18. Roman
ROMAN
The corridors seem endless, and masses of people, who I assume are patients since they’re all wearing the same pink outfit, hurry toward me.
There’s no use in hiding. I’m here to find Ophelia, and I remind myself that I’m dressed as a member of staff.
That should give me some authority over the patients.
They all seem dazed and frightened, but I don’t know if that’s their normal state or it’s because I’ve cut the lights.
I silently ask the old gods for guidance, to show me the way to Ophelia.
They’re disappearing through the doors lining the corridor, one by one. I assume they’ve been given instructions to return to their rooms until the power is returned. That means Ophelia has most likely returned to her room, too. The problem is, how the hell do I know which one she’s in?
One of the patients stops right in front of me.
“How long are we supposed to stay in our rooms?” the young man asks. He’s skinny, his blue eyes pale and unfocused.
He clearly thinks I work here.
“Until the lights come back on.”
He’s not suspicious of me, and none of the other patients seem to be either. Truthfully, they are too drugged up to care, and I bet lots of temporary staff work in these places. I just need to ask where she is.
I try to get the attention of an older woman, but she’s in a daze and doesn’t seem to notice I’m there. A girl closer to my age catches my eye. I’m drawn to her, though I can’t say why.
“Do you know which room Ophelia Sinclair is in?”
She narrows her eyes at my question. “Why?”
Her gaze is focused, and she’s a lot sharper than the other patients in her scrutiny of me.
“She needs help.” I keep my reply deliberately vague. I don’t want to announce I’m here to break her out, but I also don’t want to say something that might prompt this girl to hide Ophelia’s information from me.
“Room one-oh-four.” She jerks her head down the corridor. “Door on your right.”
“Thanks.” I hope she’s there.
I sense the girl looking over her shoulder at me, watching me go. Is she wondering if I mean Ophelia harm? Does she want to protect her? I’m glad Ophelia already has people here who are looking out for her.
I find Ophelia’s room, but I don’t bother to knock. If she’s there, we’re not going to have time for niceties. We’ll need to get the hell out of here before anyone realizes something is going on.
Cracking open the door, I stick my head inside and freeze.
For a split second, my brain doesn’t compute what I’m seeing.
Do I have the wrong room? There’s a man on the bed.
But then I see he has his pants halfway down, and I catch a glimpse of white-blonde hair and a slender body pinned under him.
She’s struggling but unable to move due to the way he has her bent over and held down.
I don’t think. I just react.
Adrenaline surges through me as I grab the man by the back of his shirt and haul him off Ophelia.
I don’t stop there. I keep swinging him around until he collides with the wall opposite.
He lets out an oofff of surprise. I know I haven’t done much damage—yet—but my main concern is Ophelia.
She’s still face down on the bed, and her pants are halfway down her thighs. Has the son of a bitch raped her?
Her shoulders shake as she cries, and she reaches back to pull her pants up.
With relief, I note her panties are still in place, but I doubt they would have stayed that way for much longer.
I want to hold her, to tell her she’s safe now and that I’m here, but I still have the motherfucker who was trying to hurt her to deal with.
He’s recovered a little now. The collision with the wall must have dazed him, but, like a bird that’s flown into a window, only to stun itself for a moment, he seems to be coming back around.
There’s confusion in his eyes, especially when he clocks my staff uniform but clearly doesn’t recognize the person wearing it.
He takes a couple of staggered steps toward me, but his pants are still halfway down and limit his movements. He seems to have forgotten, and he glances down, as though wondering what’s constricting him. I follow his line of sight and my gaze lands on his erect cock.
Red hot rage flares inside me. This fucker was going to stick his cock inside Ophelia, while she was crying on the bed and he held her down.
In a swift motion, I reach down, freeing the small switch blade from the conceal carry holster I have around my waist, hidden beneath my shirt.
I’d worried about the outline being seen, or the use of metal detectors on the way in, but my blade is enhanced ceramic, so it shouldn’t set off any detectors, and, in the eventuality there were none, so my worries had been unfounded.
The blade is small, but wickedly sharp.
This bastard hasn’t even noticed I’m holding it.
He grips his cock and waggles it around. “You ruined my fun. We can always share, you know? Plenty of the scrawny bitch to go around.”
Red edges in on the periphery of my vision, turning the wall behind him a bloody shade.
I’m taken back to my childhood when my uncle would make me go into a closet with him so we could have some ‘special’ time together.
It’s all I can see. This fucking asshole morphs into my uncle, and the rage bubble inside me explodes.
I take a couple of steps closer to the guy, stopping right in front of him.
I don’t want to touch his dick, but I force myself to grab it with one hand. To my disgust, it grows harder in my hand.
“What the fuck?” the guy exclaims. Then his expression changes. “Oh, I get it. You want a piece of the action, huh? I don’t normally swing that way, but I’ll never say no to a hand job. If you use your mouth, even better.”
I’m distantly aware that Ophelia has her clothes back in place and has turned to face us.
“Roman?”
There’s disbelief and shock in her voice, as though she can’t quite trust her own eyes.
