Chapter Five
Scarlett
Iwake up slowly, with a horribly dry mouth and aching body. Memories swarm my mind— Max, Monster, going down on Monster, Monster shoving a needle in my neck.
Monster.
Monster.
It wasn’t a nightmare, no matter how desperately I want to believe it is. No, as I come to blearily, blinking and sitting up on a soft mattress, I realize that my nightmare has only just begun.
Cold sweat drips down the back of my neck, wetting the material of the oversized shirt that I’m wearing…
which is the only article of clothing covering my body.
My breathing speeds up as I cast a slightly blurry gaze over the room.
This… is the real nightmare. This is my torture chamber, and probably where I’ll be executed, once and for all.
I’m back in a cell. Only, it’s not the cell I first woke up in nearly a year ago; there are very distinct differences.
The walls are made of brick rather than cement, which means I’m not at the annex…
but wherever I am, it isn’t much better, and it’s been built to represent a near-replica to my original death cell.
Bile rises in my throat at the sight of a familiar metal table and chair, equipped with restraints, sitting in the middle of the mid-sized room. The bed I’m in has hardwood paneling and four short posters, each of which have chains wrapped around them.
My very soul roils in turmoil as I realize that Monster can do whatever he wants to me. Strap me to that metal chair and waterboard me again, or do it right here in the bed. Stab me. Humiliate me. Kill me.
I should’ve gotten to that knife in my kitchen when I had the chance, because now… now, I’m literally fucked.
There are no cameras in this room that I can see, but I have no doubt there are hidden ones—and probably bugs all over the place.
The illusion of privacy is a thin veil hiding an ugly truth.
Every single object into this room is a barely shielded threat, constructed to inflict maximum psychological torture.
A table and chair that’s a replica of the one I almost died in.
A bed I can be chained down to in any position.
But the biggest threat of all comes from the mug sitting on the rickety wooden table next to the bed, filled with steaming tea.
Tea.
I look closer at the mug… then promptly rear back as horrible memories assault me. This is the same exact mug Monster drank out of the night I poisoned him, down to the shape, color, and slight chip in the handle.
Nausea rises in my esophagus. Something inside my head goes numb, as if my fundamental brain chemistry is shifting.
Is Monster going to poison me?
Is that how I’m going to die?
Monster talked a big game before I escaped him. Repeated that he wouldn’t hurt me moments before brutally taking my virginity. Told me that he’d claimed me as his ‘chosen’ woman, the one he’d protect above all others, while failing to protect me against his boss—Cain.
I don’t think there’ll be any talk of a big game or illusions this time around.
He’s going to get straight down to business, torturing me until he’s bored and then kill me.
The mug is a representation of that. A small shiver starts up in my bones as the familiar sensation of fear begins to overwhelm me.
The knowledge that I’m done for—that the brief taste of freedom I had was a complete lie.
I should’ve killed Monster when I had the chance. I should’ve done anything in my power to end him forever—I shouldn’t have even contemplated giving him the antidote to the oleander. If he were dead, I wouldn’t be back to this hellscape.
A fearful voice whispers the same thing over and over in my head: Monster’s going to fuck and torture me until he’s bored of me, and then he’ll end me.
I can only pray to God that he kills me sooner rather than later.
The steel door opens with an ominous creak.
I flinch back, staring wide-eyed as the door slowly swings outward, and Monster steps through.
He closes the door behind him, folds his hands in his pockets, and stares at me.
I try to keep a straight face while holding his gaze, but I can’t stop my bottom lip from trembling.
I’m terrified. My terror isn’t a new sensation, but it’s one I was trying my best to forget.
“You’re awake,” he says, echoing the same words he spoke to me nearly a year ago, after he nearly killed me—only to then realize my innocence.
I’m no longer innocent. I committed the crime of attempted murder, even if I pulled back at the last second. I have no doubt that, in Monster’s mind, I deserve every inch of what he’s about to do to me.
And maybe I actually do deserve it. I’m a piece of fruit that fell from a rotten tree; my blood is tarnished, my very soul is blackened just by my heritage alone.
“Do you like your accommodations?” he asks, casting a pointed gaze around the room. “I imagine they’re better than the shitty little apartment you were stuffed in while waiting for me to retrieve you.”
“I’d give this place a one-star on Airbnb,” I snap. “And we both know I was not waiting on you. I was running from you.”
