Chapter 28 #2
When my eyes land on Doc, I nearly break.
It was Doc who once told me that kindness wasn’t weakness, that forgiveness and love are strengths, that being independent isn’t always a good thing.
He blinks slowly, the chains creaking as he shifts.
When he sees me, his mouth parts like he might say my name.
He doesn’t. He can’t. But something in him softens.
Doc of all of them will know what I’m doing and why.
He looks at me with understanding, forgiving me for what I’m about to do.
They don’t ask why I’m here. Not with words.
Zeke grins, a knife glinting between his fingers as he toys with it like a magician with a coin.
“Now, Lena, while we’ve been getting to know each other better,” he says, voice syrup-thick and venom-sweet, “It’s become apparent that these kidnapping monsters are in love with you.
” He chuckles, as if the notion is ridiculous.
“And that they actually believe you could ever love them back.”
He looks at me directly now, and I freeze, like a deer trapped in headlights. My fight or flight instincts are racing. I won’t run. And I can’t fight, not with my fists anyway. So I have to use the only option available to me. I have to manipulate Zeke without him even knowing it.
“So, to prove you’re not theirs,” he says, “to prove that you are mine, I want you to pick one.” He gestures toward the men with a lazy flick of his blade. “Pick who goes first.”
My stomach drops. For a heartbeat, I’m not in my body. I’m floating, watching myself from the ceiling, a ghost in a girl’s skin.
I’d rehearsed for this. I’d planned for this. A hundred cruel phrases lined up in my mind like knives. Cold enough to convince him. Subtle enough to spare them.
But now, in the light of their pain, all my lies feel thin and shivering.
I force my shoulders back, make my spine steel. I try to channel Mary Beth’s dismissive sneer, the way she used to look at people like they were ants.
“I don’t care, each of them deserves what’s coming to them,” I say.
It slices through the room like a blade.
Rex’s gaze snaps to mine. For a moment, a terrible, heart-wrecking moment, he believes me. He thinks I mean it. That the woman who has loved him from the first moment we met is now willing to let him die without blinking. That I don’t care if he lives or dies.
His brows twitch together. Pain and resignation settle into his expression. The trust collapses, and I can’t breathe. But I don’t break. I won’t. Because if I do, Zeke wins.
Zeke’s smile stretches wide, teeth like a wolf’s glinting in the dark. “Cold,” he says approvingly. “Beautifully cold.”
He stalks over to Rex and grips his jaw, forcing his face upward. “She says she doesn’t care about you. How’s that feel, lover-boy?”
Rex doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t fight. But the sound he makes behind the gag breaks another piece of me. It’s the sound of grief wrapped in silence.
Zeke doesn’t wait to see if I’m watching; he knows I can’t look away.
He drags the knife across Rex’s chest, producing a shallow ribbon of red, and then punches him hard in the ribs. The sound is hollow and booming. Rex jerks, gasps through the gag, convulsing against the restraints as blood bubbles from his nose.
I lock my knees to keep myself from falling.
Zeke is deliberate. He doesn’t simply beat them; he curates a different brand of torture for each one.
A broken bottle to Judge’s knuckles, slow and grinding.
A boot to Cole’s stomach so hard that he vomits blood.
A backhanded slap to Doc’s handsome face that snaps his head sideways like a marionette with its strings cut.
They don’t scream. Not the way you’d expect. It’s worse, it’s the sound of men trying not to break even as they’re being torn apart, limb from limb.
Doc tries to crawl toward the others, his brothers, chains clattering, teeth bared in agony like a man who knows he’s already dead. A guard yanks him back. The thud of his body hitting the wall makes my ears ring. I want to scream. I don’t.
“You could beg for them,” Zeke whispers near my ear.
I turn to him, putting on my mask. “Beg? For what?” My voice is as flat as the edge of his knife. “Mercy? Forgiveness? You and I both know those words don’t come out of your mouth.”
He laughs, pleased. “Come on. Let’s see some real desperation, Lena.”
I try to block it out, the sounds of the screams he manages to wrench from them.
I’m a statue made of cool, hard marble. There to simply observe but remain untouched by my surroundings, standing sentinel.
What Zeke is forcing me to bear witness to lives in me now.
It will live in me forever. But I can’t break the lie.
So I stay silent.
Zeke grows bored of the blood, of my lack of reaction, and turns to mind games.
He whispers stories, grotesque, believable lies, of how I betrayed each of them.
He tells Rex I begged him to kill them, that I only stayed because I was afraid of them.
He tells Judge that I laughed behind his back and mocked his scars.
He tells Doc I called him weak and a fool.
Cole can’t hide the grimace on his face as Zeke creates fictional sexual scenarios, talking of all the times we were sleeping together behind their backs.
He tells them Mary Beth’s lie, which they almost once believed, that I was his spy, his lover, working with him all along.
I don’t correct him.
The truth would only doom us all.
So I feed the poison with my silence. Let the lies curl into the air like smoke, each one choking me further.
I tell myself this is survival. That love, real love, wears masks when it must. That if I have to become the villain in their eyes to keep them breathing, then so be it.
But God help me, if we survive this, I don’t know if they’ll ever forgive me.
And I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself.