41. Chapter 41
Chapter forty- one
— PTOLEMAEA BY ETHEL CAIN
I don’t want to be here.
I’m not safe.
He’s hurting me.
He’s going to kill me.
Please, make it stop. Make it fucking stop.
I chant it over and over again in my head. Screaming is no use to me. Now, I’m praying to anyone who can hear me—if anyone or anything is even out there.
Ralph is on top of me, stroking himself as he watches me struggle against the handcuffs he has me in. He runs his free hand over my body, and even though my pajamas are still on, I can feel every hard ridge of his hands, just like last time.
Tears are streaming down my face, and they haven't stopped. My head hurts from where he knocked me out, my limbs feel weak from whatever sedative he gave me, and my face hurts from where he slapped me.
My wrists and ankles are burning, screaming at me to stop fighting, stop trying, because it’s no use. The metal is cold against the scrapes on my hands and feet, but I’m not stopping .
Ralph likes my fight, so he’s getting off to this. He’s enjoying this. He loves watching the tears stream down my face as I fight for my freedom. He tells me it’s because he loves me.
Obviously, he doesn't. He’s just fascinated by me. I’m the next in line of his obsessions, and he’s going to kill me just like he killed his girlfriend.
I’m trying not to throw up as I watch the door behind him for any sign of help, but it never moves.
I’m all alone.
I’m fighting, but it’s no use.
I do it anyway. I’ll fight against him until I’m sick of it.
“My perfect little fuck puppet. Now I can do this properly.”
My lungs start to seize under the duct tape, and I feel like I’m gonna pass out. Maybe I should, just so I can’t feel whatever he’s about to do to me.
Ralph’s warm, clammy touch makes me squirm, and I wish I had access to my legs so I could try and knee him—he’s barely paying attention as he strokes himself.
Ew. Ew. Ew.
I keep squirming, hoping he’ll at least get off of me, before he chastises me.
“That’s it. Fight me, Bree. I know this is what you want. And you’ll take it. God, you look so fuckable bound underneath me.” He’s drowning in his own lust while I’m fighting the nausea crawling up my throat. “Fuck, if it feels this good, it can’t be bad, can it, little lamb?”
I scream through the tape over my mouth, hoping he’ll take it off, but he doesn't, and I keep thrashing, so much so that he loses his balance.
“I won’t let you ruin this again, Bree!” he screams as his hands wrap around my throat, and all my air is cut off. I’m frozen as his hands squeeze so hard that it feels like my eyes are about to pop out of my head .
Stop! Please, stop.
“You need to be punished. And if I kill you, then at least I can have my way with you!” His hands are still cutting off my airway, and my lungs are seizing underneath the duct tape, my hands and feet thrashing as I try to loosen his hold, but he’s too strong for me.
This is it, I think to myself. At least I fought this time. At least I tried, right? That’s all I’m able to do, especially when someone else is making all the decisions.
Tears leak out of my eyes, burning as they slide down my face.
I love you, Liv. You’re the best big sister I could’ve had.
I love you, Teags. You’re the only person I can call a true friend.
I love you, Tristan. Take care of my sister for me.
I love you, Vince. And I’m sorry I never said it when I had the chance.
I speak all these things in my mind, hoping that after I’m gone, they’ll all know that, in my last moments of being Bree Hart, I loved them.
In my last moments, I choose to think about them and not what’s happening because if I’m leaving this world, I’m leaving it with good memories.
As my breathing starts to slow, the tears continue to fall, and I swear I hear something crack before I pass out.
“Half of you are with Nico. Go around the back of the property and enter through that door. The rest of you are with me. We’re going in the front,” I say to my men as I adjust my bulletproof vest before we pull up to Bree’s old house .
It looks just like I remember it. I haven't been back here since I left the first time, and I never thought I would be.
Leave it to Ralph to bring her back to the one place she’s been trying to forget.
I know he’s here. The white Ford Fusion is parked in the driveway, and all the lights inside are off. He’s taunting Bree, playing the cat-and-mouse game he loves so fucking much.
