Cigarette smoke burned my nostrils, but it didn’t compare to the fire in my muscles. My hands were locked above my head, wrists shackled together, and my feet were anchored to the concrete with chains.
“Hey, Cleft,” someone’s voice thundered through my pounding skull. “I think he’s comin’ to.”
Bodies moved and the putrid air around me stirred. I could hardly lift my head, which felt like a bowling ball on my shoulders. “Where’s Alex?” I mumbled.
Someone slapped my cheeks. “Time to wake up.”
“Whaddya want,” I slurred, forcing my chin up.
The guy in the hoodie stood in front of me, and the dim bulb hanging between the rafters cast his face in light. If not for the hard lines in his skin, I’d guess he was in his mid-twenties. He took a drag from a cigarette, and something flashed in my memory. I couldn’t hold onto it, though the notable cleft in his chin seemed familiar.
“Alex,” I said again, refusing to back down until I got an answer.
“Relax. She’s fine, but whether or not she stays that way is up to you. You hold all the power here.”
“Find that hard to believe,” I said, breath rasping out as I glanced up at my restrained hands, “seeing as how you assholes have me strung up.” I pulled on the chains, and the clank of metal grated. Fucking futile. I glanced beyond the guy they called Cleft. The room spanned deep in a rectangle shape, and a bed sat tucked against a crumbling brick wall on the far end. A display of paddles, whips, crops and other implements of pain hung on hooks. Lighting equipment and camcorders were scattered throughout the space.
A second set of chains and cuffs dangled a few feet in front of me, empty now, but I feared they wouldn’t be for long. Those things made me nervous. It was too easy to imagine them restraining Alex there, where they’d force me to watch them do their worst, so close but unable to stop them.
Fuck. I couldn’t let this happen.
Clenching my hands, I glared at Cleft, wishing I could rip into his smug grin. “What the fuck do you want?”
He took another drag, and a door creaked open. His gaze darted behind me.
“Rafe!”
I jerked my head and watched two men bring Alex in. “Let her go!” I struggled against the restraints, my eyes never leaving her ashen face. They hauled her to where the other set of shackles swayed.
Waiting.
Taunting.
“Strip her,” Cleft ordered.
I lurched forward and the chains strained from the ceiling, metal cuffs gouging my wrists, but my feet wouldn’t budge another inch. They’d fully anchored me to the ceiling and floor. “Don’t you fucking touch her!”
Cleft grinned, and the guy I’d punched earlier snickered.
“This is Brock,” Cleft said, slapping his buddy on the back. “He’s got a real hunger for pain, dontcha, Brock?”
His nefarious gaze, no longer hidden behind dark glasses, roved over Alex’s shaking body. He removed his hat and tossed it to the floor, revealing his closely-shaved head. She seemed so small next to his massive frame, so breakable under the strength of his muscles. They were going to rape her. The certainty of it gnawed in my gut like a parasite. I almost vomited at the mental picture.
“If you hurt her—”
“You’ll do what?” Cleft interrupted as Brock and the other goon he’d come in with slid the tank top over her head. The other men in the room hung back, arms crossed in casual observation while Brock and his asshole accomplice tore her panties free. She squeezed her green eyes shut and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t even try fighting them as they strung her up and locked her into the same position as me.
“Damn, girl,” Brock said, swiping a palm over Zach’s carving on her belly. “Someone marked you up good.” Brock circled her then slapped her ass hard.
“You don’t need her,” I said. “You have me. Let her go.”
Cleft dropped the cigarette butt and ground it out with his shoe before closing the distance between us. He dragged a finger down my chest, his eyes alight with something close to glee. “I have you and her.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Didn’t we go over this on your piece of shit island? I want you to suffer.” He gestured to Brock. “Make the bitch scream.”
“No!” I sprang forward again, mindless of the chains trapping me.
Brock pulled a rubber band from his wrist and lifted her hair, securing it in a messy bun. He grabbed her chin and turned her face so he could drag his tongue up her cheek. She inched away from him, her mouth twisted in revulsion.
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted.
But Brock ignored me. They all fucking ignored me.
He let her go and waltzed to the back of the room where he eyed the various implements. God, I couldn’t watch them hurt her. It would kill me. They had everything they needed to tear me apart, all wrapped up in Alex De Luca. He removed a cane from the rack and strolled toward Alex.
“Answer me!”
“We don’t answer to you, Mason.” Cleft’s lip curled, and he folded his arms as Brock halted a few feet behind her.
