Chapter 60
60
I try to scream.
A feeble and voiceless cry for help sits silently on my tongue.
I try again and again until my lungs feel like they’re about to explode… and yet nothing escapes past my throat. It’s like a stopper has been inserted, a gross and violating invisible gag has been shoved down my windpipe, and my ability to use my voice has been stolen.
The man who rules this world, who abuses children, who has been responsible for so many atrocities, strolls around in the shadows. My nostrils flare repeatedly, trying to inhale and exhale and not lose my sanity at the prospect of what this means.
A menacing wave starts to extend through my body like smoke, creeping slowly along the network of veins and capillaries, turning me into nothing better than a shell of myself, with only a faint grasp of control. It’s enough that I can still hold myself upright; I can still breathe, but the all too familiar talons sink into my mind and start to slice away my grasp on reality, feasting on each morsel with rabid intent .
This is exactly how it was when I was held in that place.
Spiders begin to climb over my skin, leaving me with wetness coating my face at the wretchedness of it all. The hopelessness. No one is coming to rescue me this time because I’ve agreed to this.
Every second I’m alone with this predator is thanks to my own choice to be here. On the inside, there’s a ghost of me screaming to be released. She’s banging on the cage formed by my bruised ribs; she’s scratching her nails against the underside of my skin as if she’s been buried alive.
That red light continues to glare at me. Letting me know that every moment of this torture is going to be recorded. My body is going to be defiled, and my brain will be, too, if this disgusting man has anything to do with it.
He comes back toward me, this time with a riding crop in his hand. Using the handle, he shoves it beneath my chin to keep my attention trained on him and grabs hold of the length of my hair in his other fist.
Tears run freely over my face, coating skin that is partially numb with a strange sensation that leaves me aware that I’m crying, but I can’t properly feel it. Maybe that’s a blessing. Whatever this bastard does to me, whatever brutality he subjects me to, maybe I won’t feel any of it?
“I’m going to make sure every pathetic sob gets captured on camera.” He leans down and runs a foul tongue up the side of my face, tasting my tears, and that furious scream on my insides howls with a long, haunting note of despair. “Every drop of blood. Every silent scream for me. It’ll fetch an impressive price, seeing noble Elysium pussy on display. It won’t be long before I’ll have a line waiting for their turn, and I’ll be sure to make it memorable for each and every one of them. An on-film record of the moment they break you in to suit their tastes.”
Andreas licks up the other side of my face, then tightens his hold on my hair, forcing my body to bend to his command, even though I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to.
“That’s the kind of thing fertile little bitches like you enjoy, isn’t it? Being pinned down and screwed until you can’t walk?”
His face might be concealed, but I can hear the sickening sneer.
“Indulge an old man while we let that little cocktail make a home in your veins and really loosen you up. I do love a story, don’t you? Let me tell you just how perfect you turned out to be. The naive young thing walking through those doors downstairs for the first time was the key I didn’t know I needed to own.”
As he talks, he walks around behind me, examining every detail, inspecting me in a way that, if I were in my right mind, would leave me with goosebumps. Except, all I’m able to do is kneel here, pathetically spread and available for his depraved tastes to be fulfilled.
“Looks like I chose well with you, Posey. Not only having the perfect way to make sure Calliano stays loyal, since he does seem so very fond of his latest pet, but keeping you here as my chance to secure an Elysium House bloodline for my own? I think you’ll do quite nicely to bear me a child, and a spare for good measure, that can carry on my lineage. A man like me needs loyalty above all else, and I’ve been impressed with the loyalty you’ve so eagerly shown. So perfectly molded, so quickly. It’s remarkable.”
My brain shatters a little more. Glass falling onto concrete. A baseball bat taken to a china cabinet full of the remaining sacred parts of myself.
Would I survive knowing this awful man won’t stop until I’m pregnant? Invisible sobs wrack my body from the inside, with rolling wave after wave of agony.
The sight of my men’s faces swim into my mind’s eye. What would it do to them if I were to be impregnated by this monster? None of us would fucking survive it, I’m certain, because they’d forever be destroyed seeing the growing evidence of his claim on me.
“Hawke Calliano.” There’s a disdain in his voice, as he rolls his tongue over the name. “That’s a man who tells me time and again that he’s loyal , but I’ve had suspicions for some time now that he’s been up to something. With your rescue , it brought to light just how far he’s strayed from the task I’ve entrusted him with. There’s only one way he found out where I had you taken to, and it means he’s been working against me in secret. When he found you so very easily, after a matter of weeks, it gave me exactly the answers I’d been searching for.”
It’s too much. I feel like I’m crumbling and decaying with the revelation that Andreas was pulling the strings this whole time. Not only to ruin me, but to entrap Hawke and the others, too.
“You know, Vitto had the right idea, making sure you were found and initiated. It's ironic, really, that his own brother was the key to tracking your whereabouts after all this time. He’ll get his turn with you eventually. Even though he’s been well compensated for handing you over to my control, I know a man thirsty for a sample of the sweetest young fruit when I see one.”
He comes back to stand in front of me and uses the riding crop to flick at my thigh, testing my reflexes. Studying my reaction to see if the drugs have taken hold—they must have, because I hardly feel it graze my skin. He gives a second strike in the exact same spot; this time, I see the increased force behind his strike and the greater amount of effort used with his wrist. Yet, the same deadened, dull thud is all I register.
When I look down, I see the reddened welt raised across my skin.
