6. Riley
RILEY
“Aren’t you coming in?” I shift my weight, gravel cutting into my feet.
My whole body is bruised and achy from lying on the rocky ground. I’m so cold it’s like there’s ice underneath my skin, and hungry in a painful way—my stomach cramping with acids.
The lights are on. Aron is on the outside of my cage, plate in his hand and a blanket thrown over his arm, just like the last few times he’s come down here. Except for whatever stupid reason, he’s just standing there staring at me.
My mouth is watering, and my teeth are chattering so hard they might crack.
Fuck him. Fuck this.
My hand shoots forward through the bars. I try to grab the blanket. But he just takes a step back—out of my reach—snickering. The sound makes my blood boil.
“Careful, you’ll make me spill your tea.” As always, there’s a steaming mug on top of the plate, and I need it now, even more than the slice of bread and two triangles of cheese surrounding it.
Why won’t he let me have it?
“You fucking asshole.” The insult echoes shrilly throughout the cavern until it sounds like the whole cave is mocking me.
“What, did you want these?” He indicates the plate and the blanket, taunting me.
“What do you think?”
“I think you need to learn a lesson, Hotshot,” he drawls maliciously. “You need to learn that these are a privilege. A privilege you can lose if you don’t behave.”
“Fuck you!”
He tuts, setting the plate and the blanket down before stepping back to the bars. I want to bolt, but I’m weak and slow. His hand is around my throat before I know what’s happening. He runs his thumb over my pulse, his eyes darkening with warning.
I bet he wouldn’t be pleased to know how nice the warmth of his touch feels.
“You got very spicy with me last time,” he drones.
Pressure builds, and my hands shoot up, my fingers clawing at his, trying to pry them away.
“I did not,” I rasp.
“You called me some choice names. You threw rocks at me.”
“Oh, I did do that. I just wouldn’t call that very spicy,” I retort, gasping for breath when he squeezes even harder.
My heart is speeding up in instinctive panic even as my mind remains calm. He won’t choke me to death. That’d be too nice an end for me. But my body doesn’t know that, and adrenaline floods my veins.
Aron chuckles. “Fair enough, Hotshot. Be a bad girl if you want. But understand this: bad girls get punished.” He releases his grip on my throat, sliding his hand down towards my exposed breast.
I stumble backwards, and my foot lands on a jagged piece of rock.
“Oww, fuck!” I nearly crash to the ground, my eyes watering.
I want to tell Aron to go to hell. I want to tell him to stop talking to me like I’m his next meal.
But I don’t say any of that. I’m in no position to.
He can do whatever he wants to me. Arguing about that is pointless.
Head-on resistance will get me nowhere. I need a smarter approach.
But I’m drawing a blank, and so I just glare at him.
“Okay, here’s the deal. You’re not going to get your food, blanket and bathroom break unless you do as I say.”
“What do you want me to do?” I ask, not hiding my apprehension.
“Kneel in that gravel over there until I tell you that you can get up.”
I glance at the patch of particularly sharp-looking scree and gulp audibly.
“You wouldn’t let me starve or freeze to death,” I point out without any conviction.
“No,” he confirms. “But I can let you go without food and warmth for much longer than I have without killing you. I can make you suffer a lot more.”
I don’t doubt that for a second. If anything, I’m sure that the only reason he fed and warmed me up regularly until now was to have something more immediate to threaten me with, other than the pain he could inflict on Corrado.
And it is not lost on me that he’s withheld that threat until he let me taste hunger and physical discomfort.
On my first day here, I would have told him to fuck off and gone without eating and respite from the cold.
But now, after those endless hours spent down here sleep-deprived, painfully hollow inside, cold cutting through me from all sides like sharpened knives, and with the walls closing in on me as my only company ... I’m so desperate for comfort that it’s making my eyes well up with bitter tears.
He has worn me down.
Don’t beg, don’t beg, don’t beg. It will only encourage him. Don’t beg.
“Please.” My voice is barely above a whisper. “Please, let me have my food. I won’t do that anymore. You know I’m smarter than that. Please.”
To my shock, his facial expression does soften, a flicker of compassion erasing some of its harsher lines. For a heartbeat, he looks tempted to relent. But it’s gone in the blink of an eye.