“You know this bitch?” the guy says, jerking his head in her direction. He nudges his hips forward, trying to get me to move my hand up and down on his cock. “Look, like I say, I’m happy to share. You can fuck her first, if you want. I like to watch. You can give me a handy while you screw her.”
He pumps his hips again, and his erection slides through my grip. The sensation of the hardness beneath the silk of his skin sickens me, but I hold him tighter.
He blinks. “Careful, dude. You might want to ease up a little.”
Moving my other hand swiftly, I bring the blade up, so the sharp edge meets the underside of his cock, right at the base. I grit my teeth and hold his dick tight as I slice upward in a swift, vicious motion.
The morphing of expressions on his face is almost comical. They transition from filthy lust, to confusion, to pain, and finally terror as understanding hits him.
I still have a hold on his dick as I remove it from his body and then hold it up for him to see. Blood spurts everywhere, spattering all over his white uniform and mine.
His face is ashen, and his eyes are round with shock, but I see the pain is about to truly hit, and that means he’s going to start making noise.
He opens his mouth to scream, so I act fast, shoving his removed cock between his lips and jamming it down his throat.
It stifles both his screams and his airways.
I push viciously so it goes deep and smirk at my handiwork as he makes the most Godawful sounds around his own dick.
The man staggers back, hitting the wall I’d thrown him against before.
Now, instead of staying on his feet, he slides down it, choking on his own cock.
His hands flutter around his face and body, as though he doesn’t know whether to cover his crotch to try to stop the bleeding, or stuff his fingers down his throat to try to remove his own dick.
Blood continues to spurt, but I don’t pause any longer to see what he decides.
I spin back to Ophelia who is now on her feet, her mouth ajar, her mismatched eyes wide. Her usually pale face is rapidly turning chalk white as her gaze flicks from the man on the floor to me, and back.
“W-w-what—how—?” she stutters. “Oh, God.”
I put my hand out to her, ignoring the blood. “We need to get out of here.”
She flinches and moves back from me as if I’m the bad one in this scenario. I swallow down my anger, calm the adrenaline raging through my veins and soften my tone.
“Ophelia, it’s me, Roman. We’ve got to go.”
With a shaking finger, she points to the man. “Y-y-you cut it off. Oh, my God. I’m going to pass out.”
We don’t have time for her meltdown. It won’t be long until we’re discovered, and I highly doubt my reasoning that he’d been trying to rape Ophelia will be an acceptable one for what I’ve done.
I’m not even supposed to be here, and I brought a blade with me.
I wish I’d brought my mask, too, so I could hide my face, but it hadn’t gone with my ‘pretend to be one of the staff’ plan.
I glance down at myself. Fuck. People are going to see the blood splattered all over my white outfit and ask questions. The only thing I can hope for is that the lighting stays off. In the dim red glow from the emergency lighting, I might be able to pass the blood off as something else.
“But how—” she tries again. Her gaze once more falls to the man, and she swallows hard as if trying to stop herself from being sick.
I glance back at him. I guess it is a gruesome sight. I need her with me, though, not scared of me.
“Let’s save the questions for when you’re safe.
” I use my hand that’s not as covered in blood and take hold of her chin firmly.
“Look at me, Angel.” I purposefully use Cain’s nickname for her from long ago.
I’m trying to anchor her to me in this moment.
Her gaze finally moves from the man on the floor to me.
“Good girl. Now, we need to leave, because otherwise we’re going to be stuck here, and I can’t save you then.
The other guys are outside.” I pause and smile at her softly. “We came for you, baby.”
A small sob escapes her, and one single tear falls from her paler eye, streaking prettily down her cheek. She nods, and I see that strength I know she has assert itself.
Ophelia slides her small palm into mine, and my determination to keep her safe, always, solidifies inside me.
That she can be so trusting of me, even when I’m covered in another man’s blood, makes me love her with a ferocity that takes away my breath.
She gazes up at me with those big eyes, and, for a brief moment, the entire universe collapses to this fleeting second in space and time between us.
I break myself from the trance and get with the program.
“Okay, let’s go.”
We head to the door, her behind me, her hand still in mine.
I still have the switchblade in my other hand, and I close my fingers around it.
The crazy thought goes through my head that I need to repent and must hurt myself.
Punish myself. Ophelia was almost raped, and after everything she’s already gone through, it’s too much.
She’s already so fragile. I feel like I failed her, even though I was the one who stopped and punished him.
I can’t get over the feeling I need to punish myself, too, though.
I need a release from this fury inside me.
I don’t have the luxury of time to take my belt off and slam it against the skin of my back, but if I don’t do something to release this pressure building inside, I feel as if I’ll lose my mind.
Before anything else, I need to get us out of here.
I still have the keycard around my neck, so as long as this place isn’t in lockdown, I can use it to open the external doors.
But now I’m covered in blood, and holding a knife, so getting out of here isn’t going to be so easy.
I could change into one of Ophelia’s pink outfits, but first, they’d be even smaller on my frame, and second, if I look like a patient, someone will question why I have a lanyard around my neck.
I’m going to have to rely on the dim lighting and pray no one asks too many questions. I have the blade, and I’ll use it again, if I must, but I’d prefer to get out of here with no one else getting hurt.