Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Emily
My eyes snap open. A shiver rolls down my thighs, heat pooling between them. Wetness pulses from my body. For a second, I think I am dreaming. Then I try to move.
A laugh answers me.
My wrists burn as I realize my arms are stretched above my head. Chains bite into my skin, pulling me up toward the ceiling. I hang there, suspended. The room around me glows white and empty.
Beneath me, two women kneel. They are trapped here with me, locked in the same cell. But their mouths are already on me.
Tongues trace the inside of my thighs. Fingers find me, pressing against my clit, then slipping inside me, thrusting and out. My body jerks despite me. I can only manage weak movements, legs flinching back and forth as the chains rattle softly above.
“No,” I shout. My voice cracks. “Get away from me.”
They don’t stop.
I glance over and notice him.
He sits in a red chair, as if he owns the room, his body relaxed, one hand wrapped around his cock as another leans on the chair. His eyes never leave mine as he touches himself slowly.
Zeke.
The twin brother of the man I am falling for.
His face is clean-shaven now, hair falling into his eyes. When he looks at me, the expression is the same one I have seen before.
The same eyes. The same mouth.
They are identical.
“Emily,” he murmurs. His voice crawls over my skin. “Watching you come in the mouths of the girls I will eat is turning me on.”
My throat tightens. I swallow hard, forcing air into my lungs.
“No,” I whisper, the word barely forming. I try to move again.
One of the women spreads my legs wider. The other steps closer, her mouth closing around my clit. She licks slowly in circular motions, then sucks it with her soft, full lips.
My body betrays me. Heat builds, and wetness spreads. I hate the way my muscles tense, the way my breath stutters.
Her hands hold me open. A tongue drags from my clit down, then back up again, pressing deeper, curling, thrusting. I drip onto her face. I can’t stop it.
“That’s it,” Zeke says. “Give them the food they deserve.”
I try to hold it back. I bite down on my lip, but the sound that escapes me is not a word “no”; It is a moan.
Shame burns through me.
This is wrong.
I have no control over my body. My eyes squeeze shut as I try to pretend this is a dream.
But every stroke of her tongue proves it is not.
He is the devil. A true narcissist. Everything he does is for his own pleasure.
I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.
Tears slide down my cheeks as I lock eyes with him. He groans while touching himself, head falling back, mouth open as he growls. His shoulders tense and shake as he jerks off in the chair, lost in his own satisfaction.
He thinks he is a king—a man with power and control over women. And none of us tells him no. He feeds on the power he holds over us. He feeds on misery, on need, on the way our bodies betray us even when our minds fight for our freedom.
“No need to resist, Emily,” he says softly. “They won’t stop until I tell them to. It gives them hope they will live.”
Hope.
The word feels so unreal now.
I am trapped in a cage with a monster wearing the same face as the man my body is falling for. My thoughts spiral, clawing at each other. My heart fractures into pieces, and I have no idea how to put them back together.
Hope is something I no longer have.
I want to close my eyes and let him finish it. Let him kill me. Let him take my life. I know that once he is done with me, surviving will feel impossible.
I break in front of him while he moans in pleasure.
Then my legs twitch.
Strength slowly returns, creeping back into my muscles. Whatever drug he gave me earlier begins to fade. I force my body to move. And with a sharp push, I shove one of the women off me. She falls hard to the floor.
She is fragile, like porcelain. The sound echoes as her body hits, bones snapping from the force.
The second woman steps back, eyes wide.
“Look what you did, Emily,” he says, his voice calm as he rises from the chair.
He comes closer, completely naked now, except for black sneakers on his feet.
His cock is hard in the air as he strokes himself while approaching me.
He shoves the girl away like she was nothing. And she doesn’t fight it. She is so malnourished that she barely stays standing, like one wrong move could snap her in half.
He spins me around, his hand spreading my ass cheeks apart. When I face forward, a large mirror fills my vision.
I see everything. Every movement. Every choice he makes.
As he holds me open, he spits down on my asshole and forces himself inside.
I scream in pain, my eyes squeezing shut, but he only laughs, thrusting in, inch by inch, without slowing down.
A hiss tears from my throat as my back arches, pain rippling through me.
Then I feel another set of hands.
They slide over my breasts, down my stomach, then to my hips before finding my clit. A tongue closes around my nipple. When I open my eyes, I see a woman standing in front of me, sucking my nipples while her fingers work between my legs, gliding inside my inner flesh.
“You are mine now, Emily,” Zeke whispers against my ear as he pushes deeper inside me.
He pins me to him, his palms gripping my ass, holding me steady as he drives into me again and again.
A deep, primal moan rips from my chest.
“You will come for me,” he murmurs, nibbling at my ear. “You will show me how completely you surrender, because you can’t escape this.”
The woman moves lower, her tongue pressing against my clit while her fingers thrust inside me.
My knees buckle. My body tightens, locking around every sensation as my breath comes in broken gasps.
Tears blur my vision, mixing with pleasure and betrayal as I watch myself in the mirror, my body used and exposed, and I can’t do anything about it.
His hand slides up my throat, gripping it. Then his fingers trace from my chin to my mouth, prying it open before he shoves two fingers inside.
“If my brother knew I was fucking you,” he laughs, his cock pulsing inside me as he groans, “he would kill us both.”
And all I see is Zayne’s face in front of me.
My mind tries to tell me he is the one behind me, that this is him, that I can surrender.
I feel weak. So weak.
And then I finally gave in.
My thighs start to shake, my lips parting.
“Oh God,” I whisper between sobs.
The woman pulls her fingers from me and begins to rub my clit. Zeke pulls his cock out, then drives it back inside my inner flesh.
I tighten around him, my eyes closing as my mouth opens on a broken sound. My ass slaps against his skin as he fucks me with full force, thrusting in and out until his cock swells inside me.
