Chapter Three, The Day Of The Crash
Hours. It had to have been hours. It can’t have been just moments that I spent staring at my daddy and wondering if I would ever burn the sight of his mutilated body out of my brain. I wouldn’t get it out of my brain because it was probably the most fucked up thing I had ever seen. It was beyond messed up. There was no way to describe such a sight without gagging and crying, and wanting to throw things, and scream an awful lot. Perhaps even worse.
There was no denying that it would leave a lasting mark on my soul and if I made it to old age, I would still sit there, recalling each vivid detail and just how much it hurt. Because it did hurt – more than physical pain. It was like my grief had been locked away in a box, only appearing on a rainy day, but now that lock had shattered, the box popped open and there was no chance of it ever returning to what it had been before. It was too busy trying to fuck me over. Too busy forcing me to be in an agony I would never get away from.
The door to my dungeon opened once more, and though the drugs in my system and the pain burning in my lungs were doing their best to distract me and occupy my brain, I refused to let them win. Instead, I did my best to concentrate on the figure padding towards me, soft as anything, as though they were not a psycho with a person chained up.
As though they were just having a nice and normal day and they hadn’t waterboarded me until I’d passed out.
“Did you enjoy your dinner?” They asked as though I hadn’t left it all on the plate and spent however long they had been gone since I woke up, alternating between screaming, crying and throwing up a little.
Okay, a lot.
Making myself sick wasn’t fun in the slightest, but it was the only thing I could think of to help the drugs leave me faster, so the moment the freak had undone my bindings and allowed me to roam freely, I had taken advantage. They’d given me salt on the table and though it was not pleasant, I tipped it into the bottle of water I had before downing as much of it as I could until it made me vomit.
Now, though feeling like shit, I was semi lucid enough that I was fairly sure though I was seeing things, I could make it out of the room if I tried hard enough. I would be able to run away to freedom and try to find myself a weapon of some kind if I could just find a break in the torture to get myself out.
A break that would lead me to a weapon that would be the first to be used against my remaining enemies until they were nothing but a fresh corpse.
I had been making a list in my mind of my plans on what I would do if I made it out alive without a cheeky bit of murder beforehand. My kill list had been mentally jotted down, in the best order for me to slaughter. First, Elaina. She was the weakest target, and responsible for more pain than I could count. So vengeance alone pushed me to go after her, but so did one undeniable fact.
She was not as bad a villain as the other enemies of mine.
Sure, she tortured people and spewed violence from her tongue. She had raped people, beaten them, groomed them. She was a rotten bitch to her core, and that was all horrid and entirely inexcusable for her to do to anyone, least of all people I loved. But she worked on John or the stalker’s orders, which meant she was not as big of a threat as compared to them. So she would die first, like in a game of chess where you took out your opponent’s pawns before going for the next stage that kept their queen safe. Though Elaina was not the pawn. The Vice Kings were. She was more of a… of a knight, perhaps. Slightly better than them, but nowhere near good enough to be a hassle.
John would come after Elaina and his gangsters. I would not dare call him a king, but he might be a bishop of some kind on my board of murder chess. He was the one who would go second to last and though I wished to enjoy it – to, by all means, devour him whole for hours on end. I would not make the same mistake I had with Elaina and let him risk escape. Instead, I would put jumper cables on him and electrocute him to death, or something of a similar nature. Where I had maximum pain in minimal time.
The only thing I would do to satisfy my inner monster was to record each of his screams and see how he liked being on the other side of the twisted camera.
In my mind, the stalker was the queen piece. That meant they came last. They were the one who held all the power in the game and were the most important piece to take out of the equation if I wanted to win. There were no kings in my game except for me, and I fully intended to checkmate everyone else in sight the minute I could, so even though everything inside me hurt, I wasn’t too far gone to care when I could concentrate on my enemies.
Right now, I had no time at all to do anything other than sit in my chair, pretending to be a good little captive who was far more drugged than she was. It made it easier to act, so when my stalker opened the door, joining me again with a gun in their hand, I could find a moment to run. I was just waiting for a chance to do so, like when their back was turned or something else entirely stupid.
