Chapter 6 Kane
KANE
“Eighty-nine!” I scream, my fists bloody from trying to escape this fucking room. Not again. I can’t go through it again.
I can hear them.
Right outside the doors.
They’re waiting to be let inside.
“Not ninety!”
It hasn’t been ninety days.
I’ve been counting.
Eighty-nine is safe.
Eighty-nine is when they stay outside.
Eighty-nine is when I’m alone.
They’re directly on the other side of this door—again.
So when my knees are weak and my body is depleted of energy, I use my head to scare them away.
The steel door is cool as I throw my head forward.
“Please, it hasn’t been ninety days.” I slide down the door, my forehead slamming against the metal as I sink to my knees, still begging, still hopeful.
“You don’t have to. I’ll give you whatever you want.
I have some money in commissary. I’ll pay for your shopping.
” The steel dents as my movements become more forceful, my voice erratic, strained through tears. “Please. Cigarettes, anything.”
“Kane,” Asher whispers beside me as he places his hand on my shoulder, lightly squeezing, “you’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Eighty-nine.” I look at him with tears in my eyes. “It’s eighty-nine. Please stop them.”
He nods once. Then the steps move away. Five steps. Turn. Five steps. They fade away.
“I’m sorry,” I cry openly. “I’m sorry for killing you.”
His features harden, eyes darkening as he snarls, “She did it. Not you.”
I nod.
“This is all her fault,” he says as I collapse on the floor, laying on my side. He copies me, lying opposite me. “Say it, Kane. Say who did it.”
“De-Delilah?”
“Delilah did this to you. Don’t forget; don’t forgive. Tell me what she did.”
“She killed you?”
He nods, urging me to say more.
“She sent me away?” I quickly shake my head. “No, Delilah wouldn’t. Not to me. I’m sorry. I know you took her, but she was mine first.”
Inching closer, he corrects, “She belongs to both of us.”
“Both of us.” I nod, hating it.
Something brushes my side and I look down to see Asher wrap his arm around me. It’s smaller than mine without ink or blood—clean and safe.
“Kane, remember everything she’s done to you.”
“She killed you?”
“No. What did she do to you?”
“Sent me away?”
“Yes. What happens when you get sent away?”
“Ninety days,” I whimper, my breathing escalating.
“Yes, what else?”
“Doctors.”
“Good. What do the doctors do?”
“They—” My breathing is heavier, filling the room and amplifying the sound. “They take out everything that was put inside me and stitch me up.”
“Who sent you to the doctors?”
“Ninety.”
“No. Who sent you there?”
“The guard stabbed me an-and allows the-them inside.”
“No,” he snaps, angrier. “Who. Sent. You?”
“The other inmates?” I cry, turning on my back, crossing my hands over my crotch as I bite on the inside of my lip.
Asher climbs over me, protecting me from anyone getting access but he’s forgotten it never works. They always send him away.
Not now. He stays so I’m right. It’s not ninety, it’s eighty-nine.
“Delilah. She’s the reason you’re here. She’s the reason they’ll come in here. She’s the reason they rape you!”
“No!” I scream back. “It’s not that.”
It’s not. It’s not. It’s not. It’s not. They’re fighting me. It’s different. It’s not a word that makes me weak, pathetic, damaged, unclean.
He argues with me, gripping my jaw so tightly my teeth ache as I’m forced to remain still.
Just like the others, he controls what my body can do as his pale green eyes—eyes which were once like mine—bore into my desolate ones.
“It. Is. And it’s all her fault. Don’t you fucking dare forget she broke my reflection. Are you listening to me, Kane?”
“It’s not,” I mumble. “This is different.”
He tightens his fingers, his palm slipping over my mouth to stop me speaking.
“They rape you. They rape you. They rape you.”
I try to shake my head but it’s no use with his tight grasp on my face.
“That’s why you get stitched up. Do you like wearing the diapers?”
My eyes tremble, erratically moving side to side to convey no.
“Exactly! Who put you in here so that happens to you?” he asks, removing his hand from my face.
I audibly gulp before I ask, “Delilah?”
“Yes, tell me what she did.”
“She sent me away?”
“Yes, and?”
I fall silent because there has to be a reason when she loves me. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have laid in my bed, watching the stars while I watched her.
Asher punches the floor beside my head, snapping, “Don’t be fucking weak!
She did this! She did it to you. Say it!
” When I don’t do what he wants, he slaps his fingers against my cheek, taunting me.
“She doesn’t love you. All those times she fucked you, she’d fuck me right after.
She’d kiss you after sucking my cock while my cum was still on her fucking teeth. ”
“No!”
He tightens his thighs around my arms, locking them at my sides. “She used you because she’s a whore. Now she’s using you again because you’re fucking weak.”
“No.” I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut as I argue, “She loves me. It was always supposed to be me and Delilah, but you scared her.”
He slaps me again, forcing my eyes to open. “She fucked you. Delilah doesn’t love anyone apart from herself. Remember how you begged her, how you asked her to save you. She didn’t, did she? No, she made sure you rot, abused for that bitch’s crimes.”
I shake my head again as he attacks me.
My head slams off the concrete floor with a thud vibrating around my skull.
More thuds.
More thuds.
I can’t get him off me as my body becomes limp, my eyes rolling back in my head.
I’m prodded awake with a sharp slap against my chest as Helene stands above me, light from the open door filtering through, casting me in her shadow.
“Have you had time to think now?” she asks, dragging her stick back to her side.
I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be thinking about since she found me on the shore.
“You are broken,” she says, her lip curling. “I have no use for those who do not function correctly. I will allow you out of this torment if you take ten days of punishment without complaint.”
“Yes,” I rush out, not even leaving a gap between her offer and my response.
“Up, broken boy.” She slaps her stick against my shoulder.
