14. Demi
DEMI
I open my eyes too quickly and try to bury myself beneath the covers like a mole scuttling underground. But my fingers don’t find my comforter, I must’ve kicked it off the bed in the night, and I have no choice but to open them again and look for it.
Blinding light. What the actual hell!
I shield my eyes with the flat of my hand and peek though cracked-open eyelids.
The window comes into view, curtains open to reveal watery blue sky whitewashed with thin clouds.
I’m breathing heavily like I was trying to escape the clutches of a psycho serial killer before I woke up, and my brain is still trapped inside the dream.
It’s okay, I tell myself. I’m safe. It’s safe to let go of whatever nightmare was chasing me around an abandoned mountain cabin which is where most of these psychos seem to appear in my subconscious.
The Fish is dead, but I can’t seem to let him go.
I’ve no idea how Megan sleeps at night; maybe it has something to do with having Giovanni Sabatelli by her side, and her twins in the next room.
And whichever bodyguard they replaced me with.
This is when I notice the spotlights around the room, the kind used by YouTubers and podcasters, on stands with lamps the size of someone’s head. Something icy trickles down my spine, and goose bumps pop all over my body.
I sit up and collapse back onto the bed with my face buried in the pillow to stop myself from being sick. Something hard is pressing into my ribs, a broken mattress spring or metal buttons. I slide a hand between me and the bed and trace the links of a chain from my abdomen up to my breasts.
My brain cells are a couple of beats behind my movements, retracing my steps in private so that they can hit me with the outcome without any foreshadowing.
And there it is. I’m still wearing my Nyx outfit from last night.
Which means this isn’t my apartment. This isn’t my bed. And that isn’t the view from my bedroom window.
I sit up and slide my legs over the side of the bed, covering my mouth with my hand and squeezing my eyes shut so that I can’t see the room spinning around me.
It’s no good. This is how I imagine people living with vertigo must feel: that perpetual lightheadedness that could be from standing at the top of a mountain or being underwater for so long, your lungs are about to explode.
I lie back down, roll onto my side with my eyes still shut, and wait for everything to settle.
I need to figure out what happened before I can even think about busting out of here.
Wherever here is.
I must drift back off to sleep at some point. When I resurface, the lights are still unbearably bright, but the spinning room has slowed to a gentle carousel speed, and a hammer has taken up residence inside my skull instead. Hammers I can deal with. All I need is some water.
I roll onto my side and check out the nightstand where I find a full, one liter bottle of water. I unscrew the cap and guzzle the cold liquid, drizzling it down my chin and onto the pillow before I realize that it might be spiked.
Shit!
The seal was already broken, and now that the idea is in my head, I can’t tell if the water tastes different than it should or if it’s regular water wrapped in plastic.
Wiping my chin with the back of my hand, I set the bottle back down on the nightstand and sit with my back propped up against the headboard.
The spotlights are glaring at me, but I blank them out and focus on the events of the previous night. Assuming it was last night and I’ve not been unconscious for multiple days.
My memories are fuzzy around the edges, but I remember the other Nyx and Brian, three of us in the room together.
I removed Brian’s mask in the darkness; we were almost out of the door when Nyx got hurt.
They knew exactly what they were doing when they hurt her; they knew we wouldn’t leave her behind.
After that point, I can’t be certain of anything else that happened.
I don’t remember leaving the building. I’ve no idea who brought me here or if I fought back, but I understand with complete clarity that the thug with the snake tattoo is behind it all.
Voices reach my ears like gunfire.
I lurch out of bed and cross the room on shaky legs, throwing myself against the door. I want them to hear me. I want them to know that I’m awake. I try the handle, but the door doesn’t budge; of course it’s locked.
“Hey!” I call out, pounding the door with my fists. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Stupid question, but it’s the best I’ve got right now.
The voices stop. They heard me.
“Hello! Open the door!” Nothing. “I need to pee.”
The instant the words leave my mouth, I peer around the room and spot the door on the opposite wall, marble floor tiles visible in the gap, clearly an ensuite bathroom.
“Where am I?” I call out, my voice already losing steam.
I press my ear to the door and try to tune out the blood gushing around my veins.
