I think I hate him the most of all. The bastard with the blue eyes—he’s watching me even now.
The other men are mere dogs like Vinny. They don’t understand anything but violence and bloodshed. But he...this man is different. He’s colder. He’s calculating. He is a snake circling the carnage and swallowing down his chosen prey before the poor soul even knows what’s happening.
Though, maybe it’s the alcohol that makes me so angry. My head drifts. My thoughts are harder to grasp, and sanity is like a rudder, struggling to propel me through the darkness. The bottle is gone; I don’t know what he’s done with it, or if it was really there in the first place.
Delirium likes to play tricks on an already exhausted mind. My head is on a cloud. My right ear is miles away, and everything else feels like distant pulses. I can see my other limbs when I crane my neck down, but controlling them seems about as easy as telling smoke in which direction to float.
I can’t help feeling like this is his own selfish pittance; make the poor girl so drunk she won’t be able to feel her own rape. Hell, maybe she’ll pass out during it. Whatever helps him sleep at night.
Silly, silly bastard. Didn’t he know how impossible it was to sleep with the souls of others weighing you down? They whispered in your ear at night, right before you drifted off, and they haunted your dreams, turning them into nightmares. I haven’t slept in five years. I cease to exist at night. I go numb right until the exact moment that slumber takes me. Then, I open my eyes again, wide awake, and it’s torment.
On second thought, he doesn’t seem as tired as I am. He drank more than me, and yet his posture is stoically erect. He watches me unashamedly. He’s counting down the hours.
“Vinny.” I don’t know why I speak. My voice is a hollow whisper that slithers to the farthest reaches of the room—he can’t pretend like he doesn’t hear me. “Vinny. You want to know what would really make him angry?”
My tormentor doesn’t answer, but I know I’ve piqued his interest.
“If I willingly f-fucked another man...that would make him anggrrrryy.” My tongue fumbles with the words and then end on a sudden hiccup. “That would make him want me back.”
If only so he could kill me himself.
The man doesn’t seem impressed by what I’ve said. He’s un-amused by the unfiltered Daniela, but she suddenly feels desperate to have an audience.
“I would do it, too,” I tell him. Virginal Lynn’s deep, dark secret. I would take anyone over Vinny. The red-haired man. Any one of his thugs. The man with blue eyes.
Anyone. I’d deny him the one thing of value I had left. No matter how tonight ended, Vincent Stacatto wouldn’t claim all of me.
“I’d do it,” I say out loud, just to make it sink in. My confirmation to the universe if not to the man himself. Vinny would never have me fully. The thought makes me snicker, and the blue-eyed man pulls away from the wall, bored of me already.
I watch him head to the doorway that leads to the stairs. There he pauses, and it’s only then that I realize someone else is already in the process of descending them.
“It’s show time,” the red-haired man declares in a guttural rumble. His eyes burn with a sickening mixture of rage and excitement.
Slowly, my gaze drifts over to focus on the wall. I’m not here anymore. I see a stage...a cello. I’m playing Bach. My mind spins the invisible notes. I focus hard on crafting the melody, its soothing cadence. But I’m too dizzy. Words break through the song.
“What the fuck is wrong with her? Is she drunk?” The words dissolve into countless syllables that bounce across the room. My head throbs. A million thoughts and fears leak through the cracks these men have beaten and cut into—I can’t hide them anymore.
A hand grazes my shoulder, and I flinch. Then the entire chair is wrenched out from under me, and I land hard on the floor. My knee smarts. More pain joins the symphony of it that fights with the rising stream of voices for my attention.
“Set up the camera—”
“Where?”
“Any-fucking-where!”
I bite my lip to silence a scream and squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the room and the men who crowd it. I’m not here. I’m floating...flying...playing. Bach’s melody fills my ears again. My bow is in my hand. I can feel the tension in the strings.
“All right...get her clothes off.”
A hand seizes the collar of my borrowed shirt and tugs. I hear ripping. There’s cool air on my back and the laughter and jeers of countless men battle with my attempts to ignore them. My cello is too heavy to lift. The bow breaks. The music dies off.
All at once, I’m lying on an ice-cold floor, clothed only in a pair of underwear, which someone attempts to drag down my legs while they croon what a “sweet ass” I’ve got into my ear.
“Wait.”
