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“And Mr. Girard is your boss? Is he the man who hired my father?”
“Shut up, bitch.”
“Because I can give you the files and then he’ll owe you.”
“Shut it.”
“Did he do that to you?” I gesture with my head, and he knows what I mean. “My dad did this to me.”
Wyatt cocks his head to the side. He gestures from himself to me and back. “Are we connecting?” he asks, setting the phone down on the table beside the bed along with his hunting knife. “Because I’m not looking for a meaningful connection,” he says and begins to undo the buttons of his shirt. He sets the shirt over the back of a chair, and I take in his bare chest, stomach. He’s huge, not defined with muscle but strong and scarred like he’s been in a hundred fights. He pushes his shoes off, strips off his pants and drapes those over the shirt then he pushes his briefs down and off. Those he leaves on the floor as he stalks toward me. “All I’m interested in are those holes I mentioned. Raping them. Hearing you scream when I do.”
I yank at my restraints and his grin grows huge. He comes to stand by the side of the bed and there’s one thing I’m grateful for. Just one thing. He’s not hard. He can’t rape me if he’s not hard.
“But since you asked, I will tell you.” He crosses the room to the wall of whips, scanning his options as I struggle to free myself from my restraints. He makes his choice. A long, thin flexible rod which, when he tests it in the air, makes a whooshing sound that makes me shudder.
He turns back to me, looks me over. “You know, I think this may work better if you’re upright. Then we don’t miss any spots.” He grins, sets the rod down and undoes one foot. He grips the ankle and leans in close to my face. “You kick and I’ll fucking slice your clit off before we even get started. You hear me, bitch? You understand me?”
I nod. I both hear and understand him. And so, when he undoes my bonds then lifts me to stand and walks me to the center of the room, I don’t kick, but I don’t make it easy either. He’s going to whip me. I’ll have to take it. But it’ll buy time, right? I can take a whipping. It won’t do lasting damage. If he cuts me, I may not be able to run. I can take a whipping. I keep telling myself this as he lifts me by the waist and hauls my arms over my head to wrap the leather cuffs dangling from the ceiling around my wrists. They’re high and I’m short and when he releases me, I literally hang from my wrists. It hurts. It hurts a lot, and he laughs when he watches me trying to at least get the tips of my big toes to touch down.
“As I was saying,” he continues casually, picking up the whip he’d set down before returning to me. Standing right in front of me, inches from me. “Yeah, the scar was compliments of Antoine fucking Girard. Because a little girl made a clown out of me. So, I should look like one for the rest of my fucking life.” He grows more bitter as he says the words and I get it. “But now, that little girl is right here and mine. Mine to punish. Mine to rape. Mine to end.” He steps backward. “Ready?”
I shake my head.
He grins. “Make sure you scream. It’s what gets me hard.”
4
EZEKIEL
Someone took Blue.
Someone took her because I left her alone and unprotected.
Not the first time you did that, is it?
My mind mocks me. My own thoughts turn against me.
I step out of the shower and dry off. Dropping my ruined clothes in the trash can, I cross my old bedroom, the room I grew up in that is as foreign to me as the bedroom I’m borrowing in Clayton Bishop’s house. Inside the closet hang my clothes. They, too, seem unfamiliar. Like they belong to someone else. Another man living another life. Because what I’m doing isn’t living.
On autopilot I pull on clothes, jeans and a dark sweater, socks and shoes. I comb my hair, trying not to look too long at a man I no longer recognize in the mirror. I am a shell, a corpse walking in this hollowed out husk of flesh.
History repeats.
I shouldn’t have left her alone. I shouldn’t have trusted anyone else to look after her.
My phone, which is on the nightstand beside hers and that flash drive, rings. I pick it up when I see it’s Robbie.
“Just pulling through the gates.” I hadn’t bothered to close them after driving in.
“I’ll be down in a minute.” We disconnect and I walk down the hall. When I pass Angelique’s door, I see it’s open a crack. She’s always done that ever since she was little. Always afraid, as if her subconscious knows, that life can turn on a dime and the people you love can vanish. Poof. Like they were never there at all.
Like Zoë.
Like Blue.
History repeats.
I push that door open now and see her little head on the pillow, her dark curls wild. She stirs, a light sleeper even at her young age. I enter the room as she lifts herself up onto her elbows, then rubs her eyes.
