36. To own is to…. Destroy
Chapter thirty-six
To own is to…. Destroy
T he space between my legs is tacky, the crippling, burning pain there like a side note to various other wounds as I walk into the common space outside our cells. Not because I want to, but they whistled. The price for ignoring their calls is too steep for me to pay today. I watch as the other girls look at me, some with various degrees of disgust, others with panic. I’m not obeying.
I can’t even muster the same anxiety I see in their eyes, the sobbing that drifts through the concrete halls at night. Gemma is making her rounds. I’ve found it’s her job to care for the girls, keep them fed and clean like a housemother at a sorority. Only, this isn’t a sorority. We’re sex slaves, and instead of pep rallies and cheer camp, we get gangbangs and torcher games. My blonde hair hangs around my face, oily, my nose now and then flaring as it gets a whiff of something I can only assume is me.
I want to wash.
I’m supposed to wash.
Most certainly, I have a UTI, judging by the whimpers and tears that fill my eyes every time I pee.
But I don’t wash.
I’ve kept track, though. Of the days. It has been five months.
The place I’m kept now isn’t the same cell as before, but it’s barely better. Tiny, rectangular windows let in a modicum of light, far from the expansive stained glass and rolling hills, the grass that moved like waves. The heads of Bloom, Mistress and… Maste r come and go, taking, biting, fucking and choking. That’s who called today. Her . Her pretty, sharp features seem like a perfect mask for the brutality she holds. Gemma passes me, her eyes going wide before she plants her hands on my chest, shoving me backward toward my room.
“What in the world, child?” She hisses, although she doesn’t sound angry, only…panicked. “Are you trying to get yourself killed? If she sees you like this…” The older woman shudders as she all but shoves me into my days-old cleansing tub. The frigid water makes me gasp, my hands slapping out to grip the edges as she tries to rile the old suds.
That old panic tickles my chest, but for months, it has been unable to take root as water pours over my face.
It’s almost like it isn’t happening.
Anything at all.
Of course, I can feel it, the things they do to my body, but it’s not me. It’s not happening to me. It’s happening to another woman. Chloe . Some unfortunate, pitiful person I don’t know. I can sympathize the way you do when you hear about a car accident on the news. It’s sad, and you might get a tinge in your chest before you smile because it’ll be sunny and warm for your extended weekend. Only, I’m not smiling, and it’s been so long since I felt warm.
My thoughts, as they often do, turn to sage and oak, angry hazel eyes and touches that are adoring and soft as she thrusts her hand between my legs, mumbling to herself as she scrubs me.
“Hey, listen to me!” She scolds quietly, her brows furrowing as her hand pauses on my forehead. “You feel feverish.”
“I think I have a UTI. My vagina hurts, and it burns when I pee. ”
She shakes her head. “You’re supposed to tell me these things so I can help. Have you been eating?”
I shake my head.
“You’ve been in this life long enough to know better. What did that man do to you?” She asks, mostly to herself as she frantically tries to get me presentable, but we both know it won’t help. There isn’t enough time. This filth has been weeks in the making. It seems my shiny new car smell finally wore off, other lilies coming and going. Now, my visitors are mostly made up of trainers and other higher-ups. They rarely complain.
Her question bounces back to me after my mind finishes wandering.
What did that man do to you?
That vivid pain tickles my chest, the one he put there.
“He loved me,” I whisper.
Her hands still as they scrub at me, her forehead coming to rest against mine. That maternal touch reminds me so much of before my first stay here, when hers was the first touch of kindness I’d felt in ages. But now, instead of my mom, it's Mahari who haunts me, her gentle laugh and smile. My eyes well with tears for a moment before that too fades.
“They don’t fall for the whores. Ever. Put him out of your mind, or you won’t survive this.” The words are grave, spoken in a way that hints at a heartbreak of her own, but I don’t press. I just don’t…care.
“They’re coming. You need to go.”
“It’s my job to take care of you girls.”
