Chapter 34 - Scarlett #2
Kidnapping Mr. Alascer would risk the rest of the church finding out what we were doing if Malachi hadn’t warned them already.
Had he? Would he? If I were him, I don’t think I would have.
Even knowing Azrael, I think stealing his Claim would be enough to keep him from making any rash decisions, so why tell the churches? Why prepare them?
But Malachi also knew his other sons.
Would he tell the churches? Or would he just let it happen? Let them be destroyed and save himself?
I shook my head and turned back to the letter, running my fingers over the red ink. They had kept my sister here. In this bed. She had slept here, had been doused in water, had been tortured and raped.
She was here. Five years ago. She had been raped by the same man who had just raped me and she had left clues.
Smart, beautiful, strong, unrelenting, flaming, passionate, breathtaking Rae Bennett.
My sister.
I spent the rest of the night reading her letters. They had been written in blood, something I hadn’t considered when trying to figure out how I would keep my notes.
Her letters were beautiful. There was one dedicated to each girl that came and left this room. One dedicated to every week she was here, and one single letter bidding her farewell.
I knew she didn’t remember what happened here. She didn’t remember anything about it, and Azrael had made it clear that Jack didn’t ever want her to remember it.
I had always wondered why it was better for her not to have known what happened here, but now I had a clearer picture. I hoped beyond hope that they wouldn’t force her to remember now just because I was here.
I would survive this. She didn’t need to relive anything for me.
I sat in bed all night thinking over what would happen next.
What I would do. The windows were nailed shut and the bars were so close together that even if I did take the risk of breaking the window, I didn’t think I would be able to squeeze through the bars and drop to the ground without breaking a leg, so that was out of the question.
The only way out was through the front door, which I could get out if I could get Lady Elise’s or Mack’s hand, something I needed a real weapon for—
I heard the door open and realized that I would not be doing anything today.
It had been a long time since I had gone a full night without sleep.
Even Azrael allowed me to rest from time to time, but this was my fault.
I was too enthralled with the story Rae had told me through the letters and pictures that I hadn’t even considered sleep.
And, I suppose, I was a little scared to close my eyes this time around. I’d rather just keep my mind busy than allow it to create whatever it wanted to while I slept.
“This habit of yours is ruining my week.”
Luckily for me, I had already shoved the evidence away just after finishing the last letter. I put on my smile, stood, and took off my clothes to face him.
He rose his brows, looking me over. “We’ve got you trained so well in certain areas and so terribly in others.
” He stepped back and gestured for me to head for the hall.
“This morning, after breakfast, you will be meeting with two clients. Both of whom you should know. This, of course, means that you will be missing your morning service again, but when you attend afternoon service, that’s when Lady Elise will begin your new punishment.
It’ll be a change that will go on for a month before we take it away and see how you do. ”
The fear flooded over me just like that cold water would have had I been asleep, but I quickly shook it away. There wasn’t time for fear now.
I wondered who Malachi had sent this time.
I wondered what the punishment would be.
The second I finished my last blueberry, the front door opened, causing my stomach to twist uncomfortably and threaten to push my breakfast back up my throat.
Kat took my plate and placed it in the sink as I leaned back in my chair and placed my folded hands over my folded legs. I was still sore from yesterday, but I refused to give an inch, even in the way I sat.
A moment later, a hand wrapped painfully into my hair and jerked my head back, pain exploding down my spine. My own fear, I learned, tasted like blueberries. “Look at you,” Mr. Bastrom hummed in my ear, my blood running cold. “The whore of the church.”
A nickname I loathed, but one, it seemed, the whole church had adopted since my ‘untimely’ departure.
He jerked me back and released my hair, letting me fall to the floor, the chair cracking under me.
A sharp pain erupted across my lower back and the backs of my knees, forcing tears in my eyes. The skin on the right side of my lower back was pinched in the crack. Holy Hell, it hurt.
He grabbed the corner of the seat as I tried to remain still, grabbed a chair leg in his other hand and easily snapped it off.
The force of his actions caused me to lose balance, but before I could right myself, he grabbed the edge of the chair and ripped it out from under me, tearing the skin that had been pinched in that crack.
