Chapter Six

 

Tamara

I rub my wrists as he takes his seat and spears a slice of prime rib from the silver tray.

“What are you going to do—?”

“You’re being rude,” he says coldly, gesturing at the dinner. “Eat.”

I bark a disbelieving laugh. “I’m being rude?” I say. “Kidnapping me was rude. And insane. I have the right to—”

He sets his fork down and looks at me, and the words dry up in my mouth. I’ve never seen anything like the expression on his face. I can’t believe how fast he went from gently stroking my face to…feral, I guess, is the only way I could describe it.

I fall silent and stare down at my plate.

“Eat,” he repeats, in a tone that says that if he has to ask me one more time, I will be very, very sorry.

I know that look. My stepfather used to give me that look.

It was a wise person who said, “Choose your battles.” There’s no point in refusing this meal. The food looks delicious, and I realize that I’m so hungry I’m lightheaded.

I reach out, grab the silver tongs and lay a slice of prime rib on the plate in front of me. There’s a carving knife and fork there, and I wish I had the courage to grab them and stab him.

Instead, I take a little food from each platter and eat until I’m full.

He keeps eating for a little while longer, and I sit there in silence, waiting to learn my fate.

Finally, he sets his knife and fork down and takes a sip of red wine from the glass next to his plate. I didn’t get any wine. I am afraid that means he doesn’t want to let me dull my senses; he wants me to feel everything he’s going to do to me.

“I’m in a generous mood. Since this is your first day here with me, I will give you a gift. You may ask me five questions. But don’t get used to this, Tamara. I’m not a nice man.”

Games. He loves to play games. I file that information away in my head, along with how many steps I took, in case it’s useful somehow.

Mentally keeping count, I start with the most important one. Important to me, that is. It means nothing to him. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No. And you just wasted a question.”

Scorn glitters in his eyes, and I’m furious with him. My fear is a casual joke to him. This is my life.

“You asked me that last night. Of course, there’s the possibility that I’m lying to you. Now, I can tell you that I will never lie, and you’ll find that out over time, but if I were a liar, asking me again would not make me change my answer.” He looks disappointed, and ridiculously, I feel ashamed of myself for disappointing him. “Now, if you ever were to try to harm Elizabeth, or myself, I might have to kill you.” He flicks a glance at the carving knife, as if to tell me that he knew what I was thinking.

“Are you going to cut my tongue out like you did hers?” I demand bitterly.

He gives me an odd look. “I didn’t cut her tongue out.”

“Oh, I suppose she just came like that.” I snorted.

“Are you calling me a liar?” he inquires politely. I recognize the threat lacing his words, but I don’t care, because he’s going to hurt me anyway, so I might as well get a few last shots in.

“If the shoe fits.” I’m being insane, taunting a sadistic killer, but a surge of miserable pride wells up inside me at my bravery. I mentally pat myself on the back. Atta girl, Tamara.

“That’s going to cost you, sweetheart. And she did it to herself.” He takes a sip of ice water.

I stare at him in shock. What the hell? For some reason, I think he’s telling the truth. I can’t imagine how agonizing it would be to cut your own tongue out.

“Why did she do that?” I demand.

“You’d have to ask her.” Oh, that’s hilarious. I can’t ask her. Because she can’t speak. The cruel amusement glinting in his eyes makes me want to murder him. I can’t believe he let me have a steak knife.

No that’s not true, I can believe it quite easily. It’s part of his taunting game.

“Are you going to let me go some day?”

“Never.”

I utter a strangled cry before I can stop myself. His perfect lips have just shaped my death sentence.

Even if he doesn’t kill me, I’ve been sentenced to life imprisonment, which is the same as death. Every dream I’ve ever had has been snuffed out by that one word.

I knew this from the moment I woke up, knew I was never walking out of here, wherever “here” is, but having it thrown in my face hurts so much I think my heart will tear in two.

Tears run down my face and splash on the table. My shoulders shake, and sorrow washes over me. He’s telling me my life as I knew it is over.

“School starts in two weeks.” My voice is husky with misery. “I’ve been working toward this for years. This is my whole life. I have a scholarship.”

