Chapter 60
Delilah
When the world comes back around, it’s nothing but a whirling, blurry gray and splitting pain.
I attempt to open my eyes, but they fall closed again, too heavy to lift.
When I try to move, a hot stab, like a fire poker through my brain, shoots through my skull, and nausea ripples in my belly.
More stinging fire ignites in my wrists as I shift, and everything floods back to me, hitting me like a tidal wave.
My limbs tingle, my palms sweat as I try to lift a hand to rub my eyes, but I can’t seem to signal my brain because it will not move.
It feels like concrete scrapes against my eyeballs, and I try to rub them again, and the sharp sting of something grates into my wrist. I blink several more times, fighting the urge to puke as my vision centers on a solid gray wall.
Beneath me, I sense a hard surface, sense I’m sitting… .
Upright? In a chair?
Pain twinges in my neck as my head lolls to the side. My mouth unglues, and I smack my lips. After a few more seconds of fighting the remnants of the drug Fallon gave me, everything around me finally comes into focus.
Sluggishly, I blink, focusing on the concrete floor. Rust stains gather around a drain a few feet away. My gaze drops to my lap. My bare legs, spread open, a wooden chair visible beneath me.
My gaze drags to my arms.
Bound with rope to the arm of a chair.
Panic lands in the center of my chest like a hot coal.
I jerk violently, and everything snaps into clarity.
My head jerks, but I see nothing but gray walls veiled in shadows and a concrete floor.
I try to shift my legs, but they don’t move, and the pain of the rope at my ankles cuts into my flesh.
A dark, trembling awareness floods my limbs, like a dam breaking open.
It pours over me, and a choked sob breaks through the deafening quiet.
Scanning the space, I take in each detail. I’m in a warehouse of some sort, tied to a fucking chair, wearing nothing but Striker’s shirt. I wiggle, but my legs are splayed open, leaving me even more vulnerable than I’ve ever felt before.
I swallow, nausea nearly taking my breath away, and try to breathe through the terror eating at my brain like a parasite.
He’ll test you, Delilah. Rune will want to make sure you’ve not been compromised.
“Where am I?” I whisper, trying to keep control.
Knowing my father, he’s somewhere watching me.
Waiting for me to wake up. Maybe even see how I’ll react.
Before I can sink into the horror of my situation, a faint buzz, like a door far away has unlocked, and then the tap tap tap of shoes echoes behind me.
I sense someone behind me. A minute later, a familiar face comes into view.
“Dr. Morgan?” I ask, but my blood drains from my head, and I tilt sideways when Zane steps into my line of sight.
“When you return, your first instinct will be to shrink away in fear. Do not show fear. Rune can smell it like a rabid dog. Fallon’s words fill my head. You have not seen your father in weeks. What would Delilah do?”
Except we never planned for, never expected, Zane to be the one to greet me.
I take in his suit and tie. The sling and cast on his arm. The slick, cruel glee, darkening his eyes.
“Zane?” I whisper, slapped into a state of total fear as every moment from the last few weeks hits me from all directions. I glance around. “Where am I?”
“Here,” he says, cold eyes locked on me. They slip lower to the space between my legs.
“Why am I here?” I ask. “Why am I tied up, and where is Cor—”
Behind me, the door buzzes. The skin on the back of my neck pricks.
Zane keeps his eyes on me, watching my reaction.
Then I feel him. His presence fills the room, almost tangible in its darkness.
Footsteps—heavy, deliberate, slow—scrape the floor behind me.
Goosebumps break out on my skin. He moves in slowly behind me and stands there.
“He may try to intimidate you. Don’t show fear. Fear means guilt.”
The tips of his fingers skim along the top of my head. “You’re home.”
Tears burst free as terror floods my bloodstream. I choke on a sob.
Images of Cora over the years with him—every single moment I missed because I refused to see it—and the pictures of mutilated bodies fill my head, swirling fast enough that I have to clench my teeth, breathing out slowly through my nose so I don’t pass out.
My pulse skyrockets, aware that Zane is watching me, and let the word come out as if I’m ignorant of every horrendous sin, “Daddy?”
Rune circles, coming to a stop a foot in front of me. My father looks exactly as he always does. Pressed suit, salt and pepper hair, vibrant blue eyes, but the subtle changes are there. The dark circles under his eyes. The stubble along his jaw.
But now that I know, I can see it. The underlying layer of something not quite right. Some thin veil that shrouds him, a dark, shadowy thing, turning everything about him slightly off.
A tremble starts in my shoulders, from his nearness, but he takes a step back and then gestures to Morgan.
Dr. Morgan clears his throat, and that’s when I notice the file in his hands. He opens it. “The reports show semen from four separate males was present in the vaginal cavity.”
My chest caves in as the air leaves my lungs. “You examined me?”
Morgan shifts his focus from the file to me, then he says. “Further vaginal examination reveals no vaginal tearing, so it is unclear if there was an assault or if the subject was willing. There was no evidence of semen in the anus, so it appears the patient was not sodomized.”
My chin quivers, and I look at Zane, whose cold, penetrating stare makes my skin prick.
