CHAPTER EIGHT #2
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Cameron.
Going back on our deal is a bad idea. Something ain’t right there, and we all know what’s at risk if this gets out,” Harry says.
His voice is much quieter than usual, but I figure it’s likely muffled by the blood dripping from the gash Gio caused when he hit me in the head earlier, now pooling in my ears.
I resist the urge to wipe it away but I am desperate to hear more.
This is the first time any of them have mentioned my father since I got here, and I knew better than to ask questions.
Even if the idea of any harm coming to him has been all I could think about for years.
The fact that they are speaking freely could mean that they are finally going to put me out of my misery.
“Yeah, well that expired when their end of the deal wasn’t honored. So, tough shit if I outsource a new one.”
“You made a deal with the devil, and you’re pissed they didn’t meet their end of the bargain. Good one, Cameron.”
“Ha!” Cameron scoffs in amusement, his derision carrying across the room with the same authority he always seems to have over the others.
“Here’s the thing about the devil,” he murmurs, and I flinch as his boots return to the spot on the floor I haven’t dared to look away from.
“The devil is only powerful until the hands that made them, decide to unmake them.” His voice crawls under my throbbing skin, my pulse stuttering, dulling everything except the shape and weight of that sentence.
Who is he talking about?
It can’t be my father.
They just said they’d dangle me in front of him like carrots.
For what? Money? Power? It’s all the same currency in our world.
The world they stole me from. No, it has to be someone else.
This devil…isn’t a man they fear. It’s a man they made, and I don’t think they’re talking about my bodyguard.
He didn’t carry enough weight nor command the kind of power that would persuade any of these men to rely on him.
My vision swims, darkness creeping at the edges, but I hold on because not knowing why I am here feels worse than anything they could ever do to me.
I’ve learned almost nothing about the seven of them, but they don’t strike me as the type who would gamble everything on one expendable piece.
Not when the stakes look like me. The French Mafia princess, bleeding at their feet.
Whoever is responsible for bringing me here has failed them in some way, and now they’re pissed.
I can hear it in the tension separating me from them.
Does that mean they’re planning a trade?
Would my father even want what is left of me?
Half a daughter? I was not worthy of saving then, so why would I deserve it now?
He didn’t come for me. Didn’t look for me.
I’m nothing more than a burden sent away to make room for his new life.
Make room for new memories. To say goodbye to me was to bury a memory, the memory that I am the reason my mother is dead.
And the fact that I am still here, and my father is still breathing, can only mean that I was never getting out of here.
I was never going to be rescued. My life, my stupid waste of life, was only ever going to be this place.
My future, if I still have one, was never meant for living. It was only ever meant for them.
“So… what? Is that why you won’t let us fuck her pussy?
In case we have to hand her back intact?
” I don’t know which of them says it, only that the words settle over me, serrated and glacial, much colder than the snow rotting beyond these walls.
I knew this was coming. I’ve been waiting for it.
Watching their every move. Listening for it in every pause of their heavy bodies, and every slight change in their tone.
To name the one thing they haven’t yet taken from me.
A slow crushing pressure rises behind my sternum, pressed heavily against the floorboards.
It’s like my brittle heart is finally caving in.
Tears well in my eyes before falling slowly onto the spot beneath my cheek.
Piece by piece, they’ve left me with nothing.
They have used me in ways I didn’t know existed.
I would not wish any of this on anyone, not even my worst enemy.
My thoughts falter because they are my enemies. I don’t have anyone else to hate.
Only them.
“Why would we need her pussy anyways? Her ass feels like a fucking dream.” Bile rises in my throat as my tears fall soundlessly, ignored beneath the laughter filling the chilled air around me.
A hand fists in the back of my hair, yanking hard.
A cry tears from my throat as I am dragged to my knees, my lungs seizing, my bones burning as though they’ve been set alight beneath my skin.
I tilt my head up, blinking through blood and tears at the tall figures close in around me.
They don’t speak. They don’t have to. For the first time in what feels like forever, I do.
“Kill me,” I whisper, my voice breaking under the force of their depraved gazes. “P-please.”
“Awe. Where’s the fun in that?” Gio says teasingly, stepping in closer. Too close.
“Grab the chain,” Cameron orders. Something inside me cracks open. No. Not again. They’re going to… Not here. Not like this. A sob rips from behind my lips, my hands clawing weakly at the air. At nothing. At everything.
“Please! I’m sorry! Don’t tie me up in here…
please.” The words fracture as they leave my split lips, catching on blood as it fills my mouth.
My voice cracks, shattering into a useless, strangled exhale before it can even sound like the desperate plea that it’s meant to.
Cameron jerks my head back by my hair and pain rips across my scalp, already raw from Gio’s earlier assault.
A violent shudder rips through me as Cameron’s hand clamps around my jaw, his fingers biting into my skin as he forces my face upward.
My eyes lock onto his, and something cold unravels down my spine as he watches me with a quiet, assessing hunger.
There is no emotion in them. His eyes. There is no warmth.
No care. There is only indifference. An absence so complete it turns my stomach.
My old life was filled with monsters, yet I had never seen anything this empty.
I’d never known anyone to possess such evil until I was kidnapped and forced to remain in this godforsaken place.
“Someone fill her fucking mouth already,” Dash says, before slamming his boot into my left kneecap, causing me to collapse forward, my head burning as Cameron yanks me back into an upright position.
Blinding pain explodes through my entire body, writhing in agony and swinging in Cameron’s grip as he holds me there, almost suspended by my hair.
I scream as their torment becomes unbearable, my throat raw with emotion and the certainty that they’re going to chain me up again, only this time, I’m not so sure they’ll let me go.
Even if I’m good. There is no escaping them.
There is nowhere for me to run, to hide, no corner of the world they wouldn’t find me.
My heart burns, my eyes sting, and every inch of me feels like it is slowly dying.
Except it doesn’t end. None of this ends.
Because an end would be too easy. Harry steps in, the cold bite of metal wrapping around my waist. Every frozen link scrapes against me, a reminder of when they first dragged me here and locked me away.
I don’t try to fight the hands clawing at my body.
I don’t have anything left to fight with.
Little by little, they’ve hollowed me out, peeling me back in careful layers until I became exactly what they wanted.
A vacant thing dressed in old, lace curtains.
A quiet, obedient object kept only to move when summoned.
Knowing my father is still alive and that he had nothing to do with me being here should make me feel relieved.
Happy. It should be a mercy, but it isn’t.
It only leaves me lost, knowing way too much and understanding none of it.
Cameron said there was someone else behind all of this, and I know he only revealed that information because he thought I wasn’t fully coherent, but I know what I heard.
It means this isn’t over. It means there’s still a chance I’ll get out of here.
A trade. I hate how quickly I latch onto that, how something desperate inside me reaches for the dim flicker of light before I can crush it down the way I’ve learned to.
I don’t want hope. I don’t want to feel what doesn’t exist if there’s a chance that it will be ripped away again.
I’ve survived too long to be that stupid, still, I need something.
Anything to get through what they’re doing to me.
I can do this. I’ve done worse. I can keep going, keep breathing, keep enduring until the day comes that they decide they’re done with me and send me home.