Silence on the other side. No one is coming.
Leaning my back against the door, I sink onto the floor, knees raised to my chest. The water has helped a little, muffling the hammers inside my head with cotton wool, but from this vantage point, I realize that the lamps have been strategically placed around the room, concentrating the light on one focal point.
The bed.
I shudder at the mental image of the sick fuckers watching me while I was unconscious.
They must’ve drugged me. I wasn’t wearing a bracelet, so they couldn’t zap me like they did with Brian and Nyx, which means they saved another brand of twisted fuckery to get me out of there and put me here like an exhibit in a glass container.
That’s what this is… The lights, the Egyptian queen Nyx outfit…
I realize I’m still not wearing any underwear around the same time I understand that there are cameras watching me.
I scrabble onto my feet, tugging the skirt down to cover my nakedness, then I mentally carry out a full body check, clenching my pussy and testing my nipples for soreness and swelling.
Confident that my captors haven’t crossed that line, I dart into the bathroom, undress, and stand under the shower until I feel at least a little cleansed.
When I come out and look for a robe, there isn’t one.
“This isn’t a fucking five-star hotel, Demi,” I tell my reflection.
I’m not here to be pampered. I’m here for someone’s entertainment, and nothing will convince me that this isn’t all about Brian.
He’s involved whether he likes it or not, and my gut is telling me that it isn’t what he signed up for when he knocked on the front door of the nightclub and handed over his invitation.
Staring at the fat pouches under my eyes and my stringy-wet hair, I get a niggling feeling about Brian. Something he said… I replay my raggedy recollections of that night until my head hurts, but it remains just out of reach and the ache inside my skull won’t let me pursue it.
Unable to look at the golden outfit on the floor, I wrap myself in a fluffy towel and wander back through to the bedroom.
The shower has highlighted my aching muscles and the bruises on my arms and thighs, and I pray that I put up a good fight.
But I refuse to go back to bed and play their twisted games.
Instead, I sit in the corner of the room, hug my knees to my chest, and close my eyes.
Everything about the club was false, fake walls, secret panels, hidden exits.
Michael Douglas…
How could I forget what he did for me? He was Team Brian all the way, it turned out, and although I’ve no idea why he was helping me, right now, he’s my only chance of getting out of here.
A click from the doorway drags me onto my feet, pulse racing. I’m there, holding the towel around me, ready to lunge the instant it opens.
But when it does, my breath sticks in my throat, and rather than balling my hands into fists, I clutch the towel around my body.
The guy with the snake tattoo isn’t smiling. Not that a smile would make much difference at this point, not when he’s holding all the cards, and I have nothing to barter with. Because I’m fucked if I’ll open my legs for him, and we both know it won’t buy my freedom even if I did.
“Tut, tut, Demi, I’m disappointed with you.”
It takes an interminable beat for me to realize that he knows my name.
“How did you—”
His lips curl, but a smile isn’t forthcoming, and I think it says a lot about a person when their mouths don’t instinctively curve upwards like regular people.
“You lied to me, Demi. Do you know what happens to people who lie to me?”
I don’t want to know, but I reckon he’s going to tell me anyway.
“They get what’s coming to them.”
I hold his cold dark eyes and jut my chin. “Do you ever think that maybe someday you’ll get what’s coming to you too?”
He laughs, and I glimpse gold in the back of his mouth. Then his hand is around my throat, and we’ve swapped places, and the back of my head collides with the wall.
His breath is in my face again, but I hardly notice because no air is getting through his metal grip. The pounding in my skull is magnified by a thousand, my heartbeat playing a heavy bass vying for attention with the ringing in my ears.
“Have you ever climbed a mountain, Demi?”
My tongue is too big for my mouth, but the words try to form, allowing him to squeeze harder around my constricting throat. I claw at his arms, but he’s immovable.
“It’s hard,” he continues.
But not fucking impossible, I yell silently.
“You need the right equipment of course, climbing gear, ropes, crampons. But you could spend all the money in the world on this stuff, and you still won’t reach the top. Do you know why?”
The asshole is deliberately taking his time, watching the life ebb from me while he speaks, and enjoying every moment.