He pulls out and steps around to stand in front of me. He grabs the woman by the hair and commands, “Open your eyes, Emily.”
I watch as she takes every drop of his cum into her mouth, her tongue out, swallowing every last bit.
“This is the only food she has every day,” he says.
He shoves her to the floor and comes back to me, jerking the chains so my body swings. The movement makes me twitch. He yanks the chain down hard, forcing me to collapse against his shoulder as he lifts me and carries me out of the room.
As we walk away, I see the woman rush toward another woman lying on the floor. She laughs, then sinks her teeth into her flesh.
I scream, my eyes squeezing shut.
The sound barely leaves my mouth before Zeke spanks my ass hard.
“Shut the fuck up.”
And I do.
There is no reason to fight this. I know if I do, I will only suffer more than I already am.
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper.
“Pleasure,” he says, laughing.
He carries me back to the cell.
This time, I am alone. No one waits inside—just the thin mattress on the floor and the cold walls closing in.
He lowers me down.
The chains come off, metal clattering against the floor below as he tosses them aside. Before I can move, his hands are already there, fastening a collar around my neck.
“If you try to say another word,” he says, “you will get electroshocked.” He chuckles softly. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say, stupid and naive.
The collar answers for him.
Electricity rips through my neck, burning my skin and flooding my spine. My body jerks as the shock tears me apart from the inside. I slide down onto the mattress, muscles seizing, teeth chattering, my whole body shaking as the pain runs through my body.
He laughs.
He climbs on top of me, his weight pressing the air from my lungs.
“You are my pet now, Emily,” he says. “My whole life, I get whatever the fuck I want, and you are the only thing I want now.”
He lowers himself onto my chest. His hands move slowly, gliding over my skin, while his fingers trace down my torso, then close around my breasts, squeezing, claiming me as his.
He takes my hand and presses it into his hair.
“Touch it,” he chuckles. “Love me.”
I want to cry. I want to shove him away. My arms feel useless, my body still humming with pain. The shock still stays locked beneath my skin like a warning that never leaves.
So I comply.
My fingers sink into his hair. I move them slowly, brushing through it, up and down, just enough until he growls.
His arms wrap around me, pinning me down, holding me so tightly I can’t move. My body goes rigid beneath him.
“I won’t let anyone touch you,” he whispers. “I will make sure you love only me.”
My heart slams against my ribs, panicked. Pain spreads through my chest. Silent tears slide from the corners of my eyes, soaking into the mattress beneath my head.
He is destroying me.
And I am still here, breathing, letting him take every piece of me.
I know this feeling. I talked about it so many times.
It’s the feeling of having no way out.
The moment when you are trapped between the need to love someone and the need to let them go, you are trapped. When he lets me touch him, when this big, nasty monster needs my love, needs me to fix him, it makes me feel wanted.
Feeling sinks into my bones.
Even though I know he takes every last piece of my will, the face he wears gives me something dangerous. Zayne’s face. Gives me a sense of safety in a way that hurts. It feels like a fragment of home, like maybe I can still have him. Not Zeke, Zayne.
Even though he is not him.
I find Zayne inside Zeke. I cling to him. I want to love someone. I want to be loved by Zayne, even knowing he wants to kill me.
If I want the torture to stop, I have to let myself go.
I came to Eureka Springs for answers. This case is supposed to bring closure. Families wait for answers about the people whose lives they took. Instead, it gives them nothing but more questions. And now I am trapped, unable to answer any of them.
I hate myself for it.
I hate that I have strength for everyone else, but not for myself. I can help everyone. I can save everyone. But I can’t save myself.
And I hate myself for that.
Now I am just a caged bird. Small, fragile bird. My wings are cut, bleeding stumps where freedom should be. I am afraid to leave the cage because outside, there is nothing to carry me. Being trapped here inside feels safer than flying outside without wings.
This is what they do.
They pull you in with promises and hope. They make you feel chosen. And once you have nothing else to hold onto, every attempt to escape is punished. Each time is worse than the last.
Until you no longer have a choice.
Until survival depends on them.
What have I become?
I used to be strong. Now I am just another victim—a serial killer’s possession. The next missing poster taped to a police station wall.
Would anyone care?
I have nothing waiting for me.
Would a nation rise to find me, or would there be girls out there thirsting over the man who broke another woman to her knees?
Would they choose him or me?
They see his face, the mask he wears so well.
He would tell them it’s all my fault, that I wanted this. And when they start to believe the truth that comes from his mouth, their voices repeat his lies over and over until I am nothing more than another forgotten case.
So, tell me.
What would you choose?
To be a woman, or to be a woman standing beside a man.
No one knows he exists.
And if he comes to you, wearing the mask of a detective, with pretty eyes and a calm voice, promising you will be safe, would you trust him?
I think you would.
Look around.
LOOK!
We all wear dog collars. We are all bound by chains we can’t see. We can’t speak. We can’t scream the truth of our pain, or name the ones who hurt us. We stay silent, swallowing our words, carrying them until one day they become just another file. Another case locked inside a drawer.
And that electricity that surges through our necks when we try to speak, that is not a collar at all. It’s our own mind. It’s fear that forces us to forget who we were always meant to be.
Be loud.
Fucking bark.
In the end, you lose nothing by trying.
I push myself up, shoving him off me.
He laughs in my face.
I run.
I run for myself.
I ran for every victim who was here before me. For every lost and forgotten case.
The collar sparks again, electricity ripping through my body, my muscles jerking as his laughter follows me down the corridor.
I stumble.
I push again.
Because I knew that if I survived, I would be able to tell a story about a woman who didn’t just take it all.
I would be able to tell a story about a woman who tried and fucking survived.