Chapter 10 Skylar
SKYLAR
Up until yesterday, the worst of my nightmares were incredibly dumb. Flunking a chem final, getting rejected from pre-med, letting my parents down.
What a fucking joke.
Those weren’t nightmares. They were daydreams of a pampered, clueless girl.
Real nightmares sound like my sister screaming. They feel like being carried down the hall by a masked monster who made me come. Who threatened to skin me, to turn me into his next belt or his lampshade.
That’s a nightmare.
And knowing I’m going to die here, at the hands of this giant man I can’t stop craving even when he terrifies me, that’s pure, unfiltered horror.
A sob almost escapes me, and I smother it by pressing my mouth to Knox’s back.
I can’t let him hear it. Can’t let him win.
Damn him for his manly scent that seeps through the smell of bleach. For the heat of him burning against me when I should only feel hate.
Inwardly, I call him every name in the book, especially for the charm he’s gagged me with. This thing steadies me. It lowers my guard.
I’m slipping, giving in to him like I did back there in the room. My anger keeps losing ground to the thrum of want tearing through me.
So wrong. It’s so fucking wrong. Wanting him is a death sentence. A noose around my neck.
And I’m the one tying the knot.
This needs to end—everything. The lust, the defeat. I have to snap out of it and come up with an escape plan to get all three of us out of here.
Slamming my eyes shut, I force myself to focus, to stop obsessing over Knox and the rippling muscles beneath his shirt.
But even without being distracted by him, I come to the same heartbreaking conclusion as I did before.
There’s no way out.
My scalpel is long gone.
We’re outnumbered.
This is it.
Furious, I spit his charm out to spite him.
“I hate you,” I growl, while my soaked pussy calls me a liar. “Hate your gift. Go to hell.”
“Quiet,” Knox snaps.
I want to snarl at him, to tell him to go to hell again, but the moment we hit the stairs, the words die on my tongue.
My guilt strangles me better than any gag ever could.
Any second now, I’m going to see Bronwyn.
My broken, tortured sister.
I’ll have to look her in the eye, knowing I came while she suffered.
Oh God. What have I done?
What have I become?
“There you are, Son.”
Knox doesn’t answer, only grabs my legs tighter. Being protective.
Protective? What the hell am I thinking? He doesn’t care about me.
“Skylar!” Easton’s voice slices through the air, desperate and raw. “Skylar! Help!”
The sound reminds me of what matters. Bronwyn. Easton. The three of us making it out alive. We’ll escape this place together. We have to.
I tell myself I won’t miss Knox once I’m free. Maybe there’ll be a hollow space where the illusion he spun used to be, but that’s all.
But then he lowers me to the ground, his hands skilled and sure as he flips me to face them. My foolish body betrays me all over again.
I lean into his side, toward the least dangerous Colbert in the room. When he drapes an arm over me, gripping my bicep, I tell myself it’s survival.
Ridiculous.
Knox isn’t safe. None of these people is.
Jett and Papa, these monsters, glare at me.
Jett has his hand clamped like a shackle around Easton’s arm.
Papa, that bastard, has Bronwyn by the back of her neck.
Urine has left a wet trail down the inside of her leg and gathered at her feet.
Somehow, that isn’t even the worst of it.
My mouth fills with the taste of metal as I take in her cracked fingernails. The blood dripping from her nose, soaking into the front of her gray nightgown.
The bridge of her nose is swollen, her face mottled with bruises. Deep shadows are etched under her eyes.
Her watery, raw, accusing eyes.
“There he is.” Jett’s tone is sickeningly cheerful, louder than before.
I don’t look at him. I can’t. My eyes stay locked on my broken, wounded Bronwyn. The sight of her is a weight pressing down, crushing me.
“Let her go.” My throat tightens, my voice rough. “She won’t tell anyone—”
“You.” Knox’s grip bruises my arm as he squeezes it, dragging me closer to his side.
My arm screams under the pressure.
“What the hell is this?” Papa’s blue eyes cut to Knox’s, his brow furrowing. “You call this taming her?”
Easton groans as Jett hauls him to the spot next to Papa. The open gash on Easton’s forehead drains the last ounce of hope from me.
Out of the three of us, Easton is the strongest. Now he’s nothing, subdued and wounded.
Bronwyn’s chin quivers, her cheeks stark red.
Knox, if possible, holds me tighter.
“Yeah, Brother, we heard you up there. You banged her around. Where’s the blood?” The leering gaze Jett directs at me has my skin crawling. “The swelling?”
Knox takes a step forward, shifting his grip on my arm so he can push me an inch behind him.
He’s…shielding me?
Why waste his breath? There’s only death waiting for me here.
For the three of us, if I don’t do something soon.
“Her stomach and back are bruised.” Knox huffs, pretending to be completely unaffected while he shoves me another inch behind him.
