Chapter 51 #2
I almost wanted to laugh, the hysterical, brink of insanity kind of laughter that could only come from being warned by my friends not to get human trafficked by billionaires, only to wind up getting human trafficked by a billionaire.
Archer and Jayne were getting off on hiding evil in plain sight, and I’d stayed in their cult even after a fucking auction.
Stupid couldn’t begin to describe how I felt right now.
When Wes finally spoke, it was eerily calm. “You will not be able to keep this up, Roman. This will be the downfall of the Graves legacy. And if Max finds out…”
“Father knows who I am,” Roman spat, the first sign of instability finally bleeding through the cracks at the mention of the Graves patriarch. “He is like me, not you. I have already played out every possible sequence of events, and in every scenario, I win. I win every time.”
He released me.
Roman slowly circled to the other side of the table, his gun pointed at me the whole time.
“Oh, and in case this needs to be said, Nova is only valuable to me so long as she is valuable to you,” he said to Wes.
“If you disobey even one of my orders, I will assume she lost her value, and I will shoot her in the head.”
Wes’s eyes flashed raw panic. They never left mine.
“That would be my least favorite outcome, but it would still be a net win for me.” He took a deep breath. “Now, please secure Nova to the table. I’m ready to begin. You’ve both been rather dull participants so far, but I can fix that.”
Wes stepped forward.
He was going to follow Roman’s orders to protect me, and I was going to let it happen to protect him. Because I couldn’t stomach the thought of him watching one more person die before his eyes.
Roman stepped back into an alcove between wine shelves, the opposite side of the room to us. I started pushing myself up onto the table, but Roman stopped me.
“No, angel,” he said. “Let Wes do everything. Think of yourself as a perfect human doll.”
My throat constricted as Wes approached me, mirroring my helplessness as he desperately searched my eyes.
“Hey, you’re going to be okay,” he whispered.
“What a silly thing to say,” I said back, my voice shaking. My lips trembled as I tried and failed to smile.
He moved the torture devices to the floor and lifted me onto the table. He held my hand for the briefest moment. The look in his eyes was an apology, a wound that had been ripped back open.
Realization and understanding struck me all at once.
“Hard points are under the table. I want her arms and legs spread,” Roman said, his tone impatient as he glared at us with his arms crossed.
“He hurt Kallie, didn’t he?” I asked. “It was all him.”
Wes gently guided me onto my back and lifted my wrists above my head. “Yes. I tried to warn you, but I was black bagged before I could.” With trembling hands, Wes began to tie the rope around my right wrist.
“God,” was all I could say, horrified.
“She needs painkillers at least, Roman. You can’t brand her like this while she’s fully awake and—”
“Do not fucking tell me what to do with my property!” Roman yelled, his face reddening a shade as his dark eyes grew even darker.
Wes tensed. With the gun pointed back at my head, he pulled my bound wrist and secured the end of the rope to the hard point under the table.
Deep breath after breath, I tried not to go into a full-blown panic attack. But imagining the smell of my own sizzling flesh was enough to send my body into a visceral state of panic I’d never felt before.
“Please. You don’t need to do this,” I said to Roman.
“Yes, beg me for mercy. You look so fucking sexy when you’re desperate,” he purred.
I stopped speaking. Wes bristled.
“Seems like a good time to remind you of all the occasions you treated me with contempt, disobeyed me, even raised your voice with me…” He tsked.
“After this, you will be purified. Purified of my brother’s touch.
Purified of all your numerous offences against me.
Be grateful I’m not taking another page out of that book and piercing your cunt. ”
A shiver rolled down my spine. Wes held my hand again, his face contorting with pain and fury.
I squeezed his hand back.
“There’s something I need you to know,” Wes said, barely above a whisper as he secured the knot around my left wrist. He released a shaky breath. “It feels fucked-up to say it now, but I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I—”
Wes’s gravelly voice cracked, and I braced myself as tears blurred my vision.
“I love you, Nova.”
Wes caught the tear that escaped my eye with his thumb. “I made a huge mistake—by not telling you the truth, and then by not fighting for you. I told myself I was protecting you. I’m so—”
“It’s okay,” I said. My wrists were now spread above me, immobilized.
I couldn’t stand to see Wes like this. I’d been so wrong about him, about everything. He might’ve messed up, but I couldn’t do anything but forgive him now.
I might never see him again.