He gives a casual shrug. “Perhaps that’s what you’d like to think…
” he meets my eyes again, and I’m hit with the crushing force of the darkness in his gaze, the anger.
“But you knew I’d come for you. You chose to save my life rather than let me die.
” He takes a few steps forward. Grabs the back of the metal chair and starts dragging it along the floor on his way to me.
“If you wanted me to leave you alone, you would’ve let the poison finish its job.
” He stops the chair less than a foot away from the corner of my bed and gracefully lowers himself onto it.
It’s a struggle not to shrink back against the pillows, but I manage to hold myself in place.
Monster’s eyes flick to the mug of tea. “Not thirsty?”
“That mug is cruel, and you know it.”
“Ah, does it bring memories to mind?” His eyes are startlingly dark and frighteningly empty, almost soulless. I’ve seen Monster furious before, but I’ve never seen him wear a look like this. “The night when you couldn’t even bring yourself to kill me?” he mocks.
“Fuck you.”
“Soon, Flower. For now…” he lifts the mug and holds it in front of me. “Drink. We don’t want you getting dehydrated, now do we?”
“Your enthusiasm for hydration still knows no bounds,” I retort. “I’m not drinking anything you give me.”
“Why not?” Monster asks, tilting his head to the side. “Are you afraid that I’ve… put something in it?”
“Yes.”
A crooked yet somehow flat smile takes over his lips. “That’d be a fair assumption, Flower. After all, who wouldn’t be vengeful toward the person who tried to kill them?”
“You tried to kill me first. I was literally on the brink of death on my tenth day with you. Conversely, I gave you the antidote as soon as you passed out. You stopped when I had seconds in that cell; I stopped when you still had minutes.”
“I don’t care for this competition.” His tone is hard. “Drink the fucking tea.”
“No.”
“Either you drink, or I force your jaw open and pour it down your throat. Dealer’s choice.”
Christ, he’s fucking psychotic, and that tea is absolutely poisoned.
I don’t know that it’s toxic enough to give me a fatal dose, however—I don’t think Monster would allow me such a quick escape.
No, I wager it has just enough poison to put me through a world of misery without giving me the relief of death. Maybe he even put oleander in it…
True fear sets in, blowing away my pride with a gust of wind and leaving behind only raw, exposed terror. It gouges me open from the inside out, spilling my emotions onto the cold, polished floor.
“Monster, please don’t,” I whisper, all my bluster gone. “I… I don’t want—”
“I don’t give a single fuck what you want, Scarlett,” Monster says harshly. His eyes are no longer blank—now, they’re filled with every inch of anger I’ve been expecting from him. The fury he managed to contain in my apartment. “Drink. The goddamn. Tea.”
My chest shakes as I stare at the tea. I know I don’t have a choice—not really. He will pour it down my throat. I’m going to ingest the tea, whether by my own volition, or by force.
I take the mug from his hold with shaking hands. Inhale a deep breath and briefly flick my eyes upward. Maybe if I drink it all at once, it’ll kill me fast. Maybe he did put a fatal dosage of poison in it.
But I don’t want to die. I’m willing to die, but that doesn’t mean I wish to, and I certainly don’t want to give Monster the privilege of killing me…
I let my eyes flutter shut. Clear the indecision from my mind, and steel myself for what I have to do.
Take in three deep breaths, and gulp the tea as swiftly as possible—rip off the metaphorical band aid.
When I finish the contents of the mug, I let it fall to the mattress beside me, and only then do I realize I’m crying and hyperventilating—fully panicking.
I saw the effects of what the oleander did to Monster.
I know I’m in for pain, so much pain, and it scares me down to my core.
I squeeze my eyes and bring my hands up to shield my face, not wanting Monster to see the full extent of my breakdown, but he doesn’t even offer me that courtesy. He grabs my wrists and lowers my hands, not budging when I flail against his grip.
“Just let me go!” I screech with a burst of energy, of fury that hides my terror. “Go! Leave me here to die in peace!”
“Oh, Flower,” Monster murmurs, his words so quiet over the cacophony of my own panic I can barely hear them. “Why on earth would I kill you?”
I’m in too much of a panic to comprehend his words. I struggle desperately against his grip, waiting for the moment my breath starts to shorten and my muscles begin to spasm… but it doesn’t come.
Nothing changes, which only sends me deeper into my spiral of panic and confusion. Did he give me something that has a delayed-onset?