“Ahhh. Perfection. Just like I knew you would be.” He drags my head back again, forcing my spine to arch. “It was easy enough to put my men on you, to pluck you like a rare jewel to add to my collection. Almost laughable how desperate those three were to get you back. All I needed to do was give them a sniff, and they dug their own graves. I need something, or someone, to help me keep those three in line. And there’s no doubt that you’ll be my perfect little plaything to ensure they carry out their duties and stop poking around with things that don’t concern them.”
That’s when he pinches my chin, tilting my face side to side in order to take a long look from behind his mask at the O-ring gag, and if I had the ability, this would be the moment I might start hyperventilating. I can’t possibly know what his expression says, but the way he appears to be fixating on my mouth tells me everything.
With his groin positioned right in front of my face, he tosses the riding crop and undoes the drawstring of his trousers. I’m numb, helpless, floating somewhere out of my body as the worst begins to unfold only inches from my forcibly parted lips.
Andreas pulls his foul dick out and starts stroking himself. The crown is so close that my insides recoil. It takes a monumental force, but I manage to pull my head back while almost buckling under the strain of trying to move. The man standing over me immediately scolds my reaction. An electric shock zaps through my neck and races a searing knife of hot pain down my spine. Even though the flesh of my body is numb from the drugs, it’s excruciating as that sharp barb burrows into my muscles in a thousand different places at once.
“Oh no. I don’t think so.” He waves a remote in front of my bleary eyes before tucking it back in the pocket of his robe. “You will bend to my will, Posey. You will satisfy this arrangement, or so help me, I will snap you in half and send you back to them as nothing more than a shell. You can be assured that I won’t order their execution, but I will have no qualms in caging them, removing their eyelids, and forcing them to watch every moment of your body being used by myself and others for year upon year.”
He grips his cock in one hand and brutally clutches my hair at my crown, then drags the disgusting, putrid smear of his leaking cock across my cheek in the same spot where he licked me before.
I want to shrivel. I’m collapsing in on myself. This isn’t happening to me. It’s an awful thing happening to someone else who isn’t me.
With fingers scraping a dull sound against the outside of my skull, he angles my head to line up the O-ring with his fist. His hips shift, and he pushes forward. There’s a moment when his flesh fits inside the device, when I sense the obstruction that is about to penetrate and violate me, and my brain shuts down.
Somehow, I vanish from inside this living corpse, and instead, I’m tucked against Angel’s warm chest, listening to his contented rumbles. I feel Grey ever so gently run his stroking touch over my hair, twirling one of the strands around his tattooed finger. The heat of Hawke’s palm glides up and down the small of my back.
My heart and mind have flown away from this hell, to be safe and loved. A refuge where I crawl into their strong arms and am surrounded by their care for me.
I’m with them.
I’m not here at all.
The gag inside my mouth tugs hard, and the strap affixed behind my head pulls forward, along with the grip that rips away a chunk of my hair. It’s as if the entire thing is being wrenched from my face, and I hardly dare open my eyes.
Except the figure in front of me staggers backward, clutching the front of his chest.
Red seeps down the front of his torso, coating his fingers as they scrabble at the item protruding from his stomach. It’s sharp and gleams with the bright red evidence of plunging through him from behind.
Andreas splutters and coughs violently, spraying more blood everywhere as it bubbles from the point where he’s been run through.
As I try to make sense of the scene before me, there’s a flash of a silver weapon cutting straight through the darkness of this room, and he slumps to his knees, his hands now clawing at his throat. It erupts in a torrent of blood, streaming down his collarbone as he begins to collapse under the force of the injuries.
Standing over him, dressed head-to-toe in black fatigues, wearing a balaclava with only two eye holes, is a short figure. Too short to be my men, or Keisha, or anyone I can think of who might come to my rescue.
They curse something in a language I don’t recognize, or maybe that’s just my drug-addled mind. I’m unsure whether to believe what I’m witnessing—that monster bleeding to death on the marble before me.
With one boot, the black-clad figure pushes at his shoulder, rolling him to one side, and tugs on the handle of a long blade sticking out of his back. Using that same blade, they proceed to hack at Andreas’ groin.
His severed penis hits the floor, landing in a pool of his own blood.
Rivers of glistening, slick crimson pour from his body without hesitation now. It’s starting to form a sheen that coats the floor and extends in my direction as I watch on in horror.
Is this person here to end my life, too?
Andreas convulses on the floor, life draining from his limbs with every pumping gush of blood that drains out of him. The figure crosses the room, turns off the camera, and brings it back with them, setting it down on the floor and then crouches on their haunches in front of me.
I can smell the copper, the death. It floods my nostrils.
“Can’t have you knowing what comes next. Things are gonna get pretty grisly.” It’s a female voice, one that sounds raspy to my dulled senses. She pulls a syringe from the Kevlar vest she’s wearing.
Oh, god. Please, no. Not more drugs.
She crouches before me and runs a gloved finger over my numb jaw. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances. Maybe you’ll remember this moment, or maybe your brain will erase it for you, but if we ever cross paths in the future, you’ll know me as Emerald.”
The needle digs into the side of my neck. Embedding straight into my vein.
“I’ll see you around sometime, Poe.”
She guides my head and body to the side, cradling the side of my face as I slump against the floor, and blackness comes in to claim me with full force. As the room disappears, her final words follow me into that sleeping mist.
“Take care of my brother for me.”