Chapter 22 #2
I left the box open and wrapped my arms around myself as I studied the piece of gold jewelry.
It wasn’t exactly a necklace, but it looked nothing like the dog-style chain Father had put around me so many years ago and had one of his men weld together with a blowtorch while another had held me still, not caring about the screams of pain I’d let out.
Or the tears I’d shed.
Or the pleas to stop that I’d repeated over and over.
I’d thought the worst of it over when the blowtorch had been turned off.
But my humiliation and pain had only begun.
“Aleks.”
My brain tried to shut out the memory as the familiar and oh-so-perfect voice filtered through me. I felt rather than saw Vaughn’s hands on my arms as he came up behind me. He reached past me to close the box, but I stayed his hand.
“It doesn’t look anything like the other one,” I murmured. It was actually quite beautiful, and I guessed whichever of the men had purchased it had spent a small fortune on it. The links were very delicate and I suspected the whole thing could be ripped off one’s neck with little force.
It was almost ironic.
Father had welded a collar on me so I couldn’t remove it.
But this collar was meant to show that the pet who was wearing it could have removed it themself but was too well-trained to do so.
And while I knew there was a whole other lifestyle where men and women chose to submit to another person, nothing about the world we were going into was about submission by choice.
“I made too much noise when Father put the collar on me,” I said softly. “And I cried and said no… he didn’t like when I did that. He said I was supposed to know better – that he’d paid a lot of money for me to know better than that. I tried to apologize, but he didn’t like that either.”
Vaughn’s arm went around my collarbone and I felt his lips brush my temple. “It’s okay, Aleks, you don’t need to talk about it.”
I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered. “I’m fighting back,” I reminded him.
He kissed me again and I felt him nod against me.
I knew the other men were still in the room and I figured they hadn’t left because they would have had to move past me to get out. Maybe they’d been afraid they’d frighten me into another blackout.
I wasn’t sure.
But I didn’t want or need them to leave.
Because I wasn’t embarrassed about what had happened to me.
I hadn’t done anything wrong and I hadn’t deserved it.
I understood that now.
I wasn’t sure I would have if Vaughn hadn’t given me my own chance to “wake up” like Gio had woken him and Luca up.
“When I apologized, I grabbed his arm,” I said.
“I wasn’t ever allowed to touch any of the men unless they told me to or gave me some sign.
I knew that, but I was scared and in pain and I wasn’t thinking.
” I reached up to touch the burn scar on my neck.
“He hit me and I fell. Then he grabbed my hair and forced me to my knees. He nodded to one of his men and the guy, he just knew what Father wanted. It made me wonder how, you know?”
Vaughn’s arm tightened around me, but he didn’t say anything.
“The man left the room. He was back within a minute. He had something black in his hand, but I didn’t know what it was until he handed it to Father.
” I drew in a breath as a huge shudder ran throughout my entire body.
I could still remember the terror that had gone through me when I’d identified the object.
“Fire poker,” I breathed.
I heard someone gasp, but I wasn’t sure who it was.
“I wasn’t wearing a shirt because they’d taken it off when they’d put the collar on.
I again made the mistake of begging Father not to hurt me.
I told him I’d be good and I’d never defy him again.
He didn’t even let me finish before he hit me on the back with the poker. ”
“Aleks,” Vaughn whispered into my ear. I could hear the emotion in his voice. It sounded really thick.
But I couldn’t stop now.
Not even for him.
“I thought each blow would be the one that killed me. I couldn’t even go into my head because it hurt so bad.
I almost passed out after the first few hits, but one of the men kept throwing cold water in my face to make sure I didn’t.
I could feel the blood running down my back but then after a while I didn’t feel anything.
I remember the fire poker hitting the ground and then I was pulled to my feet and bent over the desk.
I was afraid Father would let his men take turns with me after he was done, but they didn’t.
Father just left me there, my pants around my ankles, and told his men to clean me up and put me in my room.
