ready to take him out at the next show of disrespect. “What the fuck are you talking about, boy?”
“You didn’t bring me here to learn stuff,” the boy said. “You told Bill if he kept me hidden up here, he could fuck me, didn’t you?”
“You’re making no sense, boy,” his dad muttered, but the truth was in his eyes.
Crawling out of the chair, the boy squeezed the knife in his fist. “You said you killed the whore,” he whispered coldly. “But you lied. I saw you. I saw you with her.”
“What?”
“I went looking for you,” the boy spoke low, deadly. “I found you… living with her. Married to her. I saw her belly…” His eyes were furious orbs as he raised the knife. “… and I wanted to cut her open… cut it out of her and kill it.”
His father snatched the knife from his hand and turned it on the boy, touching the blade to his throat. The boy didn’t flinch. “You will stay away from her—and my son.”
Son. His son.
“I’m your son,” the boy whispered tightly.
“Not a son a father can be proud,” his dad stated bluntly. “You’re messy and out of control. I’ve tried teaching you, but you don’t learn. You can’t learn. My new son will learn.”
The boy trembled with rage. “And what about the whore?”
“When my son is born,” his dad said. “I’ll deal with her.”
“And me?” the boy asked resentfully. “Will you deal with me, too?”
His dad stared at him, then withdrew the knife. “Learn your craft… and I won’t have to. We can teach the boy together.”
The boy narrowed his eyes. “Together?”
“Yes. But I won’t have you teaching him your messy ways. So, you will stay here and practice.”
“On animals?”