Chapter 14
VALENTINA
It was late by the time we wrapped things up at the gallery.
My little Sunshine had fallen asleep in the car as Z drove us to our desert safe house.
Xav had left earlier to keep an eye on Jason, having seen him stir ever so slightly on the cameras after partially knocking out his sedative-filled IV line.
On the outside, it looked like a decrepit wooden shack of a home, with broken windows and creaking hinges on the doors—not unlike one of the homes where we had found ourselves hiding as children.
In the laundry, there was a secret door at the back of the linen cupboard.
It opened to a winding staircase that went three levels below.
Sunshine didn’t react, but I could hear her little gasp as she took in the thick concrete walls and the reinforced door that sealed shut as we descended.
It was a fortress; there was no coming in or out, and not a lick of sound would penetrate through.
We could do what we wanted down here, and no one would ever know.
Zane led the way until we reached the landing on the very last floor.
Xav sat in a chair smoking a cigarette as Jason sat across from him, chained to his.
Cigarette butts littered his thigh, where Xav had undoubtedly been extinguishing his last hour of chain smoking.
A tinge of burnt flesh greeted my nostrils, along with the smell of piss.
Looking at Jason’s jeans, it was easy to see why.
‘Sunshine, do you want any part in this?’ I asked, stepping in front of her and pressing my forehead to hers.
Breathing in her scent and holding on like hell to this moment and to her, as I felt the red-hot rage burning under my skin, clawing at me to eviscerate the man that had hurt her.
Her bruises had faded, but the scars on her heart would remain for years to come, and I would make him pay for it all.
‘His last breath. It’s mine,’ she said as her lips found mine. Pulling back, she whispered, ‘Thank you.’
I pressed my lips to the tattoo on her neck then lifted her left hand.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, and it was. I kissed her hand as the emerald-cut ruby glinted against the fluorescent lights. It matched the red she wore the night I met her, while the yellow gold band shone like sunshine against her deep skin, looking perfect on her slender finger.
Xav stood, offering his seat to my girl. Taking it further away, creating as much distance between her and the man that had haunted her, she nodded her appreciation to my brother. He stood next to her, guarding her as he would for me.
Z dragged a stainless-steel table laden with tools, knives and other more creatively painful contraptions.
‘Need some help sister?’ he asked, grinning.
These moments were the happiest I had ever seen Z.
On the cusp of or immersed in bloodshed was where he belonged.
It’s what I feared to be, I looked at Sunshine once more, my grounding force.
Promising not to lose myself here and now.
‘I need to do this brother but thank you. Both of you,’ I said, clasping the back of his neck as our foreheads met.
I was closest to Z because we were so much closer in age with him only being three years older and we had an unspoken understanding, recognising the truth of who we were at our depths, even if I kept mine leashed. Two sides of the same fucked up coin.
Grabbing the smelling salts, I ripped the IV out from Jason’s arm and held them under his nose until he was retching himself awake.
His eyes snapped open, and slowly he took in the room and its inhabitants before him.
Fear glinted in his eyes as they landed on Z, but tonight Z would be the least of his fears because he had awakened something in me that needed to be released.
His mouth opened as if to ask Why? before his eyes settled on my Sunshine. She sat there poised, unflinching, with a strength I hadn’t yet seen radiating from her. This is what I had always wanted to see—my girl without fear, surrounded by her new family.
‘Do not look at her. Do not speak to her. Your problem lies with me.’
His head swung back to me, the tone of my voice stoking something within him. Fear.
‘I have no issues with you. My issues are with that whore over there.’
CRACK. His head whipped back so hard I thought for a moment it would sever his spine as my fist landed on his cheek.
‘Lay your hands on what’s mine, and I assure you, she is mine,’ I said, holding up my own matching ruby-and-gold ring for him to see.
‘Do that, and your problems with her become solely my problem.’ Blood dribbled from his lip; the impact of the hit was immediate.
I was slight, but I had been training my whole life with my brothers.
It’s why I had never needed a bodyguard even with the amount of people my brothers had pissed off.
‘She’s… mine. Always will be. I’ve tainted her so thoroughly there’s no getting rid of me,’ he spat, blood landing onto my already-stained white suit. I laughed—genuinely laughed—at his arrogance.
‘She stopped being yours a long time ago. You may have had her body for a time and even her fear, but her mind and soul, they were never yours. Your dirty hands never scratched the surface. And believe me when I say, you are well on your way to being erased—so completely that she will forget your name, your face and your disgusting touch. The first step is erasing you.’ I stepped towards the table, caressing everything that lay there, ready to be used.