My joints creak as I shakily stand. The skin on the tips of my fingers has been peeled away, scratches all over my chest, arms, neck.
But she looks at me like I’m covered in shit as she holds her hand over her shoulder.
“No matter what you witness or feel, you must see this punishment through. I will not rescue you again.”
I nod, staring at the black glove stretching through the open door to place a cloth bag in Helene’s hand.
“My patience is waning.” She throws it at my feet. “You have two minutes to be ready.”
She doesn’t leave the room for me to change as I empty the bag of the black military-style outfit.
I don’t ask her to either, seeing as I’ll be left in the dark and she’s not trustworthy enough to let me out of this fucking room with the exact same dimensions as my cell.
The cell I was put in as a fucking safety measure, locked away from everyone else, but it was a prison within a prison.
Like nesting dolls, it got darker the further it embedded itself inside of me.
A heavy thud hits the floor as I finish getting dressed.
There’s a pair of black boots, thick soles as though they’re purposely made to make the maximum amount of noise.
They’re heavy as fuck, barely even moving as I push my feet into them and lace them up.
Another piece of my outfit is given as she holds out a pair of black leather gloves.
I take them, noting how thin the material is, the seams scratching the cuts on my hands as I pull them on.
There isn’t a single inch of visible skin from my neck down.
I’ve become a shadow, just like Lennox calls me.
Then Helene steps back, picking up a mask from the guard at the door. She’s warmer as she instructs, “Come here, sweet boy.”
Relief takes over all of my fear as I walk straight through the doors into light. The walls are still stone but there’s no metal door locking me in. I don’t even give a fuck about what she wants me to do, it’s worth it for this small amount of freedom.
Yet Helene still fucks with it, proving she is the only person in control as she gestures for me to lower my head.
It’s not until she’s secured a curved mirror mask over my head I notice the flat black metal bar forced between my teeth.
I can’t speak as it painfully presses against each side of where my lips join, pulling them apart, making it difficult to swallow.
She tugs on my nape as she secures the back, zipping up each flap of the soft leather so it’s cushioned to the contours of my skull then pulls her hand back with the pull tab still clasped between her fingers so I can’t unzip it.
The mirrored portion distorts everything, making it darker, grimier, more terrifying as she grips my shoulder to turn me.
“If you do not obey, this will become your home,” she says, surveying the bloody walls.
I nod once, too quickly, as my nightmare’s sealed away with a slam of the door. There isn’t a drop window on the front of it, but there’s a large electronic panel resembling what I tried to make when I was fifteen.
I spent months collecting old electronic parts, screens, anything I could strip and rebuild after Asher dared me to prove I’d be able to make a working camera.
We couldn’t test it without a screen, but I took it as a challenge for myself.
I wanted it to be sleek, no buttons, thin enough I’d be able to hardwire it into the wall without any voltage boxes sticking out.
The screen in front of me is the same, down to the dimensions and the carbon casing I took from one of my dad’s factories under the guise of caring about the family business. I never gave a fuck about manufacturing, I wanted to create something new, something mine.
Helene can’t see me staring at it through the mask as she walks ahead, her voice inside the mask rather than muffled through the leather covering my ears.
“There’s something you may not remember,” she says, slowing down until I catch up with her.
“My masks showed you the videos but there were others I kept back out of protection for your innocent feelings.”
I bite down on the metal bar at the reminder as she leads me through the stone hallway.
The distant screams are picked up by whatever speaker is filtering the surrounding noises inside the mask.
They’re too low for me to work out what the person is saying, and I couldn’t give a fuck about their torment, not when I’ve managed to escape my own.
We reach a staircase chiseled out of the stone and she places her hand on my shoulder as she carefully walks up.
I gauge my chances of throwing her down the fucking stairs to really escape.
Before I can determine the likelihood of getting away, she pauses in the middle and says, “As my descendent, I’ll give you all the information from the source.
In order to do that, you must play your part—become a shadow. Can you do that, sweet boy?”
Intrigue is going to be the death of me because I nod instead of throwing her down the steps and stamping on her head like I should.
We enter the kitchen through a dimly lit pantry.
We’re in Helene’s house. She hasn’t moved me somewhere else.
Delilah’s mother is at the table, bruising under her collarbones as she sips from a gold-rimmed teacup, but there’s a hint of fearful respect when she sees Helene.
I don’t look for Delilah. She’ll be on the window, hiding from everyone like we agreed.
I could study these fuckers for years yet never understand their dynamic.
Helene seems to be their leader, but the Lerouxs only ever exuded power when I was growing up.
They weren’t the family who fell in line with others or chased anyone else’s attention.
They were the “it” family—the perfect daughters, the perfect couple, everything they allowed people to see projected the same image.
Now, Lizbeth lowers her chin instead of haughtily jutting it in the air like everyone around her is a piece of shit as Helene sits at the head of the table.
I stay back, anonymous and forgotten against the wall, watching Helene pull out a tablet.
Her fingers slap off the screen as she tilts it, playing a video of Delilah I’ve never seen before.
Asher is still in my head, telling me it’s all her fault while a teenaged Delilah falls onto a bed, mumbling, “Be quick, I have things to do.”
Lizbeth’s lips curl up in disgust at the sight of her daughter as she says, “She always was vocal.”
I don’t watch the love of my life being fucked by countless men as she giggles and moans, each fucking sound scraping my insides. There’s a small voice in the back of my head telling me she’s been drugged. It’s a new one with unknown origins like the video, but it’s a lie.
Just. Like. Delilah.
Then there’s a voice I recognize.
“Will you tell your daddy to sign the contract now?”
Harkin’s business partner. I can’t even remember his name, but Delilah would hug him, call him uncle, make sure to greet him at their family parties. Every single fucking time.