Chapter 30
Georgia
I’ll make my own pathway to tomorrow. Somehow.
Anger still fuels my defiance, else I’d have crumpled to the floor.
Yet there is nothing I can achieve in this moment and being isolated and helpless is working its way into me and churning my stomach. It’s feeding the panic that I am somehow keeping in check.
While I’m held by the two guards, the others haul those chains and a St Andrews cross to the center of the room, leaving them between where Laz and Rafe stand and the fake thrones.
The sound of the chains grating on stone—metal speaking to stone, while no one human in the room speaks—the dread piles on dread, amassing like a troll waiting to sit on me and grind my bones.
I’m sure they know this. It’s deliberate.
I eye my men and they stare back. They nod almost in unison, as if to say, we will withstand this. If I mistranslated their looks, tough. I’ll take that sentiment and use it for my fuel.
I inhale deeply, exhale. I may die today but I aim to be a bad girl on at least one more occasion.
They strip me of my clothes and strap me to the cross, facing outward, angled half toward the thrones and half toward the guards at the far side.
My wrists and ankles are secured by chain.
Domino deigns to stand, slowly, while a smile creases his mouth.
The harlequin mask shields most of him but not his ugly, red lipped mouth.
Over his dark shirt, he wears a pistol in a shoulder holster.
That mask… The camera behind the throne will be filming. Do these pair wish to remain anonymous even in their own private movies? Not that it’s private with that small army of their men watching whatever he plans to do to me.
I gulp down the fear riding me and chew it up and spit it out.
He ambles out and across the floor to where I am fastened to the cross and gagged.
If I turn my head, I can see Laz and Rafe.
They’re shifting in place, looking about, agitated, of course.
Like mine were, their cuffs bind their hands at the front.
My two guards go to them and make them kneel.
What can they do when everyone else has a gun?
Domino takes off his mask, lays it aside, revealing a man with short dark hair with red lips.
For such a disgusting specimen of humanity he is just an average looking man.
You’d pass him on the street, wave hi, maybe donate to his charity if he asked.
Looks tell you nothing about the soul inside a person.
“Welcome, Georgia, to our little fun park. I bet you don’t even know where you are?
” He turns to examine my men who of course send him the dirtiest of looks.
If looks could kill etcetera. “This is Morocco. It’s also a place I own, jointly, with my colleagues, and we do like to film our pretties.
After today, the three of us, for Mr. Beast is arriving soon, we will share you with your men.
A competition that takes us through the tunnels beneath this fort, and if they don’t perform, we slice more pieces off you… somewhere.”
I growl at him through the gag.
A man has rolled over a low metal cupboard, and he’s stopped with it within an arm’s length of Domino.
“These are all potentially going to be used on you.” Such a posh Brit accent. Nasty fucking snob. Each drawer is pulled out as he shows me a multitude of shiny steel and leather implements.
“’ich ‘an I use on you?” I ask him, muffled, but intelligible, I hope.
He laughs. “For that, I will use this, for fun, for your first time.” He draws a whip from a drawer, a long black, leather one. Decorating the full length of it are shiny dots that are small spikes. “You have caused us so…much…trouble.
“These do tend to rip the skin, but we have a doctor to stitch you up. Just ask Stephanie.” He rolls the cupboard closer and turns it so the drawers are all visible to me, shows them off again like a celebrity chef with his kitchen. “Of course, we do have previous film of you.”
On the wall, the TV screen lights up and there I am, being abused by the evil assholes in Australia.
How droll. I grind my jaw. They sent the film away. Sold it to others, I guess.
We did suspect it was so.
The film is a spliced together montage and changes to show other women with other men hurting them, and then, it’s Stephanie up there, being abused by Mr. Beast. I saved her and then she was brought here, for that.
I’m no longer sure I deserve a thank you.
It is not my fault. Never was.
These men must be the origin of this whole evil mess. More evil assholes. Evil Empire Film, I decide to call their enterprise. Is there an end to these shitheads?
Domino steps away and lets the whip uncurl, lets it follow after him like a pet snake. He plans to whip my front, my breasts, and maybe, my legs. Not my face, please. I’m splayed out and naked and cannot avoid this.
I want to run over there and strangle him…and can’t.
I breathe in, hold it.
It will not last. I will withstand this.
This is going to be worse than anything I suffered at the hands of the others. Apart from my finger. I tense and take one last look at my chain bindings, hoping they can be loosened, slipped, anything. Left side, no. Right…I clench my fist. No.
On the timber above my right wrist, the number five is scrawled in pale pen. I strive not to show my shock at this discovery. Why there?
Pale lines draw an elongated V on the strut of timber, above and below the five. Is that a flaw?
She’s damaged it. She must have. Except how does that help me? Can I use that? Is it sharp if I loosen it?
I don’t know what she meant me to do. And I’m tied here.
“Ten?” Domino says. “I like that number.”
For a second, I’m confused. Oh. Ten strikes. I shut my eyes and brace myself.
He begins the punishment, hitting me with the spiked whip, over and over, jolting me, while he chants out the count. Slow, steady, rending hurts that force me to whimper and flinch. The third lash rips a hole in my skin below my breast and adds another score line of red.
I scream then, fleetingly, I look. Fuck.
Blood pulses from the wound.