I clenched my jaw against the pain as I was forced on my stomach, the chair clattering in the background. The panic was palpable as I forced my hands underneath me and tried to push myself up.
I managed to get my body up an inch before a shoe pressed down in the center of my back, right where the chair had bit into my skin and torn away.
He crouched down again, adding more weight to his foot, causing my stomach to twist and the smile to grow sharper as I breathed heavily through my teeth. “I’m going to wipe that smug smile right off your fucking face.” He shoved off of me and turned away. “What are the rules?”
“Lady Elise wants to teach her how to make noise. She’s too quiet for her clients’ liking.”
Mr. Bastrom chuckled. “Is that so,” he hummed chillingly. “Anything goes if we can accomplish that?”
Kat considered it, my fear growing. “You can’t damage her permanently. Lady Elise believes she’ll be our most prized possession.”
“Perfect,” he growled, followed by the sound of his zipper and then his belt tearing out of his pants.
A sharp giggle escaped me when I felt him settle on my thighs, and it was everything I had in me not to cry out when I felt his belt strike my back.
“Claimed,” he scoffed, striking me again, my nails digging into the cracked tile. “I’ll show you claimed.” He hit me again. “You selfish, prideful, little bitch.”
I deserved to be selfish.
I deserved to be prideful.
I earned that!
He wrapped his belt around my neck and jerked it back, forcing my spine to arch back in a position I wasn’t unfamiliar with.
This, however, wasn’t done out of love like Azrael’s actions were.
I could feel the difference, and it was like night and day.
Mr. Bastrom hated me. He hated what I represented.
He hated that Azrael took me away from him, as if he had some sort of claim over me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew Azrael had killed his wife. If that was part of this too.
I felt one of my nails break when I clawed into the grout, my teeth grinding together, but it wasn’t his cock I felt a second later, it was something much worse.
My eyes widened, my lips quivering as he shoved that blunt, narrow chair leg slowly into my ass.
I was screaming in my mind, my heart pounding in my ears, water rushing through me, and I swear, I felt my smile tear in two, blood dripping down my cheeks as the muscles tore and reformed.
My mind started seeing sparks of white and wisps of black, the screaming mixing with the laughter, and suddenly, I couldn’t tell if the noise was inside or outside of me.
“Tick tock tick tock tick tock,” the clock did sing as the world started to twist around upside down, split in two and there it flew.
I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was hear the scream—
“Tick tock goes the clock, darling little sinner. Take stock and set your price, it’s time to crown the winner.”
~~~
I could feel the scratch marks raked down my spine, they burned more than the welts the belt had left, but not as much as my backside.
It hurt to sit, to breathe. My entire body was screaming in pain, my cheeks still damp from the tears, but I suppose I should find myself lucky.
I didn’t speak so the fact that he crushed my vocal cords didn’t matter.
Not yet anyway. Maybe it would give me more time to figure out next steps before Lady Elise pushed me to make more noise again.
I still couldn’t figure out if the sounds I had heard had come from me or if they had just been in my mind. How could you tell in a situation like that?
I wasn’t sure how long I laid in a puddle of my own drool and tears before Kat generously picked me up by my arm and dropped me in the chair. “Ah, you still have that smile. You are resilient, aren’t you?”
Did I? Everything felt so…different now.
Take their names, remember their faces. Rae survived for four months, I would certainly not be here for that long.
When I didn’t give him any form of response, Kat turned away from me. “Mack, let the other client in.”
I could still feel Mr. Bastrom’s cum dripping from my asshole. I couldn’t help but wonder if I would get an infection. If he had torn something with that chair leg, which I was sure he had, and then had sex with me, cumming inside of me, that had to lead to infection.
I suppose Kat would have his work cut out for him today.
So, which other member of my old church would come to take what they felt they were owed? Mr. Kels? Mr. Edgars? Thomas? Would he have the balls to do what his Leaders had done, or would he simply use me as his own personal punching bag until Kat pulled him off of me?
I’d take the beating over another cock any day.
The door opened a few minutes later, these footsteps a little lighter than anyone I had heard yet.