I think… I think he was sorry he scarred his pet because he used to tell his friends that he regretted not using something lighter to teach me that first lesson. ”
I reached for the jewelry box and pulled it closer. “I never defied him after that. Not once… not until the night Dante showed up and Father bent me over that same desk and showed Dante what I’d been turned into.”
“You’re so fucking strong, Aleks,” Vaughn said into my ear. “That’s who you are and who you’ve always been.”
“Unbroken,” I murmured.
Vaughn kissed the back of my neck. “Yes,” he said in a barely there whisper.
I nodded because I was finally starting to believe it for myself. But every step forward would be about that… about reminding myself that none of those men had done what they’d set out to do.
Break me.
So I reached for the small gold collar.
“No,” a voice said, then a large hand was moving the box out of my reach.
Not Vaughn’s hand, though.
Luca’s.
I hadn’t even noticed how close he’d moved to the desk. It was a testament to the fact that I really was coming to trust all the men as much as I trusted Vaughn.
“No,” Luca said. “You’re not doing this.”
I knew it wasn’t really an order because I could hear his voice breaking.
He was upset.
And I knew why.
“What was his name, Luca?” I asked.
Luca actually paled. “What?”
“The boy… the one you met when you were looking for Gio. The one you had to forget.”
Luca looked at Vaughn briefly. “He told you?” he asked me. There was a little bit of hurt in his voice.
“No,” I quickly said. “He didn’t tell me anything. You did. That night on the porch at the house in Nevada… you said you had to forget a boy to find your son. You’ve never really forgotten him though, have you?”
The man hesitated, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “They called him Billy, but I don’t know if that was his real name or not.”
“Probably not,” I said. “They changed any names that sounded too unique. They let me keep my name but they always spelled it wrong. They said the name Alex was really common here in the U.S. But my name is spelled with an ‘s’ – I was named after my father’s father who was Polish.”
I didn’t say it out loud but my guess was that Gio likely had been given a new name as well.
“We’ll find another way, Aleks,” Luca said as he snapped the jewelry box shut. He kept his big hand on it, but when I leaned across the desk and reached for it, he released it.
“It’s my choice,” I said. I flipped the box back open.
“Everything has been my choice from the moment Vaughn told me why he’d taken me.
I don’t want that to change… I won’t let it,” I said firmly.
I forced myself to pick up the collar. It barely weighed anything, but it might as well have weighed a hundred pounds.
I felt sick as I found the clasp and worked it loose. The party wasn’t for hours yet, but I needed to do this now so I could be one hundred percent focused on everything that was happening around me when the time came.
I swallowed back the bile that was trying to creep up my throat as I reached up to put the collar around my throat. I dropped my eyes and stared at the desk as I fumbled with the clasp.
But I couldn’t get it to snap together and all my effort to be strong felt like it was slipping out of my grip just like the frustrating clasp.
“James,” I whispered.
“I’ve got it, Aleks,” Vaughn said as his hands took over the task for me. When his fingers drifted down my neck and rested on my shoulders, I knew it was done. I could barely feel the collar, it was so light. But I could feel it.
And I was still okay.
I pulled in a breath, then another.
It wasn’t until Luca handed me a tissue that I realized I’d been crying the whole time.
I was tempted to lighten the mood by coyly asking how it looked, but I knew I couldn’t pull it off. And from the looks on the faces of the men around me, I doubted any of them could find even a scrap of humor in the situation.
I reached up to touch the collar… no, the necklace, because that was all it really was.
I’d take it off in a few minutes, but I wanted to prove to myself I could forget about it, so I stepped back into Vaughn’s body and reached up to link my fingers with the ones that were resting on my collarbone.
His touch did what it always did and calmed me.
I looked around at each of them. They all had different emotions on their face.
Luca looked torn, Con looked like he was feeling completely powerless, and King… King just looked pissed.
I didn’t need to look at Vaughn to know what I’d see.
Because I saw a little bit of that emotion in everyone else’s gaze too.
Pride.