Chapter 20 #2
Ridge laughed. “Make no mistake about it, little sister, they are monsters. I created them. I found a way to shut down their consciences. The last time I saw them, they were nothing more than animals, barely able to control themselves, consumed with anger.”
“Of course, they were angry, you were holding them prisoner.”
“I was studying them,” Ridge corrected, like his word choice made any difference to what he’d done.
Holding people captive in a cell so they couldn’t leave and controlling every aspect of their lives was one hundred percent holding them prisoner, no matter how her brother wanted to dress it up to pretend he was merely playing at science.
“You're delusional if you think any one of them can care for you.” Ridge scoffed. “They aren't capable of it. I saw it myself, you lived it, they whipped you raw.”
Rose wasn't arguing that point.
That was exactly what Steel and the others had done to her.
But then Steel had forced her to take the sedatives, and he and Voodoo had patched her up.
The same thing they’d done after she pulled the ceiling down on top of herself.
Her memories were hazy, but she’d heard the genuine fear in Steel’s voice as he told her she wasn't allowed to die, and he’d ordered Dragon not to kill her.
She wasn't deluding herself into thinking Steel was a normal guy, or that he was ever going to be one. Her brother had messed with his DNA, and that was never going to change, but he wasn't really a monster.
The monster in all of this was Ridge himself.
“Do you have any idea the time and money they’ve cost me?” Ridge ranted, his gaze darting between her and the forest around them as the car picked up speed. “Because they got free, I lost my funding to keep working with the military. That cost me access to the kind of subjects I needed.”
“You didn't stop, though,” she said, confident nothing would stop her brother once he became fixated on something. Ridge and Steel had that in common.
“Of course, I didn't stop. But none of my other subjects can withstand the anger. It either leads them to kill the others, or they wind up suicidal and end their own lives. I need those men back, I need to see what made them different, how they withstood the changes.”
“They didn't just withstand them. They thrived. They live productive lives working for the best private security company in the world. They built their own little family unit, and yes, they hurt me, yes, they used me, but then they realized it was wrong and they started to … accept me.” That was the best way she could describe how things had changed between her and Delta Team. They might not be the kind of men to tell her they were sorry, and to tell her she could be one of them, but she was there, they’d trusted her to help them with their quest for vengeance, which spoke louder than any words ever could.
“Stupid little Rose, always so desperate for love and affection,” Ridge mocked. “They’re not sorry they hurt you, they just found a better way of using you. Playing nice to get you to agree to play bait for them.”
Maybe she would have believed that if it were true, but Steel had been adamantly against the idea.
He hadn't wanted to risk her safety, he’d just known it was the best course of action.
She’d had to talk him into it, and the fact that he’d been on his knees throwing up after burning the soles of her feet told her everything she needed to know.
If Steel was a monster, she didn't care, because he was her monster. It was the craziest thing in the world to even consider any sort of future with the man who had been her captor, but he gave her everything she needed, everything she craved, everything she’d thought she would never get.
Threatening to spank her for causing herself more pain made her feel seen and cared for, while also giving in to her need for pain.
They had so much to learn about one another, but the thing was, she actually wanted to learn everything there was to know about her crazy captor.
Steel dominated her in a way she needed someone to take over and let her mind check out for a while, and yet he tucked a blanket around her so she wasn't cold, or massaged her feet to warm them, and cooked her homemade meals. He was possessive and jealous and obsessive, but he had a softer side he believed had been eliminated by her brother’s overzealous games.
She wanted to help him realize it still existed.
And she needed someone to help her find her own softer side, which had been buried under layers of trauma so deep she had no idea how to go about finding it.
“You can believe whatever you want, but it doesn’t mean they aren't coming for me,” she told her brother.
“Coming for me,” Ridge corrected with all the arrogance she would have expected from him. He truly seemed to believe that the entire world revolved around him. He was the sun and everyone else was the planets. Whatever he wanted was all that mattered, and nothing that happened didn't involve him.
“For both of us.” Rose wouldn't pretend that Steel and his team didn't want her brother dead, they absolutely did, and since he’d tried to run, they’d be coming after him so they could get their vengeance. But she also knew Steel would go to the ends of the earth for her.
“Stupid little girl. Get it through your head, they’re just using you.
They cannot empathize with you or feel guilt over what they did to you.
They tricked you like the stupid child you are, and if they use you to get to me, they’ll only kill you without remorse because you're a loose end they don’t care about.
I don’t understand how someone related to me can be so stupid, and—”
“And I don’t understand why someone related to me is such a psychopath,” Rose snapped as she reached out from her position and yanked on the wheel as hard as she could.
The guys were coming after her, she knew they were despite Ridge’s rant, and she wanted to make sure Ridge wasn't able to get them too far away. She wanted this over now. Listening to her brother demean her while acting like he was the smartest person to have ever existed was too much.
Ridge howled in annoyance and tried to wrangle control of the steering wheel back. To do that, he had to release his grip on her broken arm, and since the limb was already screaming in agony, Rose thought she may as well go for it.
Latching her good hand onto the wheel, she let her body drop forward, down into the recess in front of the driver’s seat. Tangled with Ridge’s legs though she was, she pressed her bad arm onto the gas pedal, making the car jerk forward.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ridge snarled, trying to make a grab for her.
Using her body to push him out of the way, Rose pressed down further on the gas pedal, making the car’s speed dramatically pick up.
“You're going to kill us both,” Ridge screamed.
“I’d rather kill us both and be done with it than let you go on experimenting on people like you’re a god.
You're no god, Ridge Gardner, you’re just a plain old flesh and blood human, with a large slice of demon thrown in,” she screamed back, pressing all the way down on the gas pedal as her hand still on the wheel yanked hard to the left.
As far as she was concerned, taking out her brother was the best thing she could ever do with her life, and would have the added bonus of infuriating him to know the little sister he placed zero value on had been the one to end his life.
For the first time ever, she had something worth living for, but Steel would still find the peace he’d craved in knowing that the man who had played with his DNA was dead, even if she died along with Ridge.
They fought over the steering wheel, and Rose never let up on the gas pedal.
Not until the car plowed into something, sending pain rippling through her entire body, did a deadly quiet, calm, blackness descend on her mind as she fell into unconsciousness.