34. To own is to…. Ruin
Chapter thirty-four
To own is to…. Ruin
W arrick
Stuart stands smugly on the other side of the room as we watch the numbers climb on the screen.
Bids.
One thing I’ve learned the hard way throughout my life is pain can be so substantial, it clouds everything. Grief, regret, despair, heartbreak, and agony can swallow you whole, leaving nothing of who you were before.
But nothing, nothing swallows and consumes like love . Nothing is as unforgiving and ugly.
Except perhaps me.
Unbidden comes the sight of her dangling above the bed, thrashing so hard, she’d added more bruises to her pale flesh. The sounds… Fuck, the sounds.
My hand tightens around the mouse, making it crack along the base, leaving the plastic jagged and sharp. That’s what this feels like, this sickening fucking hole drilled in my chest, one she put there when she had no fucking right. She had no right, forcing me to love her, to adore her small, upturned nose, her wide, hopeful eyes.
She trained me, conditioned me to crave the taste of dream-sickle on her tongue. The way she writhed took up every thought. Like clockwork, I obeyed; not just my body in the way I sought to please her, but she reworked the very fabric of my mind, knitted something together that had never existed there before, leaving me changed, altered, gored.
Weak.
She had no right to ruin everything and then…try to leave.
Each inhale hurts, although I know I’m physically fine.
How does that make sense? How does each movement of my chest feel raw and agonizing when nothing has really changed?
“Congratulations, Sir.” Stuart nods toward me, bringing my attention back to the screen. The obscene number there doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
It would never be enough.
My breakfast curdles in my gut as I nod. “Let them know there will be stipulations before you accept. Strict ones. She’s to be a showpiece , nothing more. If they disobey, the consequence will hold the weight of the House of Serpents. Ensure there’s no trace of this deal should Bloom get word of it.” Fuck, what is that sound in my voice? The thickness, like speaking through the sludge lodged in my throat.
Stuart nods in supplication, something that might have looked a bit like regret, maybe sympathy, crossing through his eyes.
That’s what you’ve made me, Pup. Something to be pitied.
You never realize you’re falling until you're inches above the ground.
It’s far too late to save either of us now.
Angels Like You by Miley Cyrus
Chloe
My hands shake as I’m led into the office by Henrietta. The usually bright woman’s head is hung. Even the air is heavy with miasma, like it knows something terrible is coming. It has been two days, two days my neck has been bare, aside from bandages. Two days, I was locked in my rooms, the only visitors Henrietta and Master’s doctor. The pain medication doesn’t sit well with the lack of food in my stomach. Everything again tastes like ash anyway. My eyes widen as I finally focus on the room around me, rich, dark opulence sitting in shambles.
Destroyed.
The man at the helm of it all stares, his eyes pressing into me like a physical touch, like sliding into a warm bath despite the cold, indifferent look on his face. His attention snaps to my wrapped, fractured hand. He’d pressed a kiss to my lips after he broke it, his lips so soft as I sobbed and screamed, crying out for him, for people long dead and long forgotten… Then, he left.
Again.
I had no clue the depth I could suffer, the way the pain and misery never seemed to bottom out. There was always further to fall, always more time to wallow. My chest clenches knowing the state of things is my fault. Tears already bud my eyes as the woman in front of me nods before departing, the smell of sage and oak filling my lungs as I drop to my knees. I should look down, bow my head to him, but I don’t.
I can’t look away. He’s a phantom, a wraith about to slip back into the ether.
He’s looking at me like he feels the same. It only serves to further sour my gut.
I’m so focused on molten hazel eyes, I don’t recognize the people on the screen at first as he turns it my way. It has been years, after all. My heart wrenches as I finally turn my attention to my mother, leaving a small but well-kept house. Her blue eyes are more wrinkled but just as empty as the last time I saw her. The day I told her I was moving to another state, and she only nodded before excusing herself to her bedroom. I had hoped she’d tell me not to, that she’d tell me to come home.
The same misguided hope I feel now as I turn my confused stare to Sir.
“You’ve heard a lot in your time here. I trust everything will stay with you.” He glances over at the picture of my mom, my heart stilling in my chest as I launch to my feet, my body groaning as I do. A started gasp leaves my raw throat as I see the date.
This month.
It was taken this month.
“What do you mean?” I whisper, but I know.
God, I know .
He doesn’t answer me.
His silence is as effective of a weapon as the pen, the whip, at punishing.
“You’re-you’re sending me home?”
“Nobody goes home, not even you.”
I’m going to be sick.
My legs feel like Jello as I step away from him, away from the desk. “Tell me. Say it.”
“Mind yourself,” Stuart snaps. “Your disobedience won’t be tolerated anywhere else.”
Master’s eyes leave mine as he takes a deep breath, and I’m begging silently, begging him not to do it.
He can’t.
He can’t.
My tears break free from my eyes, falling in rivulets as the word Bloom drifts off his silver tongue. With it, my world is sent pivoting for the hundredth time this week, plummeting .
Again, I fall deeper.
Harder.
I’m shaking my head, a sob lodging in my chest, and those hands… Those phantom touches are dragging me under the water. There’s the smell of the sea, the taste of it on my tongue as I turn, slamming past Stuart as I bolt from the room.
“Let her go. She won’t leave,” Master commands. I hate how right he is. My body cramps, my being thrumming with exhaustion and aches. I don’t make it far, running blindly through the halls. I hadn’t even tried to escape.
