Chapter 58 Delilah
DELILAH
Icrawl along the threadbare carpet, following the soft laughter in front of me as Kane says, “Are my girls having fun?”
Our baby girl jumps up to her feet as she quickly nods. She has the same soft curls her daddy had when he was younger, but her hair isn’t the same color as either of ours. It’s a soft brown, making her different than us, better.
He lowers to his haunches, ready to catch her while she runs at him, still giggling. “Momma can’t catch me!”
When she gets closer, there’s a loud crack.
Like all of the other times, they’re stolen from me. I fight to keep them, lashing out as someone grabs my shoulders, shaking me, spraying something up my nose. I need my family.
“It’s okay, little doe.”
“Lenny?” I croak as he gently strokes my hair away from my clammy skin.
“Shh, I’m not here, little doe.”
“You aren’t?” I whisper, focusing on his gloves brushing my forehead.
He slowly shakes his head as he leans back, allowing me to see the rest of the vast dormitory-style room I’ve been in since Rowan brought me to this place. “You were supposed to run.”
“I thought it was you.”
He looks even older than the last time I saw him, despite his usual perfectly tailored suit. It takes me a moment to recognize why, but when I do I’m still confused at the deep sadness in his pale eyes. Is it my own reflected back to me?
“Have you been in the Rooms?” he asks.
I nod, slow, once, incapable of more.
Lenny is even slower as he looks down my body, his eyes widening a fraction when he notices the needle sticking out of my arm.
His nostrils flare as he carefully presses two fingers to the inside of my elbow.
My tears are even slower than either of our movements as he removes the only thing I have to be with my family.
All my life I’ve been alone. My sisters left me, Asher isolated me, my parents never wanted me. Now, when I finally have people who want me, Lenny takes away my transport to them. I know how to get more so I wipe my eyes as I sit up. “Can I have more after?”
“After?” he asks with a small crease between his brows. Then shakes his head. “I’m not taking you into the Rooms. This,” he holds up the needle, “will not happen again.”
“I need more.” I try to snatch it from him, but he brushes me away with his forearm. “Lenny, please?”
There’s a little bit left in the barrel. I’ll be able to go back to Kane and our baby girl. She’ll be giggling while he blows raspberries on her cheek. Maybe this time I’ll be able to feel them instead of chasing them.
“No more.” He snaps the glass barrel, wasting the last bit. He may as well have crushed my heart in his fist.
I claw at his shirt, attempting to crawl over him to catch the small drops.
But as my fingers brush his neck, he turns rigid and throws me against the bed.
With a face full of disgust, he stands as I kick out at him, seething, “This is your fault. You promised to look after us. You let her die! Now you’re killing me! ”
The seams of his gloved fingers scrape my ankle as he grabs my leg in a bruising grip. My dress slips as he lifts my leg higher, exposing the deep, jagged scarring crossing over my uneven calf.
“Did I kill you?” He pointedly looks at the scarring. “Or did I make sure you survived?” He drops my leg with the same disgust etched into his features he’d have when Helene would inspect me.
“Please help me again.” My tears fall without anything to take me back to Kane. “Please, Lennox. I just want them back, please help me.”
He lowers to his haunches beside me, smoothing his hand over my hair. “They no longer exist.”
“They do,” I cry, hitting the side of my head. “They’re both in here.”
“Little doe,” he says on a breath so low it barely moves his lips. “You do not need anyone else. You are strong on your own. Keep your head clean, your limbs ready.”
“I do. I need Kane, and he doesn’t know about our baby.”
“Kane’s dead.”
“He’s not. It’s a trick,” I whisper. “Nobody knows him like I do. They don’t know he can lie. He’s done it before.”
“He’s dead. I was there when the order was given.”
“No.” I push his deceitful hand away. “You didn’t see him die, so he’s alive.”
No one knows what they’re talking about. Only I do. I have my memories of everything, so I know Kane is tricking them like he did to me. I know he’s doing it to keep Rowan away from me, that’s why Rowan hasn’t been here.
If Kane was dead, he’d be torturing me again. He’s not, so it’s not fucking true.
Lennox straightens to his full height, sighing as though he has more to say.
He holds his finger in front of his lips as he carefully walks between the maze of bunks to a shadowed corner.
His dark suit makes him blend into them as a young boy enters the room, barely sixteen years old even though his eyes are harsh.
They soften slightly when he sees me and he moves from foot to foot as he grips his nape. “Are you crying?”
I shake my head.
