Chapter 38 What Have They Done To Her?
What Have They Done To Her?
Tess to Kai: I shouldn’t have left you. [unsent]
Tess
You hear a lot of statistics about the likelihood of sexual assault and rape. Last I heard it was one in five. Who knows if that’s even accurate.
I’d always been lucky—one of the ones that hadn’t experienced anything like that.
Now, lying in the cold, wet, dirt, my entire body in pain, I’m not so lucky anymore.
Nikolai has ruined me.
His friends just watched, laughing at my plight.
I tried to fight. I promise I did.
But by the end I was just so very tired. Tired of the pain. Tired of life.
“You can stay out here until you’re ready to be civil,” Nikolai spits, throwing something over me, before six sets of footsteps squelch away. The rain is coming down hard now.
My hair is plastered to my skin, shivers wracking my naked body.
I hope I die out here.
It would be a mercy, I think.
For the first time in my life, I have nothing left to hold onto. No jokes. No sharp words. Just the weight of my own skin and the knowledge that I don’t belong in it anymore.
Usually, I’m pretty good at covering my problems with humour.
There’s no joke to cover this. No sharp wit for me to hide behind. There’s just the sound of the rain and the hollow ache in my chest.
I don’t bother moving.
What’s the point?
I made the worst mistake of my life by leaving. By handing myself over to a monster.
Kai’s face flits through my mind. The image cracks my heart in two.
He’ll have read my note. I can picture the heartbreak in his expression. Will he have crumpled it up? Thrown it away? Kept it?
None of it matters.
I’ll never see him again.
That thought might actually be worse than the rest of the pain I’m in.
I could endure this if I knew it would end some other way than with me trapped here, tied to a man I hate.
I’m not sure how long I lay in the mud. Long enough for the light to change, for the rain to fade and the sun to shine.
Then long enough again for the sun to dip once more, beginning to set on the horizon.
My body is stiff. It’s been hours. A day? I don’t really know.
All I know is that I’m numb.
No one comes to disturb me.
Guess Nikolai meant what he said. That I could come back inside when I was ready to be civil. That limp-dicked, crusty-foreskinned, cum-gobbling, titty-wanking, shit-stained, twat-faced, asshole.
Fucking civil?
Fuck that.
A sound to my right has me lifting my head in time to see a blur of movement. I can’t make them out through the bushes. But someone is there. Just outside the property line.
It’s probably one of Nikolai’s men. But on the off chance it’s not—I let out a garbled moan of pain.
A twig snaps.
Then footsteps and hushed voices.
“Tessa?” someone whispers yells.
My head snaps up, trying to locate the source.
“A little more to your right,” the voice calls.
Finally, I spot them.
Three men, hiding in the bushes that line the property.
I push myself up from the ground for the first time in hours, coughing at the pain as I do.
A top falls to the floor beside me.
Dirt is smeared in places you never want dirt to be, but I’m grateful I can at least cover myself somewhat.
I stand, ready to run if I need to.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” the voice calls again.
“That’s what someone who was going to hurt me would say,” I joke weakly.
“We’re here with Enzo.”
My eyes meet his again.
There’s no Russian lilt. He’s all American.
The relief is immediate.
But then.
A gunshot.
I jolt.
Body trembling with fear once more.
“Shit!” someone hisses. “Tessa, come one. We need to get out of here.”
“Where’s Enzo?” I ask, not moving towards them yet.
One of them makes an impatient noise in the back of their throat. “Just grab her. We need to go.”
Oh, no the fuck you don’t.
I take off running. Sprinting towards where I think I heard the shot come from.
I don’t know why, but something tells me to go that way.
Shouts of disapproval call out to me from behind, but I keep going.
“Where is she!?” The loud roar of Enzo is unmistakable as I throw the door to the mansion open.
No one sees me—everyone’s eyes locked on Enzo and Nikolai as they stand with their guns raised at each other.
Enzo is positioned by the large staircase, Nikolai by an open doorway to the left. Their focus is entirely on each other.
The body of one of Nikolai’s friends lies on the ground, a bullet between his eyes. Satisfaction courses through me.
My eyes dart around the room. Nate and Carina stand together, fingers twirling around their knives, twin expressions of sinister thrill.
Nikolai barks out a sinister laugh. “You brought knives to a gunfight. How cute.”
Carina flashes him a saccharine smile. “Don’t worry about us, we can handle ourselves.” To drive the point home, she flicks her wrist and hits one of the guards dead between the eyes before he has time to react.
All hell breaks loose as guns start firing and Carina and Nate start throwing knives like it’s their job. Guess it kind of is. The two of them move in perfect synchrony, as they dodge bullets.
More of Nikolai’s men fall, hit by bullets or knives.
A few of Enzo’s get struck down too.
My body stays locked, frozen in place as I watch the scene unfold.
Eventually only Nikolai remains.
His head swivels around the room, looking for an escape.
He spots me.
His grin is feral as he lifts the gun, his finger tightening on the trigger.
I don’t think.
I drop, the cold floor slamming into my knees as the air splits with a deafening crack.
Kai
My pulse hammers in my ears, a constant reminder of how useless I feel just waiting. I should be out there, doing something, anything. Instead, I'm a damn liability with this boot—sitting here like a coward. I hate it. I’ve never hated being on the sidelines this much before.
It’s always been the same with Nate. I’ve stood beside him, let him take the reins, handled the planning while he executed (literally). But this is different. This is Tess.
Despite having planned everything, I still feel out of control. And not out of control in the way that being around Tess makes me feel. This is feeling like I want to be part of the plan, to be the one who protects her.
This whole time, life has been throwing danger and obstacles at her, and someone else is always the one to save her. Or she saves herself.
It should be me. What use am I to her otherwise?
Despite promising to stay out the way, I make my way into the house through the back door.
We disabled the security systems, so there’s no issues there.
I hear the sound of shouting from the front of the house and move as quietly as I can towards it.
My finger rests on the trigger of the handgun Enzo gave me a few hours ago, despite him not expecting me to need to use it.
I hope I don’t need to. I’ve never fired a gun.
Slowly creeping (as best as someone can creep while hobbling on a broken leg) towards the shouts, I freeze at the door, the scene unfolding before me like something out of a nightmare.
The air is thick with the smell of gunpowder and blood.
Nate and Carina move with lethal precision, their knives a blur, but my eyes—my eyes lock onto her.
Tess.
She’s there.
Her skin streaked with dirt, hair matted against her forehead, face filled with fear and confusion.
For a moment, everything stops. Time drags. I can’t breathe.
What have they done to her?
My heart skips a beat as I see Nikolai’s eyes lock onto Tess. My entire body screams in panic, my hand trembling as I raise the gun.
There’s no time to second guess.
There’s no time to think. If I don’t act now, she’s dead.
My finger presses down on the trigger with a force I didn’t know I had, and the gunshot rips through the chaos.