“It’s not okay,” Wes said, reaching for more rope under the table.
“I forgive you, Wes. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you either,” I said. “And I love—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Roman snarled. “My God, it’s like neither of you understand my artistic vision.”
Wes and I tensed, exchanging a look of solidarity at the sheer insanity of Roman Graves. If the stakes weren’t life and death, I might’ve found it funny.
I knew Wes was intentionally tying my ankles slowly, also stalling the inevitable. Once I was fully restrained, Wes and I tensely awaited our next directions.
My every limb was bound and immobilized. And not in a hot way.
“You don’t love him,” Roman growled. “No one could love a fuck-up—a junkie—as worthless as him.”
I glared at Roman, unable to stop myself, even as Wes pleaded with his eyes for me not to react.
“He can’t protect anything or anyone.” Roman laughed. “I mean, look where you are, angel.” He met my glare with a cold, sinister narrowing of his gaze. “Give her a final kiss, Wes.”
Wes hesitated, and Roman aimed the gun at my leg.
I shut my eyes. Wes kissed me.
I shivered in my slip, fear shooting through my veins. The kiss was brief and soft, and I tasted the alcohol immediately. When he pulled back, my eyes welled with tears. Wes had the gall to look ashamed, as if he’d had a choice. As if he’d ever had a choice in any of this.
“He made you—” I looked past him at Roman’s smirk, and I fucking lost it. “What the fuck is wrong with you!” I yelled, my lip curling. “You disgusting—”
“Nova, please, stop,” Wes begged, low and commanding. “Baby, please.”
When I didn’t stop, Wes covered my mouth with his hand.
“How about we brand her once on the front, once on the back,” Roman said, his tone frighteningly flat. “That way, there will be no question who the fuck my favorite new plaything belongs to.”
Wes’s chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Heat the iron with the torch until it’s gray.”
With the gun pointed at my head, Wes wordlessly obeyed. He took the torch and iron out from under the table with trembling hands.
The family crest looked larger to me this time, as I imagined it seared into my skin. Then I remembered it had already been burned into Lorelei’s skin two months ago, and who knew how many other girls.
What was it with psycho cult leaders and branding? Were they all fans of erotic French literature?
I shivered again. Wes wielded the torch, letting the flame meet the iron as he struggled to hold my gaze.
We couldn’t be sure what else might set Roman off at this point, so neither of us spoke.
I could only hope I passed out from the pain, that the second branding would happen while I was unconscious.
Only five minutes passed before the brand was the desired color. Wes was somehow a shade paler than he’d been before.
“Turn it off.”
Wes set down the torch.
“Now lift her slip. I want my mark on her womb.”
I yanked against my restraints involuntarily, and Roman’s eyes lit up at the sight of my struggle.
I wanted to beg, but I didn’t want to hurt Wes, given he was the one who had to ignore my pleas. He stared at me in utter horror, his body moving stiffly like a wind-up soldier.
“Maybe if you serve me well, I’ll even let you be the one to carry my heirs,” Roman said. “She’d look great carrying my seed, don’t you think, brother?”
Bile churned in my stomach. Wes slowly pushed up my slip, exposing my white thong beneath. His teeth ground together. His eyes darted rapidly between the two of mine, as if searching for a way out.
I shook my head ever-so-slightly. I couldn’t see him get shot either. We had to survive this. We had so much more life to live.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m going to be okay, remember?”
Wes’s eyes were glassy, his lips sunken as his brows drew close.
I just had to survive. I had more life to live and—
And Wes loved me.
I closed my eyes and accepted my fate, no matter how cruel and unforgiving. We’d lost it all. Everything but the love, acted on too late, polluted by fear and pride and the evil hunting us from the shadows.
As red-hot heat hovered above my stomach, I held on to that singular, untarnished feeling—the space in my heart I’d created for Wes that I never managed to close.
I thought of eternity and religion and social media algorithms and our painful, all-consuming search for belonging. The human condition, ultimately such a fragile, desperate thing. We were all reaching, seeking, stumbling in search of the ineffable.
“Now,” Roman barked.
The heat moved closer. The snake in a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth pressed its fangs against my womb. I screamed. My skin seared. I considered the concept of oblivion, nothingness. Wes whispered that it was going to be okay, I was going to be okay.
A sound boomed through the room like the voice of God.
“In my fucking house, Roman Nicholas Graves?”