My eyes lifted slowly, desperate to take in the sight of them and coming up short when I realized one thing in my drug induced haze hadn’t been a lie.
My stalker was a woman.
A woman in a facemask, black hoody and nothing that told me who she was on display. But she was shorter than me, looked softer, and even her feet were smaller. She was petite; the monster in my life was a skinny fucking bitch. Not a big scary man or monster. A little woman… fucking hell, that was a shock to the system. Not a pleasant shock, even if it was wrong of me to presume my villain had always been a man.
Women could be just as evil if they truly wanted to be, but seriously? The biggest nightmare of mine was a woman I could have easily beaten in a physical fight? The sort of person my daddy could have snapped in half with less effort than it took him to slick back his hair every morning?
That was a lot to accept.
That was a bitter pill to swallow.
“I forgot,” I rasped the words out, lolling my head and dragging each syllable as best as I could. “Do you still have the same name, or have you changed it? I always thought your name to be so pretty.”
Starting a conversation when she came near me seemed the smartest choice because it was the only way to find the information I needed. But I was also taking a leaf out of my crime shows ideas and trying to make a connection with the freak who held me. She thought she knew me, but I needed to get to know her – to get her to see me as a real person, and perhaps listen when I tried to convince her to let me go. It was a long shot, but it was worth trying, even if the idea of being nice to her made me want to slice my own throat open.
“I use too many names to count. But on the inside, I’m still Cassie.” She spoke through her weird voice change mask, and my heart beat faster with the revelation; one I could use to hunt her down and find her if she ever managed to escape me again. “I like it more than the other names I use and it’s the only one I always wanted you to call me.”
“What other names?” I made a list in my head of all the women who had access to me during my life, but that didn’t get me far. There were so many – each member of my daddy’s board had been married to a woman. There were multiple female staff members in all of our homes, and my daddy’s assistant had even been a woman, too.
Wait.
His assistant. She’d been petite. Shorter than me, even though she was a few decades older. She’d been… fuck, she had no family either. To my knowledge, she’d had no partner or kids – nobody to tie her down or be in her way when she needed to chase me around the world.
She would have known everything my daddy did. Every password, or safehouse, or fucking code to our gates.
She’d been allowed to work from home, in any office in the world, or even use our jet and things when she needed to…
My brain raced through the sluggishness still present, trying to remember her full name. Sarah. Sarah something or other. With an L I think. Fuck, if I could remember that then -
My stalker cut off my thoughts. “You like to use different names, too. Sometimes it’s fun, isn’t it? To pretend to be someone else – someone with a different life and less pain. Though I prefer being myself, it’s been easier letting the other woman inside me take control. She gets things done easier than I can.”
Her words were flagged in my brain, and I kept track of everything she said.
“Sometimes I do, yeah. It is fun to change names and play pretend.” I asked for a drink too, wanting something to take the nasty taste out of my mouth and so I could think harder about Sarah and whether she truly fit the bill.
It was looking more likely with each second that passed, but the only thing I couldn’t move past was how she had gotten away undetected for so many years. My daddy would have surely figured it was her?
Unless he’d never truly bothered looking for a woman.
If he’d been like me and presumed my stalker was a man.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“I like Maggie the most.” She grabbed another bottle, handing it to me so I could sip more water. “I didn’t like when your name was Sapphire and I’m glad you gave it back to the real Sapphire.”
Though I was already baffled, it seemed I had found more to be confused about.
“You met the real Sapphire?” I asked, hoping they would say yes and tell me where I had met them before. Ideally, they would say through my daddy’s work, then confess to being Sarah, and suddenly develop a conscious and let me go.
Then I realized I didn’t need to be in a rush. The men I loved were dead. Malone was dead.
I had nothing to go home to now.
Nothing but silence and grief and guilt.
She nodded. “I was going to kill her, you see. But I-” Her words were cut off when her phone rang.