He stalks about, smiling, then begins again.
“Four!”
I won’t scream again. I won’t.
The count continues while I shudder and clamp shut my mouth, with the ringing in my ears almost a relief from the agonies.
“Ten!”
By the end I was screaming. I’m bloody and have at least five tears with tiny V-shaped skin flaps loose and bleeding.
“Now, you can crawl to me and kiss my feet to ask forgiveness. Unless you want more of the whip? Then you will open your little mouth and suck my cock.” He comes to me, draws little symbols on my stomach in blood while I struggle to move away.
He tires of that, thank fuck, takes off the gag, undoes the chains, then walks away.
I stayed where I was as he ripped away the last chain, clutching at my wrist as if it hurts too much to drop my arm.
This is it. My chance to see what that five means.
My hands slip and I stagger but catch the crucial end of the cross and hang there, pretending I need it for support.
I tug at it as I let go, stagger, grab it again.
The splinter comes loose as I slide and topple to all fours, tucking that thin piece under my palm. Four inches of wood. Is that enough to do anything?
It will hurt going in, this I fucking vow. Even if I have to use my head to hammer it into him.
I’ll devote my final breath to trying to kill him, and it must be now, because I doubt I will have the strength to do it tomorrow.
Gasping, with sweat dripping from the ends of my dangling hair and down my face and front, stinging me where it mixes with the blood and the wounds, I try not to imagine the damage I’ve already suffered.
“Come to me,” he drawls lecherously, his arms out to either side in a macabre welcome.
I start to crawl to him, making wobbly progress while he smiles.
My hands and knees leave a bloody trail from the drips coming off my stomach and the trickles running down my thighs to my knees.
Finally, I reach him. His boots are here, close enough to enact that kiss. I lick my lips, my head down as I sway.
This is it. I will not have another chance.
“Kiss my feet.” He taps his boot on the floor and when I hesitate, he then lifts it as if to stand on my fingers.
Outside there is a loud boom and the guards startle and seem to get orders through their earpieces. Several run for the doors. Quietly, I check the two guarding Laz and Rafe, and they are looking about as if wondering if they should stay. They start to run.
Domino frowns. “What’s that?” The poor man has no earpiece.
Shucks.
Demon mask man also seems perplexed. His stomach spills over his belt as he twists to see what the men are doing. “Mr. Beast is due to arrive?”
With his boot half-raised and tilted, with only the edge of his heel on the floor, Domino answers, “I doubt it’s—”
I lunge to my feet, grabbing his collar as if I need him for balance, then I twist and turn away from him, doing what I hope is ippon seo nagi, a judo throw I learned from a high school lover.
With my foot stomped in front of his, I bend forward.
Caught by his own bodyweight, he pivots over my ankle.
His late punch to my chest hurts but it’s nothing, nothing compared to the whip.
I laugh and drop partway to my knee, then, with all the force of my heart, soul and my anger-fed determination, as he sprawls on the floor, I punch the splinter into his earhole.
The splinter sinks in, my fist slides along it, the wood cuts me, then he stiffens, eyes bulging, blood spurting from his ear. I lean up and plant my knee on the end, and the force drives it deep into his skull. Only an inch still protrudes from a spilling well of blood.
The demon-masked man has shot to his feet, but he has no weapon.
My victim’s wheedling scream is cut off by him choking.
Then silence and the jerking of his body rule the room.
I unclip the pistol from the corpse. The rattles and shouts from elsewhere are loud.
The guards closest to Rafe and Lazlo spin and see Domino’s demise and unsling their rifles.
Rafe charges and barrels into one and drops him, kicking his head.
After the barest thought as to who to throw this to, I choose Lazlo and chuck it as accurately as I can. Can he shoot while cuffed?
The gun spins, catches the light and…
My man, Laz, he catches the pistol.
He loads a round and fires at the two nearby guards. As if on a range, he drops the first then runs to the one Rafe wrestles with and shoots him at close range.
We’re good. This is good. I dare to feel optimistic.
Until more armed Evil Empire soldiers spill into the room from the alternate doorway under the TV.
They raise their rifles and fire. Rafe rolls under the dead man near him.
Laz dives for me and gets here with bullet impacts jumping off the stone.
He drags me behind the cupboard as he wrenches it onto its side.
Stupidly, perhaps, I stick out my head far enough to see the men advancing on us. Laz fires at them and one drops. The others unleash automatic fire on us. Rafe is shooting too now and must’ve grabbed a weapon from the corpse. Demon mask? He is hiding behind the throne.
On my knees, dizzy from pain and blood loss, I waver but stay upright, clutching the cupboard. I am ready.
If we die, at least I killed Domino. I grimace at his bloody, sprawled body where he stares blindly at the wall beyond the throne.
The rattle of gunfire intensifies. Bullets hit the cabinet, clanking and pinging into the metal, with some ricocheting off with a whine.
Laz drops his empty gun after firing his last round.
“We tried,” I tell him.
“We did.” He leans his back against the cupboard then his eyes widen in shock.
I gasp. “Are you hit?”
He jabs a finger to his front as the loudness of gunfire increases. “Who are they?”
Shooting is coming from behind me and yet neither of us is dead. I twist to look.
“Goddamn…” Laz mutters.