Chapter 13 Sera
Sera
Rick has been watching me all shift.
Not the usual lazy, leering stares. This is sharper, hungrier. Even though he’s “working,” he smells like whiskey, the scent clinging to him like a second skin. He’s been nursing a bottle in the back office, the amber liquid glowing under his desk lamp whenever he cracks the door open.
I’ve counted the intervals when he slips back there, and it’s every forty-five minutes. Liquid courage for whatever he’s planning.
He steps into the back room where I’m restocking sodas. I feel him before I see him, the shift in the air, the sudden, oppressive weight of his stare. I keep my back to him, pretending to rearrange cans. My fingers brush the cool metal of a Coke can, and I imagine driving it into his temple.
“If both of us are back here, customers might rob the place,” I say with a glance over my shoulder to gauge his distance.
“You don’t talk like other girls.” He leans against the doorway, blocking my path, and his smile is a greasy smear on his face. “Makes me wonder how else you’re different.”
I turn slowly, keeping my expression flat. “You really want to find out?”
He chuckles low. “Yeah, I think I do.”
He moves like he’s done this before—luring someone into a trap. His voice drops, soft and coaxing, like the menace of him is something that should feel like comfort.
Predators learn to disguise their teeth. They learn to mimic the sounds of safety.
“Relax, sweetheart,” he murmurs, stepping closer. The toxic smell of him intensifies. “I just wanna talk.”
His fingers slide to my waist. His thumb traces the hem of my shirt, dipping beneath the fabric to scrape against the skin of my hip.
My stomach clenches, not with fear, but with fury.
I don’t freeze. I calcify. My muscles lock. My heartbeat doesn’t pound in my chest; it climbs into my throat, thick and hot, trying to choke its way out of my mouth.
I scan the room, and to my left is the cooler door made of heavy steel. On my right, metal shelves are stacked with cardboard boxes, and behind me, nothing but a wall. I have no clear exits.
I drift my fingers toward the top of my boot, where my knife is.
My gun created too much of an obvious bulge in my pants pocket, so it’s in my locker, but all I have to do is aim my knife for the soft spots, like the throat, belly, or inner thigh.
If I go for the latter, I can try to sever the femoral artery and make him bleed out fast.
Pull it. Do it now.
But my hand trembles. Not with fear, but with a rage so white-hot that it vibrates in my bones.
Fury that my body remembers a scene too similar to this.
Fury that my muscles recall how to fold, how to flinch, how to submit, when what I want is to rend and tear.
Fury that he taught my body this language.
The language of prey.
Rick’s hand slides higher up my shirt, skimming my rib cage, his touch a sick mimic of affection. His breath gusts against my ear.
“Bet you’ve got a dirty little mouth behind that red lipstick,” he whispers.
His other hand shoots up, surprisingly fast for a drunk. He grabs the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair, and shoves my face down, hard, toward the bulge in the front of his jeans.
A guttural noise tears from my throat, but not a scream. I don’t scream anymore. I learned that lesson too well. Screams are invitations. They make everything worse.
His grip tightens, forcing my head lower. I can smell the denim, the sour sweat, the rankness underneath. My vision blurs at the edges. I see the dirty floor, his tarnished belt buckle.
His free hand fumbles at his zipper, yanking it down in a sharp motion that makes me flinch. He pulls his half-hard, pathetic excuse for a cock out. With a rough grip on my hair, he forces my face toward him.
“Open,” he commands, the word thick with need.
Bent as I am, I have better access to the knife in my boot. Instead of obeying, I reach toward it.
“I said open, you whore.” He takes his cock in his fist and shoves the tip into my lips, but I clench my mouth even tighter. “Open, god damn it!”
I close my fingers around the hilt of the knife, and clarity slices through the haze of my fury. I’m going to carve him open. I’m going to show him what a girl’s capable of when she’s had enough. I’m going to paint the floor with his insides.
But he sees the blade arcing toward him, grabs my wrist, and twists. The world tilts, and I cry out in pain. The knife slips from my fingers and clatters to the concrete floor.
“What did you think you were going to do, huh?” He slaps me hard across the face, knocking me to the ground and stinging my eyes with tears. “You work for me, bitch. You do what I tell you to do. Are you hearing me? Fuck!”
He scoops up the knife, and my shoulders sink. Little by little, he’s taking more of my power, but I won’t let him have complete control. I won’t. If I can get to my gun in my locker, I’ll end this.