The gun in her hand moved right to my head, forcing me to sit still and silent as they pushed the phone against their ear, listening to what I was sure was a man shouting on the other end a moment before cursing and backing away.
The gun never left me, so I remained docile and calm. As calm as a person could be when faced with a monster that had not only ruined a lot of their life, but was liable to snap at any moment.
“Something came up and there are things I need to do for a while.” She said as she backed up toward the door and I prepared myself to make a run for it the minute I could. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, so we can finally go home. But it may take me a while before it’s safe.” She cursed to herself a couple of times, her voice still distorted by the voice changer that it almost sounded funny.
Fuck me, I was going to laugh at her. I was going to laugh at the deluded bitch who’d recently waterboarded me.
I was an idiot, clearly.
Bobbing my head in the most carefree and lazy way I could manage, I said, “No problem. Ford and I can continue our dinner whilst you deal with the business you have.”
I fucking smiled as I said my daddy’s name and pretended that I was doing anything with him other than wanting to cry and find a way to make sure his body couldn’t be ruined more than it already was. It felt disrespectful to leave him the way he was, and though I was sure there was nothing for us after death, he had thought different. I wanted to burn his body and free any ounce of his soul that might have been trapped inside of him.
I wanted to make sure nobody could ever disrespect him again.
“Would you mind sitting there a moment, whilst I get you some supplies and things to look after yourself with?” Crazy bitch looked at me, or at least her mask stared my way, as she fingered the gun in her hand with the ease of a woman who’d used a gun for decades.
“Of course.” As nice as it would have been to attack, she didn’t turn her back on me or give me a chance to. Instead, she placed her hand on a panel by the side of the one-way mirror, and a small door opened up. “This is your bathroom – you feel free to use it as you please. And the tap water isn’t very nice, so I’ll leave some bottles for you to drink too, and some food.”
The bathroom was tiny and, the worst part of all, without a single window, vent, or anything to escape. It was a toilet, sink and showerhead on the wall. Everything was tiled cream and beyond a plastic toothbrush, toothpaste, a bar of soap and a pile of toilet roll, there was nothing of use to me. Nothing that could be fashioned into a weapon. The best I had was a few towels I could hang myself with if I listened to the nagging voice in the back of my head, reminding me that all my men were dead, and I was fucking alone.
I was alone for the rest of my life because I could never replace any of them. I could never move on.
They were mine, and they were it for me. I didn’t want anyone else. I didn’t even want to live without them.
“Thank you for all this. I think I will take a nice shower whilst I wait for you to return.” There was no shower hose, only the head, and it looked like it was made of plastic, too.
Though I would attempt to do something with it to help me out, I didn’t have a good feeling. I had even less of a good feeling when she used the fancy panel on the wall that had delivered me the horrid mint cinnamon rolls, to offer me multiple large bottles of water, cereal bars, bread, cheese and various other little bags of snacks like nuts and candy. All things that lasted a while, even without a fridge and didn’t require cooking.
It would have been nice if she’d handed me a little gas stove, lighter and perhaps a knife. But that was pushing it and I knew that even if she was crazy, she wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t give me things to let me escape.
“There isn’t a lot of food, but you should be fine. I’m going to try to be fast so we can hurry up and get home.” She still hadn’t turned her back on me. Nor had she lowered her gun. “I had your bedroom made up nice and pink for you and you’ve got the best view of the woods. I know you love pink the most, and you’re always been a nature lover.”
I fucking hated pink now. Sure, I had never been a big pink girl, anyway. But living with Henley had made me tap into that more pretty princess side of me who found joy in the Barbie-like palettes and outfits. But now I would never wear the bastard color again. I was going to burn anything pink I owned and move it from my life, so I never had to be reminded of whatever bullshit was happening right now. And I sure as fuck wasn’t a nature girl. I mean, yeah. A woodland fuck? Sign me up. But I was not a hiker and the only time I even considered things like jogging on a trail or something was when Kody had bribed me with orgasms.
And now Kody is dead. He’s dead because you killed him.