I’m gasping, sobbing, my cheek pressed into another expensive hallway runner as I die inside. I waste and whittle away as reality batters down on me. The clouds part long enough to wipe away my decision, stained glass casting rainbowed jewel tones around the hall. Time passes, and soon enough, my sobs are coming silently. My body trembles as something else burrows in my chest, something I borrowed from my master…
Anger.
I’m fucking angry.
That’s when my blurry eyes catch the silvery gray, reinforced double doors in front of me. I’d know this room anywhere. It’s the one we spent days in, one I stalked outside of, begging, pleading for him to come out, where he hid while I fell apart.
I can’t go back.
Snakeskin boots fill my vision, the sizzling bite of a prod, the way the metal would scratch my core as he worked it in. I stumble to my feet, my hands bracing the silver door before I flip open the panel beside the cold metal. I punch in the code I’ll never know if there’s any significance to.
I see the other day for what it was.
I think clearly for the first time since I buried that tire iron in the woman’s skull.
When my hands failed me as I tried to pull myself back up on the banister, it was the world trying to spare me this final wound. It was a mercy that he took from me.
I sob, but the sound isn’t broken. It’s angry as I enter the metal-tinged air of the cavernous room. The handgun I jerk out of the display is nothing special. I pick it because it’s the one he taught me to load and unload. He can’t send me back there.
He fucking can’t.
He can’t save me time and time again, only to throw me away.
I won’t let him.
Suddenly, I don’t feel the ache in my body, the pain in my throat, and I'm running. Not away; I would never run away from him. I'm running toward him. I don't slow down when I barge through his office doors, finding the room empty. My legs burn as I run toward the foyer, catching sight of Master at the front door. He's tailored, regal, and silently punishing as Stuart lets another man in. The one here, no doubt, to take me away.
My hand trembles, seeing as I only have one to work with. My fingers slip the first time I try to cock the gun, but I don’t miss the second. The sound cuts the casual conversation in half, severing it as everyone's eyes find me at the top of the stairs. Everyone can look. They can gawk at me like I'm crazy, floor-length dress plastered to my clammy sin as I lift it. I’m aiming it at the only pair of eyes I care about, the wide ones of my master.
Basilisk.
Stuart takes a step toward me, his hands raised, as if he could talk me down, of all people. Fuck him.
Master quickly recovers, because of course he does, cool and indifferent in the face of my undoing. But this time is different, because I know, I know he loves me. The room's sudden uproar halts as he climbs the stairs, stopping everyone with a single raising of his palm. So much confidence, so much power. My knees wobble in the presence of it.
Suddenly, my quiet resolve and anger slip, and I’m crying again. I don't wipe or blink the tears away as they blur my vision, because it's okay to cry here, because this is likely my last chance.
It's still okay to cry here, right, Master?
“You don’t get to do this.” My finger slips to the trigger as he grows closer, making no move to stay out of the line of the barrel. “I’m yours! I won't fucking let you!” My words leave in screams, sobs wracking my chest as I push the barrel into his chest. “Don’t make me go. Don’t push me away! I want to stay with you. Please!”
“Do something about it then,” he taunts, but I can see it in the flicker of something in his cold hazel eyes. A dare— no , a plea.
I scream as his hand snags mine, but he doesn’t take the gun. My eyes go wide, my heart shuddering as his hand covers mine. I watch in horror as he slowly drags the barrel from the center of his chest to his throat, pressing it in deeper. “Do it, Pup,” he commands, and suddenly, there’s a flurry of activity around me. Armed guards storm the beautiful home. Round brown eyes are held captive by molten hazel ones, and I see it, an agony that matches mine. “Put us both out of our misery,” he whispers under his breath, only for me.
The idea slithers up my spine, a temping and sickening end to it all, and fuck, if it doesn’t obliterate my resolve.
My knees give out, another broken sob ripping from me as he lets me fall to his feet. “I need you.” I'm gasping, my chest a ragged, ugly thing.
Sir clears his throat, quickly looking away from me as he pops the bullet from the gun, tucking it into his waistband with such fluidity, you’d think he was born doing that exact thing. “You will walk out with him. Do you understand?”
“ Warrick , please …”
“Enough!” He yells back at me, his eyes lit with emotion.
My hands slap over my ears, my fingers digging into my hair until my nails prick my scalp. “I love you.”
“And I warned you from the beginning— don’t .”
With that, I'm wrenched to my feet, but these phantom hands, they’re real, cruel and bruising as he walks away. My heart ratchets in my chest as the sharp prick of a needle is plunged into my upper arm, my sobs dying when my head grows heavy on my shoulders, and darkness again takes me.
When light finds me again, the bitter tinge of cleaning products assaults my nose, and a jarring, crackling sound fills the echoed space. I groan, panic filling my chest as I find my limbs unresponsive. Only my fingers and toes give into the orders from my brain, and even that comes in tiny, jerky twitches. The crackle sounds come again as scuffed snakeskin boots fill my hazy vision from the floor. Pain overwhelms me as the sound of the prod goes off again, its metal tip being drug along the badly bruised planes of my back.
“Welcome back, Lily. The Master and Mistress pulled all the strings to get you here.” He laughs, a cold, haunting sound that has plagued my nightmares. Bloom. God, of all places, why Bloom?
“I'm not supposed to touch you, but you’ll keep our little secret, right? It’s been too long since my prod has been soaked by a cunt as delectable as yours.” His words batter along my skull as he presses the metal tongs against my entrance, my fingers curling into fists as I brace myself for what comes next.