“It’s Mistress,” I warn, wishing she’d just go. I knew what would happen when my behavior got back to her, when Sir told her I was refusing to eat, to bathe, to fuck . I wasn’t being any fun, and they can’t have that. I delivered a lackluster performance at my last party, laying limp as they took my mouth and ass, like a corpse.
That’s what this feels like.
A small death.
One of countless ones .
Because it doesn’t matter if I’m good , if I perform well, or make things fun for them. They rape and pillage all the same. My body sometimes responds when I’m lucky, but even that is barely enough cause to blink, let alone moan and writhe.
She jerks me from the tub, and I rush along with her—not for me, but because I don’t want her to get punished for helping. That’s one big rule here, the biggest. Aside from obeying , we don’t interact. Don’t help each other. We aren’t friends, sisters, or even humans. We’re ghosts haunting the same space on different planes of reality and suffering.
We were sisters and brothers.
Friends.
Moms, sons, and daughters at some point.
Before they took that.
And I love one of them, one of the ones who inflicted this on me by playing into it, by being a part of it, so I suppose that doesn’t make me any better. Especially because I still love him, so much that it hurts.
It’s agonizing, truly. Hellish, even, what he left behind.
I don’t react as Mistress turns the corner, her painted lips pulled into a deep frown. “Keeping you sweet was as much of a disservice to you as it was your former owner…and now me , seeing as I’ll be the one correcting your incompetent trainer and my husband’s mistakes.” She actually says it as if it’s a gift, a favor she’s doing me.
I stand there, sopping wet, staring at her with the same amount of expression as a doorknob. I should be terrified.
In a way, I am.
It will hurt, whatever comes next.
“Your former house might have been comfortable with your disobedience, but I will not be, seeing as your previous lessons didn’t take.” Her lips hitch up into a tiny smirk before she soothes it away. “I shouldn’t have let him sell you out from underneath me, but that’s neither here nor there. You will not embarrass the House of Bloom. Come .”
Let him sell me out from under you ?
I dip my head, padding over to her before she turns, snapping at the older woman. “And you.”
Panic rises in my chest. “She—” The smack Mistress lands on me is enough to send me to my ass, all my breath leaving me at once. Pain flares across my cheek, my hand slamming up to press the reddened skin, only to come back bloody, where her nail caught on her hand's path across my face.
“Come.”
We do, dread for the first time in months laying heavily in my stomach.
Grandma hardens her jaw when she sees me wipe at my tears frantically, making me miss a note.
“For Christ's sake, Chloe,” she mutters. Not to me, but I hear it all the same. The concert hall is enormous, the melody echoing back at me as I glance out at the empty seats that, in an hour, will be filled with the who’s who of her high society friends.
My eye patch sits discarded in my lap, the stage lights and my tears making my blurry eye burn like hell. It would help to have it on, but Grandma says it’s ugly, distracting from the music, so I don’t dare ask. When another wayward tear makes me miss a key, her hand connects roughly with the back of my head. It hurts, sure, but not much. It’s just…jarring, the way it tightens my chest and makes my lungs squeeze in on themselves. “Enough crying!”
My bottom lip wobbles, knowing it’s probably for the best Mom and Dad refused another invite. It’s probably best…
A sob bursts free from my chest, and she slaps me again. My cheeks puff out, my chest gripped with the effort to keep in my next sob, because I miss them. I miss them so much. I practiced so hard, for Mom, so she’d be… I don’t know, happy? Maybe? Maybe she’d smile at me again. Maybe I could remind her I’m her baby too.
Or I was.
I’m sixteen now. I’ve even got my license, thanks to Grandma's driver. Since I left, they’ve never come to a concert, not a single school event. Daddy-daughter dances spent on the sidelines with a lump in my throat. Stuffed in frilly dresses for proms and events I was forced to attend. After a while, I stopped asking not to, unable to stomach Grandma’s harsh blows to the tune of Renee would have loved to attend a prom . Do it for her .
My scabbed and bloody hands slam the keys of the piano as I jerk up off the bench, listening to Grandma screeching as I run off the stage, bursting at the seams and knowing there’s no reprieve. No arms to run into and no shoulder to bury my head in. There’s nothing but tears.