You dragged him into your orbit, Sapphire, and now look… he’d burned up and crashed.
He’d died for nothing.
Ignoring the tears I wanted to shed, I forced a smile onto my face as I counted the water, finding at least twenty litres and coming to the brilliant yet horrid realisation that I was probably going to be alone for a handful of days at least. Sure, alone meant no torture. But alone and waiting for my inevitable death? As my daddy’s rotting corpse sat in the same room?
I had a feeling it would be fun in the slightest.
The creepy bitch shut the bathroom door and stepped towards the door she’d entered the room in.
“You’re going to be safe without me. I have guards watching the house, and without a vehicle, you’d end up lost in the sand dunes or woods nearby. So if anyone tries to steal you away from me again, they won’t make it.” She paused for a moment and even though I couldn’t see her face, I felt like she was smiling at me. “This is a Persephone safe house so there may be deliveries a few times whilst I’m gone, but don’t worry. The men know they’re not allowed to take you or touch you. They will leave you alone and play with the other girls.”
My heart sank, but I shoved that shit down and pretended all my plans of escaping weren’t mildly ruined. So what if I died in the middle of death valley or something? It was preferable to being murdered by a stalker. I would have taken death via the sun or lost in a woodland to a long capture. But guards, more than likely armed, and a house full of people trafficking rapists? Yeah, that was an issue. A big issue and not just because the idea of anyone being hurt in such a way made me sick to my stomach.
If a single man laid his hands on me without consent, I knew I wouldn’t want to fight anymore. It would be the last straw for my brain after losing my men and I wouldn’t be able to get past it.
I’d give up. And I really didn’t want to give up.
Giving up now when people had died for my mission felt… it felt wrong, and I refused to allow it to happen.
“Thanks for taking care of me.” The words tasted like acid and didn’t help me feel less sick. “I hope you will not be long.”
She opened the door, and this was it, the one tiny scrap of time I had to save myself. I braced my hands on the chair, flexed my toes a little against the ground, and prepared myself to rush her.
Only I never made it an inch.
“I also have Henley.” She said casually, as she pressed a button on the wall and the sounds of someone screaming in agony echoed throughout the room. “Well, James has her. So whilst I think you will behave, if you decide to betray me again, rest assured that the little girl will never be found.”
For a second, I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t. Then the screaming turned to curses and insults, and I knew exactly who I was listening to.
Henley was with Rocky. She’d been taken just like me. She was being hurt and terrified, and she was in danger.
She was sobbing and swearing, and telling Rocky exactly what she thought of him.
“You hit like a pussy!” I heard her laugh through her cries. “My dead nan could punch harder than that and-” Her words were cut off as she was hit again.
Then again. And again. Until her screaming stopped, her words cut off, and I just knew she wasn’t awake anymore.
“No problem. I don’t want to go anywhere else anyway.” I stayed where I was, not an ounce of me trying to escape as my stalker stepped out of the room with a little wave and shut the door up tight behind her.
Time stopped having meaning for a while after that. I wasn’t sure how long I stayed frozen, unable to figure out where to start or what to do. Eventually, it became too much, and I forced myself to my feet, going through the motions of trying to be normal again. I used the bathroom for everything but a shower, unable to step foot beneath the stream of water. It made me flinch. The thought of it was worse than it had been the last time I had been waterboarded. And as much as I didn’t want to smell, I didn’t care enough to push myself under the water yet.
It wasn’t like I had anybody to impress. All the people I loved were dead.
Once done, I ate, drank some water, and sat on the floor in the corner, pretending that everything was fine. Then I kept my head as clear as possible, my hands as still as I could. With as much falseness as I could muster, I acted like my boys weren’t gone; I wasn’t in danger, and there was nothing wrong at all.
I just needed a plan. A plan to get out and get revenge.
I wasn’t dying in this fucking room. I wasn’t being killed by a motherfucker in a mask who hadn’t got the balls to face me for real.
I was a damn queen, and I was not ready to fall.
Not without taking my stalker out of the equation first.