Chapter 83 Kane #3
“I don’t think it’s going to be enough for him,” I say lightly, watching her confusion grow.
In The Dollhouse, one of the punishments for the masks was a heat room.
Ten minutes made it feel like my skin was peeling off.
It was a struggle to stop my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth when I wasn’t the target of the punishment, and I was only giving the guard a glass of salted water.
It doesn’t take long for the heat to burn my eyes.
Harkin’s elevated position means he feels it more intensely as Delilah collects a large bag of cooking salt.
“Where’s the island?” I ask as I hover my finger over the control for the heating.
He chooses to shut his fucking mouth, so I turn on the heating in all of the other rooms to reduce any cool breeze.
Daigon empties a bottle of water from the bar cart, fills it with a clear spirit, then mixes an unhealthy dose of salt into it.
I take the opportunity to fuck with Harkin’s head as I lift his pant leg to reveal his calf. Tracing the fleshy part of his leg with the tip of the blunt knife, I quietly ask, “Do you want to live?”
“They won’t let you go now,” he whispers, staring at my left arm. “You need my help.”
I haven’t received any contact from the Wards, and Ruby said they keep to their deals when a sacrifice is made, so I know Harkin’s full of shit.
They’re all going to die, so there won’t be anyone coming to collect Delilah after the twelve months are up.
He’s a dead man, clutching at straws to stay alive.
I’ve been in the same position before; it’s why Asher lives in my fucking head.
“Okay, tell me,” I whisper. “I’ll help you.”
“I’ll need to speak to her,” he whispers lower.
“No, tell me if it was worth it.” I meet his eyes as I push the dull edge of the blade into his calf.
“It was all Helene,” he lies. “She’s untouchable. I had no choice.”
“Funny,” Delilah snaps as she passes me a bottle of ice-cold water.
“It is,” Daigon says, coming to my other side.
“From our perspectives, it seems you were the only one who did have a choice. Drink.” He grabs Harkin’s jaw in a bruising grip, forcing his lips to part like a fish, then pours the full bottle of his concoction down his throat.
The grains swirl through the liquid, clinging to his wet chin as he chokes on the salty liquor.
I carve through his leg with the knife, smiling at the gurgled screams. Delilah wraps her hand over mine to counteract his shaking.
All three of us move around him, cutting out our pounds of flesh, pouring a mixture of salty liquor into the pockets we create while his eyes get more and more sunken in.
“Stop,” Harkin feebly shouts. “I’ll give you it.”
Delilah writes the mumbled coordinates Harkin manages to force out around his flinching. I don’t trust the cunt, so I check them. None of the maps show any land mass where the coordinates are, but it’s in the Channel Islands and Delilah said it was off the coast of England.
My t-shirt sticks to my back from the heat. Delilah has thick beads running down her temples, and Daigon takes one of the empty bottles into the kitchen with his t-shirt molded to his body.
Harkin’s lips are like raisins, shriveled and finally incapable of spewing his arrogant bullshit as his head lolls back. Despite my low energy from the heat, I can’t stop my smile when she laughs full of joy. I can’t look away or complain as she falls into me, wheezing, “You’re so fucked up.”
I look at Daigon, who’s the cause of her hysterics as he holds the now filled bottle at arm’s length. But the liquid isn’t clear. It’s fucking yellow.
“What?” he asks innocently, staring between us both. “I’ve drunk five bottles of water because the troublemaker kept giving them to me. I needed to pee.”
Harkin struggles in his restraints, uncaring about how much blood he’s lost. I don’t stop him.
Instead, I yank the front leg of the chair so it falls backwards and his head slams off the sharp wooden edge with a crack.
Daigon stops at the other end of the table then forces Harkin’s mouth open as he slowly pours the full bottle of piss into his mouth.
“Human toilets,” he says to the spluttering dickhead. “That’s what you called the subjects.” When he’s done, he steps back, gesturing to Delilah and me. “I said you could kill him.”
As much as he manipulated my life, fucking sentenced me to hell, his death belongs to Delilah, so I kiss her cheek before stepping back. “Take whatever you need, pretty girl.”
“I had a plan, you know?” She holds her hand out for Daigon to pass her a knife without looking away from Harkin.
“I was going to make you feel the pain of your body being violated while you couldn’t move.
But you’ve all stolen too much time from us when you’re not fucking worth it.
You, Harkin, are not fucking worth my time. ”
We both know she doesn’t need me as she stands by his head, but when she looks at me, I smile, urging her to do whatever she wants.
There won’t be any judgment or recoil on my part.
I love this woman more than anything in existence, enough to endure the hell we’ve been through.
Enough to know she could shit in his mouth, and I’d applaud her for it.
My crazy, beautiful wife laughs, tapping the flat of the knife against her father’s cheek as she says, “Knock, knock?”
He mumbles something.
“Who’s there?” Delilah says softly, smiling wider. “Delilah.”
The next mumble is weaker as she coats the knife in the piss, salty liquor, and his sweat.
“Delilah, who’s going to ruin your life.” She impales the knife in the center of his throat.
The weak pleas for his life are replaced with gurgling and my wife’s radiant smile despite the tears in her eyes.
It doesn’t take long for her to lose her joy as she stares down at her lifeless father.
Tears slowly drip over her lashes, skimming her skin, then splashing up from his dull cheek as she croaks, “I only wanted my dad to love me.” Her chest shudders as she looks at her dead mother.
“Both of you to love me.” I quickly pull her into my chest while she sobs, “I didn’t deserve to be hurt. None of us did.”
Pressing my lips to her crown, I listen to her cry when she’s spent her entire life ignoring her pain to such an extent she convinced herself it didn’t exist, accepted the shitty hand life dealt her to evade being lonely, yet she’s still fucking kind beneath it.
Kind enough to be here with me, kind enough not to prolong the death of the person who hurt her the most.
A shadow falls over us as Daigon stops in front of me. I look up, seeing him hold his phone out with Ruby’s name in the center. Her voice is stronger than I’ve ever heard it as she says, “I am so proud of you, Dilly.”
Delilah painfully wraps her arms around me like she’s afraid of the praise while Ruby continues, “You’re so smart.
You knew what you needed to do to survive in that house and you did it so well.
I love you, Dilly. Everyone who matters does and we’ll never let you go a day without feeling it, because you’re the only one out of the three of us who’s strong enough to do this.
No matter what happens, we’re here. We will never let you hurt again. ”
Those should be promises I make, but she needs to hear it from her sisters. So when Scarlet joins in, I lean back to prevent their voices being muffled.
“None of us asked for any of this,” Scarlet says gently. “They did. Everything they ever did to us has led them to this moment. No one else could do it. Only you, Delilah.”
She whimpers, pushing her face harder into my chest at the sound of her own name.
I’ve never heard her sisters call her anything other than Dilly.
Especially Scarlet, who would tease her, saying her breath smells like vinegar so she’s a pickle.
But the self-titled bitch is full of warmth as her voice cracks. “I wish I was more like you.”
Ruby takes over, repeating how Delilah’s not weak, how their parents deserve the worst death, how none of it is their fault. How they’re innocent, forced to live in a world they had no choice in as Delilah slowly loosens her arms around me.
And then she looks up at me. Eyes red, cheeks tear-stricken with a wide smile on her face. “I did it.” She laughs. “Stupid, silly, insolent Delilah, who’s not good at anything, did something right.”