Chapter 2 #2
“You’re finally awake, girl,” he complains. “You’re getting soft from being away from me. The drugs I was using are the same shit I used to use to fuck you with so you wouldn’t fight me. Pliant and soft is the way I like my daughter best.”
My lashes brush my cheeks as I blink, struggling to process the information presented to me. My sister was ravaged and raped by this man. Fuck. No wonder she ran.
I need to make sure she never has to again. Fortune is smiling on me today, because no matter what happens, I’m saving Nova from it.
Everyone involved is going to fucking die, after I get some answers though. Since I can’t ask any questions now, I swallow them back, gazing up at the monster in front of me.
“Nothing to say?” he growls. “Answer me!”
The bastard uses his bark on me, and I shudder. If he uses it so easily, then I shouldn’t fight it. I don’t know if Nova can break through it, but the second I’m out of here, I’ll be teaching her how.
“What do you want me to say?” I rasp, thankful that my voice is hoarse from screaming earlier.
“‘Hello, Father,’ would be a nice change of pace after the merry chase you’ve had us all on. Your mother is worried sick. In fact, she should be here soon.”
Well that’s lovely. I’m trying to piece together the puzzle pieces of Nova’s life, and what it was like for her to live with these people.
“Hello, Father,” I say robotically, forcing down my natural instinct to sass him.
“Better, but I still feel some sarcasm there. You’ve caused us all a lot of trouble,” he complains.
“How?” I ask, playing up to my role now.
“You have responsibilities here, Nova,” he says, throwing his hands up in the air. “Mr. Domino asked to have you when you turned eighteen, and instead of stepping up to be his little whore, you left.”
My jaw drops unconsciously as I shake my head. Did Nova know this? Or is this something he’s been hiding.
The door behind me opens and slams shut before the sound of heels rushing down the stairs rings out in the concrete space.
“Your mother is here,” the alpha in front of me sneers. “Now you’re in for it.”
I can’t tell if he’s supposed to be a good cop or the bad one, and the woman who walks around to face me seems too pretty to be as evil as she is.
She appears to be in her mid-fifties with smooth skin, her makeup perfectly applied, and in a skirt suit.
However, even I know that beauty can be only skin deep, and hides the evil within.
“Nova,” the woman gasps. “What have you done to your pretty hair! John, you didn’t tell me she did this. Where are her contacts? This eye color is unseemly.”
The words of a crazy person flow over me, and I grow even angrier. I hide it away until I can strike back, because my head feels heavy from the drug on the rag from earlier.
“Louise, your daughter is rebellious,” John sighs. “We’ve been too soft.”
“Have we?” she muses. There’s something in her hand, and I don’t realize what it is until it’s shoved into my side. She made sure to bat my coat open so she’d have less layers to contend with.
My body shudders from the electric pulse, and I gasp as I lose control of my limbs. All I can do is ride out the torture, my eyes tearing up involuntarily.
“It’s so nice to have you back, Nova,” Louise croons, pulling back the baton. I’m gasping for air that won’t come, my lungs drowning in pain. These are the monsters that my sister grew up with.
Holy fuck.
“It’s a shame I can’t teach you a lesson,” John mutters, his eyes raking over my body as he adjusts himself. It takes everything inside of me not to sneer, my twitching fingers working to untie the rope around my wrists.
“Mr. Domino said that he wasn’t happy to leave Michigan for pussy, but that he would make an exception for you, Nova,” Louise croons. “Aren’t you lucky? We’ve fed and clothed you your entire life, it’s about time we get a payout.”
“You’re selling me,” I gasp, recognizing the name on Louise’s lips. All of this time, my sister has been living with our enemies, the very reason Emilia is untouchable.
Logic shreds in front of me as I see red, the knowledge that I shouldn’t kill Roberto Domino no longer important. If he’s buying my sister to rape her, then it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.
John glares at me as he crouches at my feet, systematically pulling off my boots. I can’t kick him because I’m tied to the chair, though I want to writhe to get away from him.
Don’t exert your energy. If I’m too tired to fight to get away, then I’ll be fucked. My muscles already ache from sitting here, the electric aftershocks that make my body twitch not helping.