I start to haul myself up when he yanks the back of my hair with his fist.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” He brings the blade to my neck and presses it against my skin. “Open your fucking mouth, or I’ll bleed you dry, bitch.”
If I don’t, he’ll kill me. If I do, he’ll kill me. Is this what he does to all the other women who’ve worked here? Bring them into Gas N’ Go’s back room?
My pulse is a steady alarm between my ears. I need my gun, yes, but I still have teeth. Let him cut me open if I’m grinning around his severed cock.
I open wide, blood trickling from the corners of my mouth from when he hit me. He immediately pushes in, his cock now rigid and thick. He gets off on physical violence, the sick, twisted fuck.
With a loud groan, he pulls out and then starts to thrust back in again, but his movements are awkward, clumsy. His dick slides against my cheek and pokes into my ear.
I open even wider, holding perfectly still so he can get it fucking right next time before I use my teeth against him.
Then the front door bell rings.
The sound is jarringly loud in the tense silence of the back room. Rick freezes. His grip on the back of my head slackens, and he laughs.
“Be right back, sweetheart.” He pats my head like I’m a dog.
Like this is all a joke.
Like I’ll stay on my fucking knees in here and wait.
He pockets my knife, tucks himself back into his jeans, and leaves.
I’m on my feet in the next second, dashing for the door and the gun in my locker at the back of the store. I don’t fucking care if a customer sees what I’m about to do to him.
Footsteps sound, not the hesitant shuffle of a late-night customer looking for chips. These are fast, deliberate, heavy boots pounding on the linoleum.
Reaching for the break room door, I turn my head toward the rest of the store.
“What...?” Down aisle three, Rick’s smile vanishes as he faces the storm of footsteps.
He fumbles in his pocket just as James launches at him.
My James.
My stalker.
James’s face is a mask of fury, twisted into a terrifying smile. His blue eyes are bright, feverish, fixed solely on Rick. There’s no trace of the charming, boyish Scot. This is pure predator.
“That head’s nae fucking yours to touch,” James snarls at him.
His voice is low, guttural, thick with an accent turned jagged by rage.
He moves like lightning. His hand shoots out, grabbing Rick by the collar of his stained work shirt, and he hauls Rick off his feet like he weighs nothing. Rick yelps, flailing, but James doesn’t hesitate. He drags him, stumbling and choking, out of the main store and toward the bathroom hallway.
“Hey! Wait! What the fuck!” Rick protests.
James kicks open the door to the men’s bathroom.
The door slams shut behind them.
Then the sounds start.
A sickening crunch, like fist meeting bone. A muffled scream, abruptly cut off. Another punch, wetter this time. A gurgling groan. The sound of something heavy hitting the tiled floor.
I stand frozen by the break room, listening. My breath comes in shallow gasps, and my scalp stings where Rick pulled my hair.
A cool, clean wash of relief spreads through my veins like ice water. Someone is doing what I couldn’t do, what I didn’t have time to do. Someone is making him pay. Someone is translating my silent, screaming fury into action.
I float toward the bathroom door and push it open.
The scene inside is a brutal still life under the harsh fluorescent light.
Rick is slumped against the wall beneath the sink.
His face is a ruin of blood and swelling.
One eye is already swollen shut, and the other stares dazedly, unfocused.
Blood pours from his broken nose and split lips, soaking the front of his shirt.
His breath rattles wetly in his chest. One arm hangs at an unnatural angle.
All of that in seconds, maybe minutes. All of that for me.
James stands over him, breathing hard. His knuckles are raw and bloody. Spatters of crimson smear his white T-shirt, his neck, his jaw. He looks down at Rick with utter contempt, then spits, and the glob lands on Rick’s ruined cheek.
Then he turns and sees me in the doorway. His expression doesn’t soften, but the wildness in his eyes settles slightly. He steps over Rick’s prone form, ignoring the man’s weak groan.
“He winnae touch ye again,” James says, his voice rough but calmer now. He looks at me, really looks at me, his gaze scanning my face, my posture, searching for damage with the intense scrutiny of someone who claims ownership. “Promise.”
I smile at the blood on his hands, at the fierce possession in his eyes, at the casual brutality that just unfolded because Rick dared to touch what James considers his.
He didn’t come to save me.
He came because I mattered. Because something inside him recognized the violation and answered it with savage fury. Because he saw me being touched, and it ignited a violence in him that mirrored the violence I felt.
Instead of thanking him, I step inside the men’s bathroom with him, and something inside me purrs.