Endless, endless tears held at bay by rapidly blinking eyes and deep, steadying breaths.
I knew it the moment we crossed the threshold of the adjoining room, that something terrible was about to happen. To me, her, or both, I wasn’t sure. Whatever primal thing we have in us to warn us when we’re in danger was flaring, every red flag waving, just nearly two years too late. My defeated heart pumps like crazy in my chest, adrenaline crashing through my veins, my body readying to either fight or flee. Both responses have long been beaten out of me; I do neither. Judging by the resignation in Gemma’s eyes, I can tell she feels the same. The men jerk us into position and standing guard at the door, every bit as useless as the locks.
Nobody here cares enough to fight anymore.
Sexual sadism isn’t something that afflicts women often. It’s more of a man’s thing. Everything that comes next is gifted to us in slow motion and high definition. The sound of the cuffs being fastened to our ankles and wrists, the sound of the metal-tipped wipe made as it connects with flesh. Mistress’ laughter rises above it all, her taunting, the catcall whistles, the guttural moans of pleasure as she fondles her cunt and tits.
My head lulls as she stalks over to the table, using some kind of tool to redefine the line of whatever she has been snorting for the past hour. Her breath leaves her in a sigh after she takes in the white powder, her burgundy-painted nails gripping the edge of the table as she arches her back like a cat. I can feel my heartbeat in my ears, everything weighing a thousand times what it usually does as I swallow hard, forcing myself to look over at Gemma.
Somehow, I find it in me to watch. My stomach curdles at every piston of the automated machine positioned between her legs. The large and wide, cone-shaped dildo gradually works its way deeper inside her, blood squelching with each thrust. The older woman is limp, her chin touching her chest, her long silver hair threaded with streaks of black unraveled from her bun. My chin wobbles, and fuck, I can’t stop it when vomit surges up my throat. The kind, quiet older woman is in some kind of fucked up reverse cowgirl, and the machine isn’t stopping.
It’s my fault.
My putrid, sticky, hot bile runs down my chest as Mistress grabs the hose, washing me off again. I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve done this.
“Next time you’re lucky enough to be at an event, how will you behave?”
I sob. My body is an open wound as she shouts over the water, the icy stream as good as salt in every cut. “I’ll be good.”
It’s the same thing I’ve been promising for hours.
“ Good, because it’s coming up quick, and I’m quite excited to display you in your new form,” she taunts, her strong perfume filling my nose as she grips my hair. “Part of me hopes you mess up. I’ve been dying to have you in my room from the moment I saw you. Little Lily, will you cry for him more? Your former master? He sent people to check in on you, you know? At that fucking bathhouse he tried to hide you away in. Sent his snakes to make sure they were holding up their end of the bargain. Keeping you like a showpiece, no touching allowed . A lily of my house, rotting away, collecting dust, her sweet petals left to wilt without cock and pain to give them their vibrance? It’s funny, the things men will lie to their masters about, if only you wave enough cash in their faces.” Bile churns in my gut again.
He didn’t send me here.
He didn’t send me back here.
I sob, the realization ripping the hole in my chest wider because of course, he’d try to protect me, control my fate even after tossing me out. He loves me.
She wiggles out of her underwear, jerking my face into her cunt. “Lick it like I taught you.”
I drag my tongue over her soaked core, letting my mind drift to molten hazel eyes and the depths of the sea. It’s her nasty, scathing voice, so much like Grandma’s, that forces me back from that faraway place. “He never saw it coming, not until it was too late. It was Bloom's bullet that pierced his father’s arrogant skull. As if fucking Tyet has the balls to turn on the proud House of Serpents.” She lets out a throaty moan as I slow. “How ironic that all these years later, we take from him again, right under his nose.”
I still, her words sinking in as she grinds into my face, making it impossible to breathe.
“Fuck, there you go.”
I don’t know if it’s the lack of oxygen, that admittance given in the heat of the moment, or the deep lashes covering my front that make my eyes roll back in my skull, darkness edging my vision.