I captured her gaze and held it in the safety of mine. Our connection was the only thing left to get us through what he was about to do.
“Baby,” I said, my voice cracking along with the rest of me because I couldn’t stop this. “It’s gonna hurt.”
She blinked rapidly, as if to hold back tears. “I know.”
“Lesson number one,” Cleft said to me. “You don’t fight us, ever.” He nodded, and Brock struck the back of her thighs with an ear-splitting crack. She jerked forward, sucking in a noisy breath. Brock narrowed his bushy brows and swung again, harder this time, and the impact of cane on flesh reverberated off the walls.
She bit back a cry, refusing to give voice to her pain, though her eyes watered from the agony.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Brock licked his lips, as if savoring the challenge in her silence, and struck again. A small cry escaped her. With the grin of the devil, Brock unleashed his sadistic pleasure onto her ass and thighs, again and again until her escalating screams lashed through me. She cried my name, screamed until the sound of her anguish overwhelmed the room. She rose to her toes, biceps straining against the chains, body trembling, then her legs finally buckled.
My breath caught in my lungs, refusing to expel. Grief and frustration burned behind my eyes.
“Please,” I said, not above begging. Not when it came to Alex. “No more. Let her go. Your problem is with me.” I didn’t know why, but whatever they were after, it had nothing to do with her. “Take it out on me.” I growled the last word, swerving my attention between Cleft and Brock.
Cleft stopped in front of me and thrust his face within inches of mine. I tried going for his throat, regardless of my chained hands, but could only stand there with his hot breath in my fucking face.
“Please what? I like hearing you beg.”
Something about him was darkly familiar, but I still couldn’t put my finger on it, even though some part of my subconscious recognized him, responded to his presence with a level of fear I didn’t understand.
Though I was beginning to. These men, whoever they were, had proven of what they were capable. Intolerable pain delivered with menacing smiles and hooded glares.
“Please,” I said again, hating myself for sounding so pathetic, but I’d do anything to get them away from Alex. “Let her go. She isn’t part of this.”
“I warned you not to try anything, but look at Brock’s face. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” He turned and traded a glance with Brock. “More.”
The bastard wailed on her, and Alex’s hoarse shrieks ripped me to pieces. “Stop! I’ll do whatever you want!”
Cleft’s hand folded around my chin. “That’s us going easy on your girl. If the boss hadn’t given us orders not to fuck her, we’d all be having a go at her. But he’s saving her pussy for himself, so I guess we’ll settle for beating the bitch.”
I wanted to stop breathing, wanted to shut my eyes and find a place where I wouldn’t have to witness them destroying her. If we didn’t die here in body, we would die here in spirit.
“Again,” Cleft ordered.
Brock lifted his right arm and swung the cane with a grunt. I jumped at the crack that struck my ears with such force, it rattled through me. I didn’t know how she was still in one piece. Something warm and wet fell from my eyes, and her image blurred. I would have given anything to take her place. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…
The apology bled from my soul, and maybe some part of her deep inside heard it. She slumped, eyes screwed shut as her screams diminished to hopeless mewls. Right then, I knew I’d kill every last one of them, and not in the I’m-fucking-irate-as-hell-and-talking-a-good-talk way. I would literally kill them, would do so with the most disturbing satisfaction imaginable, and no one would find the pieces of their corpses after I was through.
Another crack assaulted the tormented space between my ears. Her head dipped, chin to chest, body entirely limp as urine trickled down her quaking legs. She’d given up fighting. Her fucking brother had driven her to stop fighting the day she’d tried to kill herself.
“Let her down. She can’t take anymore.” Don’t break on me now.
Cleft gestured with a wave of his hand, and the bastard with the cane brought it down on her again. After three more strikes, he pulled the rubber band from her hair, and her curls tumbled around her shoulders in a mess of tangles. He freed her from the shackles, the fucking bastard apparently satisfied he’d broken her.
But she wasn’t broken. She couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let her fucking break. She’d come too far for these assholes to do her in.
Depleted of strength, she crumpled to the floor. Blood slickened her backside, and the sight of the deep red horizontal lines on her skin turned my stomach. Brock and another guy picked her up and carried her from the room.
“Where are you taking her?” I shouted, cranking my head around. She lifted her lids, just enough for me to see a spark of the woman I’d do anything for. In that moment, I knew it was true. Alex had me by the soul, her love winding around me like an unbreakable rope of which I couldn’t escape.
I didn’t want to escape her, but we had to find a way to escape this place.