“We taught you better than that.” Rage flickers across Papa’s face. “Other than doing whatever it takes to paralyze them, you don’t damage the quality by striking below the neck.”
Paralyze who? Quality of what? What the fuck is going on? I want to ask.
Then I remember…
“See, I won’t sell your skin. I’ll tan it, turn it into leather. Keep you with me forever.”
No. No.
This can’t be what I think he does.
They can’t be doing…this.
No fucking way.
“I’ll make sure the quality’s fine,” Knox talks faster than words can form on my heavy tongue. “Don’t worry about that.”
“Ma, there you go.” A little girl’s voice carries up from the basement, happy and shrill. “I sharpened the knife just the way you like.”
My stomach ties up in knots.
My mouth snaps shut. The blood drains from my face.
There’s a kid here, and she’s in on it too.
“Thank you, Sugarplum,” Ma answers, and I could be sick.
Unlike me, Bronwyn doesn’t seem bothered by the people who just kidnapped and beat her up. With her chin no longer dimpled, she turns her gaze slightly to Papa.
“We have money, lots of it,” she says. “Name your price, and we’ll pay anything. Just let us leave.”
Money. Of course. Of fucking course. I want to slap myself for not thinking about it sooner.
Bronwyn’s trust fund and mine are locked until our twenty-fifth birthday. Mom and Dad won’t have a phone or internet for another month to wire the money.
But Easton’s wealthy. We’ll pay him back every cent and more once we’re home.
“Yes, we have—” I start as newfound hope rushes through me.
“Quiet.” Knox turns his head, his voice deadly. “I said quiet.”
I won’t let the roughness of his touch twist my hate into want.
I won’t.
“That’s right, Son. She ought to keep her mouth shut.” Papa’s snort smothers the spark of hope inside me. “I don’t care to listen to what any of you have to say. Your money means nothing here.”
“Uh, mister, we’re offering a lot. Like, way more than a few hundred dollars.” Bronwyn lifts her chin, fierce despite how small she looks beside Papa. She refuses to yield. “Easton’s family is filthy rich. His dad will give you anything if you let both of us go.”
Her words are a slap to the face. My ears are ringing.
“Both of you?” Jett tilts his head, voicing my disbelief.
“Yeah.” Easton sounds sluggish, his head drooping from the blows he took. “He’ll buy you a new town if you let Bronny and me go.”
“And me.” I can still see Bronwyn from here, so I stare at her, trying to catch her attention. “Me too, right?”
The hateful look she flays me with is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
“No.” Baring her teeth, she leans forward, only held in place by Papa. “Not you. The good twin. The smart twin. The future doctor twin. You’re going to die here.”
Knox growls, taking a menacing step forward.
“Bronwyn.” Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. “You can’t mean that. You’re upset. Tell them. Tell them Easton’s dad will pay them to let the three of us go.”
“Daddy’s girl. Mommy’s pet.” Her insults drip with hate, the sting cutting through me. “Why do you think we brought you on this trip? Hmm?”
What Bronwyn’s saying lands like a kick to the gut. Worse than anything she’s ever done to me, even the day she shoved my face into a toilet at school and laughed while I choked.
“Why?” The word breaks out of me with two hot tears that slip free.
They’re not the kind Knox wrung out of me. These aren’t tears of release, of humiliation tangled with pleasure.
Everything hurts. My heart is bleeding on the Colberts’ floor.
“Going…” Easton drags in a breath. “To…kill you. This was…” Another shudder rattles through him.
“Your last supper. Last act of kindness. That’s what I thought.
After tonight, we were supposed to murder you.
” His gaze flickers to Bronwyn, devotion raw in his eyes.
“She’s had enough of you. And me, I’ll do whatever she wants. Anything.”
“Would you look at that? Rich, poor.” Jett cackles, ruffling Easton’s hair. “In the end, we’re all bloodthirsty motherfuckers, aren’t we, Blondie?”
Papa smiles and nods at him.
“I hate you,” Bronwyn hisses.
A six-five wall of muscle rises between us as Knox shoves me all the way behind him. Broad shoulders tense, biceps flexing with restrained power.
He’s standing up for me.
The heat in my stomach flares, hotter than Bronwyn’s betrayal, and it sickens me.
“You protecting her?” Papa barks. “The woman you’re going to kill?”
“That’s just it. I’ll kill her.” The veins in Knox’s arms pump. “When I decide it’s time. She’s mine. I break her. I hurt her. Me.”
At that, the Colbert house goes deadly quiet.
And me…I’m just trying to breathe.
This day has been nothing but whiplash on top of whiplash.
Stalked. Kidnapped.
Finding out my sister’s plotting my death.
Now Knox is claiming me? While vowing to murder me?
My knees threaten to buckle, my stomach tightening with emotion so intense it chokes me.