The hands stop tugging, but the calloused fingertips still graze my skin. Whoever speaks...he has a voice that makes the entire room go silent. The roar of a lion is heeded by all predators. A part of me flinches in recognition. I know that voice, but my mind is too busy spinning to place it.
“Think...Arno...another method.” His words come in bits and pieces like the clues to a puzzle I’m too dumb to solve.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone and grown a heart on me,” someone snidely retorts, but his tone is cautious. There’s a true monster in this pit of beasts, and even this animal knows when to tread carefully. “Want me to give her back to fucking Stacatto on a silver platter?” He’s shouting, and I shudder at the words give back. I’d rather die than go back.
I arch into the hands at my sides, hoping that their owner will let his lust override any objections. Use me. Kill me. I can’t go back.
“...Just want...to think about other options. Use this to your benefit. There’s another way to make him pay.”
“How?” It’s a violent, bellowed plea that a part of me seconds. Tell me how. How can I win? How can I screw the Devil himself?
I don’t hear what is said next. The panting of the man crouched over me drowns out all else. He strokes me sloppily, grazing my hip with his nails. It feels like an eternity before another softly spoken word breaks the monotony.
“Your choice. Don’t say I never gave you business advice.” I’m unsure just what makes me peel my eyes open. He stands out like a panther in a jungle of weeds. Tall, broad shouldered. Fearless, he heads for the stairs as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. I’m just a speck on his peripheral vision, too insignificant to merit a passing glance. My eyes follow his ascent through the door and up the narrow staircase beyond it. Then the man at my backside shifts.
“Arno? We...we uh doing this or what?”
The red-headed man’s reply comes without hesitation. “We’re doing it. Who’s first?”
My eyes drift shut again. I will my head to float and separate from my body. I need to be far away. I’m not here. I’m not here. I’m...painfully trapped inside my skin, forced to feel every inch of the hand that dips into my panties and plunges between my legs.
Panic dances through my skin, riding the sharp tendrils of pain. My stomach, overflowing with alcohol, rebels. You’re not here, Daniela. You’re not here. You’re not—
“Ah, fuck! Stop.” There’s a sound like that of flesh striking flesh, but it isn’t violent—more as if someone slammed a hand into their own fist out of frustration. I can taste it, this dangerous tension building in the room like poison. Then, a man somewhere grits out a harsh sigh, and it all scatters at once. “Let her go.”
The hand between my legs doesn’t abate its cruel, searching thrust. I can’t silence the cry that slips loose, verging on the edge of a scream. I can survive anyone but Vinny...anyone. But my aching body isn’t as willing a sacrifice.
“I said let her go.”
The hands recede, and I slump to the floor, trembling and floating and panting. My eyes open once again, and I see him there, lurking just near the mouth of the staircase. A part of me wonders if he ever really left, but his voice isn’t the one that put an end to the party.
“Jesus—fuck, one day, Dante,” the red-haired man snarls. “One fucking day. You come up with nothing, and I’ll fuck her myself and send her in pieces to Stacatto. Understood? You fuck this up...and Parish’s blood is on your hands.”
The blue-eyed predator accepts the challenge with only a nod. He is uncaring, his face revealing nothing. I wonder what he’s promised. What he wanted. Why the men are leaving, spearheaded by a furious red-headed man, who slams his boots against the floor with every step.
“You can leave her here if you want,” he tells the man, Dante, before pushing past him for the stairs. “But I won’t lock the door. If anyone wants her, they are free to have her.”
I shiver, pressing my throbbing cheek against the floor while I try to find my melody again. If anyone wants her, they are free to have her... I hear footsteps approaching me. They’re steady, unconcerned when I try to shift out of reach.
My new attacker catches me easily. He seizes my panties in a fist...and then drags them back up to my hips. The next second I’m in the air, and the world spins for a terrifying moment before coming to a sudden stop—only I’m upside down. My eyes open to a hazy view of the cement floor. It shifts and writhes right before my eyes like a vibrant, gray body of water. My arms sway, dangling before me like pendulums. I’m moving. Though, on second, thought it’s more like moving with someone. They’re carrying me, whoever they are, across the basement and up the stairs. My nose hits something firm, which I assume to be a muscular body shielded by cheap cotton. I inhale sharply before I can stop myself. A mixture of musk and sweat and alcohol.