Cleft stood in front of me and folded his arms with an air of nonchalance, as if we were old friends having a friendly chat. “That was your first lesson. If you so much as sneeze without my permission, she’ll take the punishment. Do you understand?”
“What do you want from me?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“You destroyed my family.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Same old memory problems.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re pathetic, Mason, but your head issues won’t save you. I’m here to collect a debt, and I’ll take it all, pound for pound, from your girlfriend’s flesh.”
I couldn’t hold it in anymore. The chains were the only things holding me up as I vomited on the gritty floor. “Kill me,” I begged. “She’s innocent.”
He tilted his head. “Is she?” He stepped closer, his sneakered feet bypassing the mess I’d made. “She’s the reason you were in that fucking prison in the first place. One lie that sent you away,” he said, pausing long enough to snap his fingers, “and my life is fucked. She’s as much to blame as you.”
“She was only fifteen. Don’t do this. Whatever I did…just fucking kill me for it and let her go.”
“Believe me,” he said, his breath rancid in my face with the stench of tobacco. “I will cherish that day when it comes.”
I wheezed air between my lips, muscles bunched, aching to pound him to a bloody, unrecognizable mass of body parts.
Cleft’s fingers fell to the button of his jeans. He nodded to the other two men in the room, who had quietly watched the horror unfold without a word. “Get him on his knees.” He retreated a few steps. “In fact, make him kneel in his fucking puke.” He grinned in such a chilling way, the smile crawled down my back like a spider.
“Do your girl a favor and open your mouth big.” He unbuckled, and I stiffened, my teeth grinding as he lowered the zipper. The fucker had a huge-ass erection.
My nightmares came back, flooding my conscious mind with details I hadn’t been able to grasp until now. Something had seemed so familiar about Cleft. His smell especially—the odor of sweat and tobacco combined with whatever musky cologne he favored.
Now I knew why. He’d raped me in prison. Though I didn’t remember it with clarity, I knew it was true.
He folded his hand around his dick. “You’ve got two options. You can suck me off, or Brock can have some more fun with your girl. Your choice.”
I couldn’t breathe. Oh my fucking God. There was no choice. Not even a little.
His goons loosened the chains keeping me upright, and I collapsed to my knees, right in the middle of my vomit. Goon number one grabbed the back of my head and held me in place while the other forced my arms in the air again with a jerk of the chains.
The moment was surreal, like an echo from a nightmare that twisted my insides. I opened for him, focusing only on memories of Alex—on what it felt like to wrap my body around hers, how hot and wet she’d been when I dipped my fingers between her thighs. The whimpering sound she made in the back of her throat when I possessed her mouth.
Cleft pushed his cock against my tongue, and I gagged.
Memories flashed behind my eyes, crashing through the barrier like a dam busting. The rapes in prison, how deep his hatred for me ran, though my psyche refused to stir up the reason why. It was there, tickling the edges of my memories, but that sick feeling returned and scattered the path to recollection, and my heart thumped so fast, I thought I’d black out.
He pulled back, and his dick slipped free. “Fuck this. I wanna fuck.” A quick nod to his men sent them into motion. They released my hands and shoved me to the floor. I struggled in my vomit, my limbs little more than deadweight. Someone grabbed my legs, but I kicked behind me and pushed to all fours.
Laughter. Footsteps.
I crawled to my feet, body swaying, and faced the three of them. With a roar, I launched at them, but the manacles around my ankles tripped me up and sent me crashing to the cement again. Pain shuddered through my injured shoulder, and I bit back a groan.
The four of us grappled on cold concrete, grunting under the fight to get the upper hand. One of them slammed my face into the ground, and stars swam in my vision for a few seconds. Strong hands wrenched my arms behind me and shackled my wrists together.
“I’m gonna enjoy this.” Cleft tugged my sweats down with a too-familiar laugh. He settled his bulky frame over me and straddled my thighs, just like in my nightmares, only this was real.
Happening all over again.
They held me down by the shoulders, pressed my ankles to the ground. Eager fingers slid between my ass cheeks, separating, seeking entrance. Cleft nudged his erection against my backside, a moment away from shoving it in, when the door burst open.
“Get the fuck off of him!”
I twisted my head, and my whole world shattered, everything logical lost to insanity. Jax stood in the doorway, the light from the hall casting him in silhouette, though I’d known it was him the instant he’d spoken.
“We’re just having a little fun,” Cleft said.
“Fun’s over. Fucking him isn’t part of the plan.”