My fingers settled on a cold sharp blade. One edge smooth; the other serrated.
Stepping into Jason’s space, I dragged the fine tip up and over his arm, which was chained to the armrest. Once I got to his shoulder I sank the smooth edge into his skin and dragged it back down slicing a cut all the way down to his wrist. He thrashed against his chains and yelled out in pain, calling me every expletive there was.
‘Bit of an overreaction, Jason. I’m only just getting started.
I’m going to make you fear me the way she feared you.
’ I did the same to his other arm and watched his blood pool onto the floor.
Slamming the blade into the middle of his hand, I pinned it to the armrest and he let out a blood-curdling scream.
Ignoring him, I stalked back to the table to get the barbed wire.
I wrapped the barbed wire against his throat so tightly he could barely breathe let alone swallow. It was agony. ‘So many times she begged, pleaded and screamed for you to stop until her throat was raw. It’s time for you to have a little taste of what that might have been like.’
Casting a glance at my girl, she looked at me—not Jason, never at him. She was here for me, and I didn’t see fear or disgust in her eyes. I saw love. Grabbing a set of pliers, I knelt on the floor in front of him, watching the sweat drip from his clammy brow.
‘Every finger that touched her is mine now.’ Closing the pliers over his fingers, I twisted and pulled, then twisted again as I pushed against the bolted-down chair with all of my weight until it ripped from his body.
Dropping the finger, I moved to the next as his thrashing screams turned into defeated sobs, unable to comprehend the pain.
After I had ripped every finger off his left hand, I pulled the blade from his hand and used the serrated edge to saw through the fingers on his right hand; one by one they dropped to the floor.
There was so much blood. I scooped some up from the floor and held it to his lips, forcing it down his throat watching him choke on it.
‘Z, unchain him.’
But before he could move Xav interjected. ‘He should stay tied down, V.’
Walking over to my brother, I pulled his gun from his hand and shot Jason in each foot. The screams broke as they forced themselves up his throat.
‘There, he’s not going to be able to do anything without any working hands or feet.’
Z, the sick fuck, laughed. ‘She’s got you there, brother.’
As Z unchained him, I grabbed a metal clamp and an even larger knife this time.
Jason’s heavy panting only made the wire around his neck dig in more.
Blood dripped from where the spikes had embedded themselves into his flesh every time he screamed.
I slashed at his belt, not bothering to be careful.
‘I never thought I would be undressing a man ever again.’ I laughed.
‘And you never will,’ Sunshine spoke, steel in her voice as her eyes seared into mine, jealousy rearing its head in her and igniting something sadistic in me.
‘You took her against her will, Jason, so now I’m going to take something precious of yours.
’ Clamping down on his below-average dick, I hacked into it at the base.
No sound left him—the pain too immense—as he gaped at me and what I had done.
Not giving him a single moment of reprieve, I pulled him from the chair until he was sprawled on his stomach.
The tip of my blade caressing his cheeks until I poked the tip into his arsehole.
Jason’s body spasmed under the pressure.
Slowly, I pressed harder as I cut his hole wider.
Unintelligible begging escaped from him.
‘Do you fear what I can do to you now, Jason?’ A barely coherent, affirmative sound escaped him.
‘I would ask if you’re sorry, remorseful for what you did to her, but I know what your answer would be and how much of it is just self-preservation at this point.
‘Can you imagine what it would have been like to be violated by you? Well, no need to imagine it. You can feel it.’ With that, I slammed the metal clamp holding his cut-off member and plunged it into his bleeding arsehole. Leaving it in there, clamp and all.
‘Sunshine. Come,’ I breathed, outstretching my hand for her.
Without hesitation, she stood, stepping into me. We pressed against each other, foreheads meeting, breathing one another in as her abuser lay on the floor, incoherently sobbing in his own blood.
‘Are you ready?’
She nodded, pressing her lips to mine. I gave her Xav’s gun and kicked Jason’s body over so that he laid on his back, staring up at her. She stood over him, raising the barrel to his head with a stillness and surety that I wasn’t expecting.
‘You will never hurt me again.’ And with that, a single gunshot rang out, followed by another and another, until all the was left was the sound of her clicking an empty gun.
She drained every last bullet into his head until his face was unrecognisable.
A second later, she was vomiting all over his dead body.
I patted her back in soothing circles, whispering how she was such a good girl. My good girl, not his—never his.
Wiping her face on my sleeve, she straightened herself, looked at me and said the words that would finally free her. ‘It’s over.’