Dr. Morgan continues, “Examination of the arms and wrists shows no signs of restraint. Faint bruising along the neck indicates choking, or possible restraint. Bite marks along the body and the old bruising on her face, along with the healed cut on the mouth, all indicate physical assault. The birth control implant remains, so it appears the intent was not to impregnate. Bloodwork and cultures all came back clear. Negative for STDs and pregnancy.”
“How fucking dare you,” I breathe, heat rising in my chest and face.
Rune moves so fast that I don’t have time to brace for the hit. Pain explodes across my mouth, and my head snaps back.
“He will be angry. Try to deflect.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, my mouth and cheek stinging, blood and acidic hatred flooding my tongue.
“The eyes are the windows to the soul. He will see your anger. The distaste. He will see your hatred. If he suspects you are anything other than a victim of his war, he will never trust you again.”
I will my shoulders to drop. Let my head droop. My hands shake, but it’s from rage, and I let the tears building behind my eyes fall. The pain searing through me is real. So very real.
“So you spent a month fucking them?” Rune’s cold voice cuts through the room. “Is my daughter his whore now?”
I shake my head, running my tongue over my lip. Blood oozes from my nose to my mouth. It drips and hits my knee. I focus on the red as it slides over my thigh.
“You fucked them in my club!” His scream tears through the room. I shrink back, more tears falling, slipping down my chin and neck. “You embarrassed my name by forgetting who you are.”
“Convince him that you haven’t changed. Remember, you are Delilah Gavin, but you are also traumatized and angry.”
“I didn’t know,” I cry, shaking my head, then look up at him, letting him see some anger. “I just wanted a moment in my life that you didn’t control.”
He raises his hand again, and I wince. When the hit doesn’t come, I stay motionless, waiting for his next move.
Rune turns to Morgan and dismisses him. He rushes away, and a minute later the door behind me buzzes and then clicks closed.
Zane takes a step back, letting his shoes slide over the concrete floor.
The sound grates through my head, and a needling sensation stabs at my fingertips, and I grip the armrest.
“Delilah.” My father’s finger hooks under my chin. He raises my head to meet my eyes. “Tell me his name.”
My brows knit. My heart thrashes like a wild beast.
My father is an intelligent man. You don’t achieve the level of power that he has, amass this much wealth, by being a fool. Every single thing Fallon and I went over, day after day, courses through my mind, but I come up blank.
“Who?” I ask, my voice shaking. I search his eyes and for a second he looks like my father again. “Who? Those men?”
“The big one,” he says gently. “The one who was in charge.”
Reaper.
“I don’t know,” I say. “They called each other by code names.”
He nods, encouraging me to continue. When he runs his finger over his bottom lip, pain sears through me, and that desperation for my old life steals my breath.
“When he asks for their names. You tell him.”
“The one in charge was Reaper,” I whisper.
Rune’s face changes, turns cold, and a smile that I’ve never seen before cuts across his face. “That’s right. That’s him. That’s what he is. The harbinger of death.”
He backs away, and motions for Zane to come forward.
“Why am I in here?” I ask, my insides shivering with alarm. “Where are we? Why am I not at home?”
“Zane has a few questions for you,” Rune says, backing away. “You can go home once we have some answers.”
Rune turns and walks behind me. I hear the buzz and the door shuts, and then the reality that I’m alone with Zane slams into me. The man who’s tried to convince Rune to let him have me for years. The man so desperate to get his hands on me, he practically begged me for dates.
Begged to have some part of me for himself.
And now I’m strapped to a chair and left alone with him.
The same man who hunts people with Rune.
My heart slams, nearly cracking my ribcage.
Zane crouches in front of me. He raises the arm in the sling. “Did you know they were going to do this?”
I lick my lips. “Those men?”
He smiles, and my blood turns cold. “You’re different, Delilah.” Zane places his good hand on my thigh, cupping it. Fear makes my heart race so hard my vision blurs, but then anger takes over. Rage so pure, so hot, that I grind my teeth.
He’s right. I’m not the woman I used to be. I’m harder. Colder. He sees it too.
Zane’s gaze drags over me, falling between my legs. His hand slips higher, then dips between my thighs. “Did they fuck you right before they drugged you? Or did they drug you and then fuck you?”
My jaw tightens.
“Did you beg? For them to stop? To keep going?” His fingers brush along my inner thigh, moving toward my center delicately. The way a lover would. Like he knows my body and has permission to touch me. “Did you get off each time they fucked you?”
“Get your hands off me,” I grate, unable to contain the tears.
His fingers drive into me so hard I gasp at the sting.
More tears burst free, and I scream again as he swirls them inside me, the invasion as cutting as a blade.
When he withdraws his hand, he inspects his fingers, looking at the wetness coating them, rubbing it between his fingers before bringing the tips to his mouth.
He slides his tongue over them, tasting, and the smile that forms churns my stomach.
“Oh, sweet, innocent Delilah.” He wipes his hand on his shirtsleeve and then stands and backs away, keeping his eyes locked on my face. “We are going to have so much fun.”