Good thing he won't be breathing properly in a few minutes. Once I find this fucker, I’m going to fucking kill him.
“Everyone ready?” I ask as I take the safety off my gun.
I hear a string of agreements across our comms, and the police we called lead the charge.
“Pennsylvania State Police!” they shout as they breach the door with a battering ram, the rest of us rushing inside. While Nico’s team clears the back of the house and the guys I’m with clear the first floor, I head straight upstairs to Bree’s old room.
She has to be in there, and I bet Ralph is with her.
I stride up the stairs two at a time, feeling Emerson behind me. I run over to her door and kick it open, and what I see makes my body go cold.
Ralph’s standing over Bree, who appears to be passed out, bound to the bed with duct tape over her mouth. She’s not moving, and I can’t see if her chest is rising and falling.
All I see is red before I tackle him off the bed, my gun getting lost in the struggle, and all I see is the smirk on the fucker’s face as he looks up at me from the floor.
“Did you enjoy my note? I definitely enjoyed finally getting a piece of Bree’s sweet—”
Instead of letting him finish, I punch his fucking teeth in. I grab his shirt with one fist and punch him with the other, wanting the blows to hurt. He fucking touched her again, hurt her again. He doesn' t get any of my fucking mercy. My knuckles are killing me as I pound his face in, blood splattering on the carpet, but my pain doesn't matter.
Just his. And he needs to feel all of it.
“You’re a fucking coward!” Punch. “It doesn't feel as good being on the receiving end, does it?” Punch. “You touched her, and I should fucking kill you!”
It could be five or ten minutes later, and his face is a mess, the black mask wet with blood.
Good, I think. I should kill him right now for all he’s done. I should let him fucking die.
“Boss…I think he’s down,” a voice says to me, but I keep hitting. Somehow, it’s not enough. None of this will ever be enough for the rage I feel.
“Vince! Stop it!” Nico says as he pulls me off Ralph. “He’s down.”
“He deserves worse,” I bite, but Nico slapping me in the face somehow brings me back to reality.
“Go help Bree while I sort all this shit out.”
I turn my head to where Bree lies on the bed, her chest finally moving as I rush over to her. Tears are spilling down her face, and her eyes are red as fuck, practically bulging out of her head.
She’s alive, I remind myself a thousand times as I look at her.
I didn't lose her.
I rip the duct tape off slowly, and she starts coughing immediately. She has marks on her neck like the ones Ralph gave her before, and just seeing that is making me want to finish what I started with the fucker.
“G-get…me…out,” she coughs through her words, her voice barely audible.
“Holy shit,” I hear Nico mumble from behind me, the scene in front of him settling into his mind. We’ve protected some high-level people, but neither of us has seen anything like this before .
It’s going to haunt us forever, and we didn't even experience it. Bree did.
God, it hurts. It really fucking hurts that I can’t take any of her pain away right now.
“Fuck, angel, one second,” I say as I scramble for the handcuff keys. “W-where are the k-keys? Someone find the fucking keys!” I scream.
“Here, boss,” Emerson says as he hands me them. “They were on the table.”
Yeah, that makes sense. Yet another taunt. The keys to her freedom were sitting two feet away from her, and she could never reach them.
I undo all the cuffs as fast as I can, but not before seeing the red marks on her ankles and wrists. My heart lurches; she fucking fought him. She fought against him hard, so hard that she’s bleeding from where he bound her. God, what the fuck.
Her body is shaking as I hold her in my arms, her head tucked into my shoulder, as if she can’t bear to see anything else in this room. I’ve got to get her out of here.
“I’ve got you, Bree. You’re safe,” I say as I pick her up and take her outside, the area surrounded by ambulances and some news vans pulling up. Fucking hell. This is going to be all over the fucking internet by tonight.
Can't they give her some time to recuperate before they start blasting her trauma everywhere? Do these people have any fucking courtesy?
