Chapter 11 #2
December 28th
10:11 P.M.
Why was she always the pawn?
Unwanted by her parents, unwanted by her brother, manipulated into becoming the person she was through torture and neglect, and now punished because her brother was a psychopath with delusions of grandeur.
For once in her life, she just wanted to be Rose.
Wanted to matter just because she was herself, a human being, deserving of love and affection.
Never had she wanted to be her parents and Ridge’s little scientist robot, existing only to serve their goals.
Neither did she want to be used by Steel and his team to get their revenge.
When did she get to just be herself and live her own life?
“You were all we had,” Dragon said with a shrug, like her very existence was inconsequential.
Anger sparking, she glared at him. “If anything, I should be the one who gets to use you to seek revenge on my brother. After all, you said you only met him ten years ago, back then I would have been thirteen, Ridge had been raising me for nine years already. I’ve done almost double your time suffering at his hands. ”
The large hands massaging her feet stilled for a moment, and she got the feeling Steel didn't like hearing that he and his team weren't the only ones who had been victims of her brother. Dragon, on the other hand, merely narrowed his eyes at her.
“How do we know you weren't in on everything your brother has done?” he demanded.
That was a ridiculous enough question that it absolutely earned the eye roll of all eye rolls.
“Yeah, I hear the military employs a whole lot of thirteen-year-olds.
Honestly, I can't believe you were all stupid enough to think a man like Ridge cares about anybody other than himself, and anything other than his own goals.”
“We were desperate,” Steel said like that explained away everything.
But it didn't. It didn't explain away the fact that she’d been kidnapped, locked up in a windowless cell with no furniture and no toilet except for a hole in the floor.
Been starved and dehydrated, tortured with hot and cold, whipped, and then almost buried alive.
Okay, the last had been instigated by herself, but of course she was going to try to escape when they were holding her prisoner.
Trailing a finger along the bandages circling her wrist, she looked Steel dead in the eye.
“Oh, you were desperate. Guess that makes it okay then. You want revenge on my brother for doing what he did to you, which granted, is totally messed up, and I have no arguments with you that you deserve it, but going after me only makes you the same as him.”
Steel winced, and she felt the tension in the room rise several notches. It probably wasn't wise to taunt her captors, but honestly, Rose found she’d reached the end of her rope, and apparently, what she found there was a complete lack of care about anything, including what happened to her.
“Just because you might not have been in on it when you were thirteen doesn’t mean you aren't now,” Dragon said defiantly.
“Clinging to that to make yourself feel better?”
“We have no proof you weren't working with him,” Dragon said.
“And using editing romance novels as a cover?” she asked, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
“Look, I’d love to say I'm shocked to find out what my brother did, but the truth is I'm not. Ridge has always been psycho, and he’s always wanted to find out if he could manipulate DNA. When you find my brother, you can kill him. I don’t care.
Actually, that’s a lie, I do care. I know I'd sleep easier knowing he’s dead. But using me to get to him won't work.”
“You're his sister,” Dragon insisted.
“And you're his creations. Using yourself as bait would work better.”
“We talked about that, but he’ll know it’s a trap,” Steel explained.
“He would have known using me was a trap, too.”
“But we were hoping he would have risked it to save you.”
“Then you hoped wrong. Why would Ridge care about saving me when he spent almost a decade and a half abusing me?” Rose wasn't ashamed to admit that she’d been abused.
She understood she’d done nothing wrong, nothing deserving of what her brother had done.
She also understood why other kids who had been abused internalized it and blamed themselves.
It was just different for her because her brother always talked about molding her into his creation. He might not have altered her DNA, but he had still played with her head in his attempts to create a protégé.
“That’s why you were so good at withstanding what we did,” Steel said softly, and she wondered if he realized he’d stopped massaging her feet and was now gently caressing them.
Hardening herself against the soft touches, she just shrugged.
“Starving me, locking me out in the snow without proper clothes, making me sleep in a room that was hotter than the air you were pumping into that cell, whippings, canings, beatings, those were all things I knew how to deal with before I even knew what the word torture was. Ridge’s favorite was locking me in an old well.
There was a cover, so it was completely pitch black, and the bottom was mud, urine, feces, and a little water. I can handle whatever you throw at me.”
Although she jutted her chin out, daring them to disagree, daring them to do their worst, she wasn't prepared for the horrified looks on the faces of the men in the room. Even Dragon looked queasy over what she’d just told them.
Of course, she’d always known what her brother had done to her was sick and twisted, but it had just been normal for her as a kid.
Part of her life as much as schoolwork and chores.
Seeing the horror on the faces of the men who had abducted her with the express purpose of inflicting pain on her, somehow made her childhood abuse seem that much worse.
Spurred on by her righteous anger, Rose shoved down the blanket, ignoring Steel’s protests, and lifted her hips enough to wriggle down her pajama bottoms, exposing the lines of scars up her thighs.
“I didn't get my ability to do first aid through altered DNA. My brother made me learn to put in stitches by practicing on myself. I learned to run fast by being forced to run laps in the middle of the night. I had to start over if I tripped or was pushed so hard that I threw up. I strengthened my muscles with chores that were too hard for a little girl to do alone, but I knew I had no choice so I figured it out.”
Shivering even though her body had mostly warmed back up, Rose was breathing hard as she tugged her pajama bottoms back into place. She tucked the blanket around herself again, using it as a shield of sorts even though the thin material offered no protection from anything but the cold.
“There is nothing you can do that will break me, and nothing that will get Ridge to care enough to risk his own life for mine.” Taking a deep breath, she said the words fearlessly, even though she didn't want them to be true. “So you may as well just kill me and get it over and done with.”
With a growl, Steel reached out and grabbed her, hauling her into his lap. Around her, displeased grunts echoed from the others, and when she looked around at all of them, she was totally confused as to why they cared so much about killing her all of a sudden.
“How many times do I have to say you aren't dying, little ladybug?” Steel demanded.
Bracing the palm of her good hand on his chest, she balanced her hand with the cast awkwardly beside it and tried to ignore the fact that with her legs spread over his thick thighs, her center was pressed directly against the bulge in his pants.
“I don’t believe you,” she said simply. “I don’t think your buddy Dragon buys that I was abused by my brother, and he wants to kill me.
I heard him say it after you got me out of the basement. ”
“Dragon is an idiot who messed up with the woman he likes because of our plan to go after you,” Steel explained, and since Dragon didn't disagree, she assumed that was true.
“Using me won't work,” she reminded them.
“We get that now.”
“You won't let me go.”
“Can't,” Steel corrected. “Someone broke into your house. If we send you back home, your brother will have you picked up and taken to him. My guess is he’ll try to torture you for information on us, see if you know where we took you.”
Yep, that sounded like what her brother would do.
But where did that leave her?
“I was going to take you home,” Steel told her, one of his large hands hesitating before palming her cheek. “When you did your impressive little gymnastics trick, I was cooking you dinner. I was going to lace it with sedatives, wait until you passed out, then we were taking you home.”
“I want to believe that,” Rose said softly, finding that it was true, she desperately wanted there to be at least one person in her life who she could depend on and trust. “But I still don’t know where that leaves me now.
You say you don’t want to kill me, but you also say that you won't take me home and let me go back to my life. Which means the only other option is that you intend to keep me here as your prisoner indefinitely.”