Caleb and Lars taught me how to escape if I was ever kidnapped. It’s something I begged them to teach me when I started having nightmares as a teen.
Logically, I know I was a baby when Maree was kidnapped, but when I was ten, my parents installed a safe room in my closet. I asked if there was a reason for it, and my father said that he refused to allow the past to repeat itself.
To this day, I still don’t know how my sister was kidnapped, but I will find out who betrayed my family and end them.
“Your manners are lacking, daughter,” John says, pulling off my sock as well. I can’t figure out what he’s doing or why, but I’m sure it’s going to hurt. “Let me remind you of them.”
The fucker yanks my big toe back, the sound of the bone breaking slight against the pain as I suck in a breath.
“Don’t break too many,” Louise says softly. “Just enough to make her behave and so that Mr. Domino doesn’t notice.”
I don’t scream until he breaks two more bones in my toes in my left foot, and begin crying when he starts on the next.
“Good girl,” John murmurs, dragging his thumb through my tears and sucking on it.
Numbness isn’t something I can reach for, not if I’m Nova right now.
“I’ll remind you how to behave for me. I know that I said that you were too old for me to fuck now, daughter, but I do love how pretty your screams are. ”
“Why are you doing this?” I gasp out. I need to know what kind of depraved parents Nova has, and that means asking questions she may already know the answers to.
“You’re mine,” John says, standing. “I like to know where my possessions are, and I’ve spent a lot of money getting you back.”
“Mr. Domino is going to make sure we get it back in spades,” Louise says. “Two million dollars if you live through him fucking you, and eight million if he kills you. I think that’s a pretty decent deal.”
“Mr. Domino is a hard alpha,” John says, moving around the chair.
Fuck, I bet he’s going to go for my fingers now. It’s what any good torturer would do, and it’s almost worse that I know this. If he’s trying to incapacitate me in a way that won’t mark my body, my fingers and toes are the way to do it.
The joke is on him though, because pain is life. I plan to live through this and burn the world down for my baby sister. It doesn’t matter that I’m only older by minutes, she’s mine.
The lost sister no longer is, and I plan to keep it that way.
“Hmmm. Her pinky isn’t crooked anymore. Let’s fix that,” John says, breaking it.
My eyes roll back as I focus on breathing, though I allow myself to continue playing into the act of feeling pain. I am cataloguing every word they speak though, including that Nova’s pinky never healed from one of them breaking it.
The world is colored in shades of red, keeping me grounded so I can’t disconnect. It’s more painful, but necessary so they don’t realize that they have the wrong sister. My bones will heal.
She shouldn’t have to go through this anymore.
“He’s going to be here soon,” Louise frets, her heel tapping on the ground. “We need to get her ready.”
My lips snarl involuntarily, and Louise just smiles.
“I know you’re not still a virgin, but this will hurt either way, Nova,” she says. “I plan to permanently clip your wings. If you survive Mr. Domino, then we’ll fix your hair and begin hiring you out to the family. We gave you everything, and you spat in our faces.”
“Wanting a life,” I gasp through the pain, “isn’t spitting in your face.”
I have to admit that I really want to spit in her face as John cruelly breaks another one of my fingers, and my spine slams into the back of the chair as Louise grabs my hair to yank me back.
“Your entire existence is to make us look good. The gloves are off, little girl, and you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” she sighs. “We should have stolen the other twin, John.”
“Hindsight doesn’t change things,” John says gruffly as my world breaks apart from her admission. “This is gonna hurt, little girl.”
His thumb presses hard against my carotid artery and my eyes widen. Fuck, fuck, no I don’t want to pass out!
Louise presses her lips against the shell of my ear as the world begins to darken, her grip on my hair not allowing me to move.
“Your family really should have vetted their maids better,” she whispers.
“I can’t wait for Mr. Domino to break you.
He’s not a bad lover, don’t get me wrong.
John gave me to him once at a party. His dick is huge, and his knot is thick.
It’s more so that he likes to break pretty things.
Despite how much you’ve done to change your appearance, you’re still just what he likes. Pretty and stupid.”
As the world disappears, I curse her in my mind. She’s going to learn exactly what it means to choose the wrong sister. The world will burn with my anger, and there won’t be anyone to bring me back from my ire.