Bree shakes in my arms as I set her down in one of the ambulances, a female EMT immediately coming over to check her out. I don’t leave her side for a second. I can’t, because I’m afraid she’ll slip through my fingers if I let her out of my sight. I know Ralph is done. I know he’s out of the picture now, but the fear is still there.
Bree could vanish at any moment, and I’ll lose her again.
I could’ve lost her tonight, and I fucking failed at protecting her. Ralph somehow managed to get through our fucking defenses. Just as I mention the fucker in my head, his body—still alive—gets dragged out of the house. I notice his hands are cuffed in front of him, and Nico comes over to me.
“He’ll live, but he won’t see anything but concrete for the rest of his life.”
“Good,” is all I manage to get out.
“Can you tell us what happened, ma’am?” an officer asks Bree.
“W-well, I was…” Bree trails off, still coughing, and before she tries to speak again, I answer for her.
“Can’t you do this another time? She can barely fucking talk.”
The officer nods at me before leaving. Nico pats my back as my guys filter in and out of the house. Bree starts to talk, but I can’t understand what she’s trying to say.
“Liv,” is all she can say. “A-and T-Teags.”
“What about them, princess?” Nico says in a soft tone.
“Shooters,” she scratches out before coughing a few more times. “Watching th-them and y-you.”
“I found the phone, princess. Don’t worry. Those were from a few days ago when Ralph was casing your house. I found the same stolen car outside Liv’s place and the West house on the same day. They’re okay.”
She nods at me before someone calls out her name.
“Bree! Where the hell are you?” I recognize Liv’s voice just as she locks eyes with me, her gaze shifting to her sister, who sits on my right. “Oh, fuck.”
Liv and Tristan rush over to us, and Liv hugs her sister, Bree’s arms shaking as they slowly go around her body. Bree’s wrists and ankles now have gauze wrapped around them, the bleeding and scrapes covered in ointment so they can heal.
But there’s no gauze for her mind. There’s nothing anyone can do—besides Dr. Anna, maybe. Ralph terrorized her again tonight. Just like before, he’s left invisible marks in her mind and memory that she’ll never forget.
I think that hurts Bree more than the restraints. She has to heal from tonight, from what he did the first time, from everything in between.
She’s strong. She’ll heal, and I’ll be with her every step of the fucking way.
I love her, and I’m going to do everything in my power to show her that after all this, I can still love her as much as I did before. I’ll love her through every panic attack, through every bad dream, through every good memory we create together. Maybe those will override the bad ones in the future.
I can only hope.
“Are you okay?” Liv asks but then stammers a second later. “Actually, don’t answer that.”
Liv knows the answer already, and she can see the bruises on her neck. She probably has déjà vu, and I can see the fresh tears on her face, Tristan’s too. He looks at my hands, then back up at my eyes, a question in his eyes that he doesn't dare speak.
Is that from Ralph’s face?
I only nod back at him, and he does the same to me before the EMT returns.
“Your vitals look okay. Besides the elevated heart rate and scrapes on your wrists and ankles, you’ll be fine,” the EMT says before she packs some things away. “I’m recommending you go to the hospital to get your throat checked out and—”
Bree’s head shakes in my arms.
“No need for a hospital,” Nico says. “I have a specialist coming who can check Bree out at home.”
“In a different room?” I ask Nico, wanting to make sure Bree doesn't get panicked walking back into the room where Ralph took her.
“Of course. She’ll meet us at the house. ”
“T-Thanks, Nico,” Bree whispers.
“Anything for you, Bree. You should know that by now.” Nico motions for us to leave, and we follow him to the car, Bree still in my arms because I can’t bear to put her down.
I almost lost her. I almost lost the most important person in my life tonight.
And if I had walked into that house a few minutes later, a few seconds later, she might not be here. Her heart might not be beating in her chest, and everything that made my world bright, colorful, and beautiful would’ve been gone.
My beautiful fucking angel. My beautiful Bree. The only girl I’ll ever love.
A fighter.
A survivor .