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Panic punches me in the chest, and my muscles go rigid. I can’t pull enough oxygen into my lungs. I can’t even exhale. The only part of my body able to move is my heart, which hurls itself toward my spine.
His gaze flicks over Dolly before sweeping over to me and my exposed legs. Then a cold smile curls his heartbreakingly familiar features. I sit on the floor, frozen by trauma and drugs,my gaze fixed on his deep blue eyes, high cheekbones, and trim beard. He looks so much like Xero in disguise that it hurts.
Delta strides across the bathroom tiles, clad in a velvet smoking jacket. It’s a luxurious rich navy with black collars and two frog closures at the front to sculpt the fabric around his frame. The attire is fitting, considering he’s the Hugh Hefner of death.
“How are the preparations going?” he asks, his voice making my skin crawl.
Casting me a nervous glance before facing her husband, Dolly raises trembling fingers to the back of her neck. “She’s been uncooperative.”
“She looks perfect.” Delta looms over me, his eyes darkening, and reaches for my biceps.
Time stills. My mind transports me back to the asylum. I’m standing on my tiptoes, tied up with my arms stretched high above my head. Delta’s warm hands grip my flesh as he slices into my skin with a blade. Pain lances across my skin, followed by a warm trickle. Then my limbs are trapped within a straitjacket, and he pounds into my body, crushing my lungs with his superior weight.
Panic seizes my throat in a paralyzing grip. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t see anything but white.
Then his large hand moves to my shoulder, triggering a burst of adrenaline that has me shuffling backward on my ass.
“No,” I scream, my voice raw. “Get away!”
My heart pounds so hard that its beats echo in my ears like a drum. I pull away from Delta’s grip, my mind still thrashing within the throes of traumatic memories. In a flashback that feels like it’s still happening, a man pins me to the kitchen table, while his friends close in around us like the walls of an open grave. Another time, another man in black, crushes my body to the kitchen floor with blood streaming from his throat on myface like rain. Every shitty thing that ever happened in my life is connected to this monster.
Delta draws back, his brow furrowing. “Is she having a bad trip?”
“Maybe Locke should take her to meet the investors,” Dolly says, her voice wavering.
My gaze snaps to her paling face. It’s strange how my childhood monster looks mild compared to this predator. Her features are no longer mockingly triumphant, but now held in a stoic mask. I don’t need a psychic bond to know she doesn’t want me alone with Delta so soon after revealing her plans to use Xero to murder her husband.
“Nonsense.” Delta reaches down and scoops me into his arms, his touch igniting a riot of revulsion.
I shift in his grip, my stomach lurching, but he pulls me closer to his chest. “Easy now, Amy,” he murmurs into my ear, his hot breath making me cringe. “Be a good girl for Daddy Delta.”
Dolly walks at his side, following us out into a spacious bedroom of mahogany furniture and burgundy drapes. The last vestiges of sunlight stream in through the window, letting me know I’ve spent an entire day in captivity.
Her breath quickens, reminding me of the time she slashed me with that craft knife. She wore the same trapped expression back then, when the other students stared at her like she was a psychopath.
Delta pauses mid-way to place a hand on her shoulder. “Stay in the master suite. The investors can’t know there are two of you.”
She halts, her eyes wide with fear, her fingers twisting at her sides.
Delta continues toward a heavy door that leads to a black-and-white-tiled hallway, and my pulse quickens to a drumroll.Now’s my chance to say something—anything—to stop the auction.
I clutch at Delta’s lapel, making him pause. “Mr. Delta,” I say, feeling like I’m ten again and reporting back from a mission. “Dolly’s planning on having you killed.”
He stares down at me and grins. “Worried about me, Amy?”
My throat tightens, and I gulp. Didn’t Xero say something similar to me under Charlotte’s bed? I shake off that thought. “Don’t you want to know what she’s planning?”
His dark chuckle makes every fine hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “Dolly is my second greatest creation, and I’m well aware of her ambitions. Why else would I have eliminated her most loyal followers?”
My jaw drops.
He gazes down at me, his eyes dancing. “Any questions? Anything further to negotiate?”
Bile rises to my throat. I don’t need to ask about his greatest creation. This cold-hearted bastard subjected Xero to mental and psychological torture since he was seven. And if Delta already knows about Dolly’s plot, then I have nothing to offer him to save my life.
He pushes open a heavy oak door and steps into a spacious room filled with the clinking of glasses and the low hum of conversation. The scents of brandy, cigar smoke, and expensive cologne mingle with the stench of corruption and decay.
I stare out at dense trees through a wall of leaded glass windows, then at a group of older men lounging on leather sofas, nursing drinks.