His voice is firm and uncompromising when he says, “Your pathetic begging won’t work. In here, you only ever get what you fucking deserve. Either do as I say and kneel, or you won’t get to eat for a very long time.”
I’ve spent long enough on the gravelly ground to know that either option is unbearable. If I do what he wants, at least he won’t leave until he feeds me and lets me warm up. He will keep the lights on.
Gingerly, I lower myself to my knees, wincing, the rocks cutting into my skin.
Fuck, it hurts.
I’m instantly transported back in time to when my father made me kneel on corn kernels as a punishment for bad grades.
If there’s something I learnt from those days, it’s that the pain only gets worse with each passing minute.
I don’t know how I’m going to last. Staying motionless is agony, but each subtle movement only makes it worse.
Aron settles himself in the narrow corridor outside the bars, leaning back against the wall with his legs sprawled in front of him.
I keep my eyes locked on his and he on mine, like we’re in a staring contest. A heartless smile flickers across his face each time I hiss when I shift my weight, achieving nothing but making my torment even worse, the jagged edges sinking through my skin and into my ligaments.
Soon, tears are streaming down my face. I’m unable to stop them, but I don’t want to give him the pleasure of seeing me cry. I lower my head until my chin rests on my chest, and I let them fall to the ground with faint splats.
A whole eternity passes before I look up again to find that he’s gotten bored and is now tossing his knife up, letting it flip mid-air, and then catching it by the handle, over and over. After a while, he swaps hands, repeating the performance with the same practised efficiency.
Time stretches into a blur of growing agony. The sound of my ragged breathing is laced with whimpers that keep clawing up my parched throat. I grow weak. Each time I sway with fatigue, the rocks lodge deeper and deeper underneath my kneecaps, pain lashing further up my body.
“How much longer?” I finally ask him, past the point of being ashamed for the distinct note of pleading in my feeble voice.
He only shrugs, not even bothering to look at me.
“You sadistic fuck.” My words are laced with venom. “Do you promise you’ll actually let me eat if I last however long you want me to?”
He shrugs again before replying, “I can promise that I won’t if you don’t.”
Drip, drip, drip, I focus on the sound of water coming from the back of the cave, like the ticking of a clock, measuring seconds which then morph into minutes and then hours.
Aron cleans under his nails with his knife and pulls out a small paperback from his pocket, hiding the jacket from me behind his legs, bent in front of him as he reads.
This encourages me to cry loudly and openly, my sobs echoing—trying to be proud and brave is one thing, but not letting the bastard read in peace is way more tempting.
Not that he is bothered at all by the noise I’m making.
He seems completely engrossed in the story; he’s chewing his bottom lip, flipping the pages fast. Not paying me any attention at all until I shift my weight for the millionth time, but this time the pain is so sharp it feels like a ligament in my knee snapped.
My leg gives out, and I topple to the side with a screech.
“Well. That’s that.” I raise my head to see Aron stand up and slide his book back into his pocket.
My eyes stray to the blanket on the ground and the plate of food next to it. I howl like an injured dog pining for its master. I don’t even care. There’s not a thing that can make my humiliation worse than kneeling for that psychopath for hours in agony, only to have that be for absolutely nothing.
But then I hear the click of a lock and the scrape of the cell door. My heart stops.
Heavy tactical boots come into view, the outsole of one soiled with something that looks like blood. When he puts the cover over me and the soft, warm fabric touches my skin, the relief is staggering.
“Drink. Eat,” he orders me simply, pushing the plate closer to me with the tip of his boot.
Don’t thank him, you idiot. You’re better than that.
I sit up, not looking at him. A traitorous flood of endorphins is coursing through me in monumental waves.
“What made you take pity on me?” I ask to distract myself.
“Nothing.”
“What’s this then?” I ask, indicating the plate. “I thought I wasn’t getting any of this since I didn’t last as long as you wanted me to.”
“Oh, but you did,” he assures me, his voice dripping with cruelty. He crouches down and hooks his fingers underneath my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“You did, Hotshot,” he repeats with a malicious smirk, his voice low. “I wanted you to take it until you couldn’t anymore. And like a good, obedient fucking girl you did, didn’t you?”
My relief evaporates. My stomach churns, threatening to expel what little food it just got. Fear rather than restraint is the only thing that stops me from spitting in his handsome, revolting face.