“It’s time for you to move,” he says, brushing his dark blond hair away from his face. Despite the harshness in his eyes, there’s a kindness to them. He doesn’t move until I get up from the bed, limping towards him, but his eyes are fixed on the bunk I left.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“That was Xanthe’s,” he says low in his throat, continuing to stare at the bed.
“Who’s Xanthe?” I ask, hoping he isn’t a guard.
“My mother.”
“I’m sorry.”
My condolences tear his attention away from the bunk. He shakes his thoughts away before smiling at me. “What’s your name?”
“Delilah.”
“I’m Jasper. We don’t normally get new people your age. Were you a live-in?”
“What’s a live-in?”
He walks me out of the room into the strangest corridor I’ve ever been in.
The walls are a soft black, stopping any light reflecting off them like they’re lined with suede.
There’s a thin strip of light lining the corners where the floor and walls meet with different closed doors leading away from them, but the lights act like a barrier over the threshold.
“You don’t know?” He looks at me like he can see me in the low lights. “Where did you come from?”
“I…don’t know.”
I don’t think he’ll be open with me if he knows my family has contributed to this perverse club.
In the time I’ve been here, in between escaping to visit my family, I’ve been able to work out what it is.
How it works is a different matter altogether, considering the people who visit the rooms are always masked so I can’t ask them questions.
I’m in a sex club, the opposite of X, which revolved around mutual pleasure and consent.
This place needs depravity to run. It’s not about physical gratification, but mental damnation.
The mirrored rooms I’ve been forced into have all been a form of mental torture and the doors only open when I’m on the verge of passing out.
Jasper guides me to a large canteen full of noise. People eating, talking, drinking. Normal noises without any screams. It reminds me of being in school with the long rectangular tables, other than them being color-coded.
Red, blue, yellow, orange, pink, purple, grey, black, and one steel table, reflecting the harsh lights up.
The red table is nearly full, all twelve seats taken by bodies littered in scars.
Whereas the blue one—the liveliest—has five empty seats.
Yellow sit there, moving their food around their plates as they drink water.
Orange do the same, wincing as they drink.
Pink has the youngest people in the room.
Little boys and girls whose feet don’t even reach the floor.
A little boy kicks his feet in the air as he holds the girl’s hand sitting beside him.
They look alike, similar ages too, but the boy is smaller.
Purple are only slightly older, not by much.
Grey has the least amount of members, four of them who don’t interact with each other apart from a girl who glares at me as I walk behind Jasper.
She doesn’t stop until we pass the black table where one boy is trying to feed himself, but his arm shakes, causing him to spill his food.
The steel table is deathly silent other than their labored breathing as they stare wide-eyed into air.
Jasper nods to the plate rack as he whispers, “You need to get your own food.”
I pass him a warmed porcelain dinner plate before doing the same with the utensils wrapped in a napkin.
He looks at me like I’ve committed a crime as he forcefully sets it aside to collect his own then moves around the counter lined with heat lamps, like a buffet with different items in large pots.
His smile comes back when I peer over the edge of the tall steel pot. “You can’t pour soup in a flat plate.”
I nod, watching as he stabs a chicken breast with a fork then drops it into his plate. He slides his plate along to a steaming platter of vegetables then piles two spoonfuls onto his plate. Mashed potato is next.
I don’t know what I’m doing, so I copy him until our plates are identical.
It’s exactly like school as I turn to face the room.
There was never a time when I didn’t have my own group when I was a teenager.
Now I’m in my thirties. A lump forms in my throat as I look at all the tables without any idea of who will allow me to sit with them.
Jasper acts like my appointed buddy, lightly nudging my arm with his elbow as he says, “You’re unassigned. Sit with me.”
It’s not until he walks to the back of the hall I notice a small circular table with five seats.
The two girls already sitting at the table are direct opposites of one another.
One has pitch-black hair and the deepest blue eyes I’ve ever seen; the other has softer features and calmer hazel eyes.
The latter is younger too. She smiles softly as she dips her head, hiding behind a curtain of her curly brown hair.
Jasper takes a seat next to the other then points to the seat beside the younger girl.
“You can sit there so Nova can’t hit you. ”
“I can reach,” the dark-haired girl, Nova, says as she holds her fork like a weapon.
“She won’t hurt you,” the other says in the softest voice I’ve ever heard, then quickly looks away.
I lower into the seat, trying to make the least amount of noise possible. “What’s your name?”
“Sienna,” Jasper answers for her as he cuts into her chicken.
I give her a small smile I hope comes across as friendly. “I’m Delilah.”