He looks at me calmly. “I don’t care.”

I hate him so much.

I suck in a breath and try to stop crying. What he just said was so painful that I push it aside. I can’t think about it or acknowledge it, or I might die of sorrow.

“Are you going to rape me?” I’ve always been terrified of rape. The thought of having someone enter my body like that, the ultimate violation… My stomach curdles in fear, waiting for his answer.

A smile curls his mouth, and I can’t stop staring at him, wondering how I never noticed how strange his smile is, the way it doesn’t affect the rest of his face at all.

“I won’t have to.”

I rear back in my chair and stare at him in confusion. He locks his gaze with mine, and I desperately wish I could slap the smug look off his beautiful face. Does he think I’ll come crawling to him and beg for it, because he’s so pretty? Is he really that irrational?

Probably. He’s a serial killer who gets off on killing men and kidnapping women. God knows what goes on in that head of his. I won’t give him the satisfaction of asking what the hell he meant, though.

“If you’re not going to rape me, then what are you going to do with me?”

“I said five questions.”

“Wait, no, that can’t be right!” I protest.

“Believe me, Tamara, I can count to five.” He pushes his plate away and stands up.

It didn’t feel like five.

Frantically, I recount in my head. I recite my questions back. “Four!” I protest pleadingly. I have millions of questions crowding in my head, screaming for answers. And even more important than the right to ask one more question, I need to believe he’ll keep his word to me. He’s setting the rules; I have to know that he’ll follow them. It’s a kind of safety, a tiny bit of control in my new, dread-filled, out-of-control world.

He shakes his head. “You asked me what happened to Elizabeth’s tongue. Five.”

“No!” I cry, clenching my fists so hard my knuckles turn white. “I didn’t ask. You volunteered that information.”

He assesses me with a long, cool look. I wonder if my defiance is going to cost me, and in what coin he’ll exact his retribution.

Finally he nods, with a glint of what I think is reluctant admiration in his eyes. “Very good, Tamara. You may have one more question. You want to know what I’m going to do with you?”

I think quickly. That question is pointless. He’s already claimed he won’t rape me or kill me. He loves to play games, and if I ask him what he’s going to do with me, he’ll give me some bullshit answer like “Whatever I feel like,” and I will have wasted a question.

So I come up with a new question. “Do you only kill bad people?”

“I wouldn’t describe it like that. I only kill predators,” he says coolly.

“So you’re like that guy Dexter on the TV show.” I’m grasping for a lifeline, anything that will make him human, someone with a moral code, someone who might, despite what he just said, someday take pity on me and let me go.

“No, I kill predators because they’re the only ones who pose a real challenge. What kind of pathetic weakling would kill a woman or a child or an old man? Or some weak little office drone?” He pushes his chair back from the table.

And now all my questions are answered, and I’ve just lost the only power I had over him. Weakness floods my body and loosens my muscles. I wish I had more questions left. They stalled the inevitable.

He stands abruptly, reaches down, and grabs me by my hair, pulling me to my feet.

“You didn’t have to do that! You could have just asked me to stand up!” I cry out.

He nods. “I know.”

The deliberate, pointless cruelty of his statement drags dull dread through my body, and my food churns in my stomach. I feel sick and sad and so very frightened.

Fingers still twisted in my hair, he marches me out of the room and down the hall, in the opposite direction of the door that leads down to my basement cell. The terror of the unknown makes me whimper, and suddenly the basement doesn’t seem so bad after all. I swallow my pleas, knowing that they’ll do nothing more than amuse him.

He pushes me into a room, releases me, and slams the door shut behind us.

I suck in a breath, struggling for words. It’s… I don’t know how to describe it. A torture room? A pleasure palace?

“Welcome to my playroom,” he says, as if reading my mind.

The room is easily a thousand square feet. The walls are white, not glaring, but a soft ivory. Recessed lights run along the ceiling. There are at least half a dozen… I’d have to call them restraint stations… placed throughout the room, with chains dangling from them. There’s an X-shaped cross with cuffs on it, chains dangling from the ceiling, chains on the wall, and a bed on a platform with more chains hanging off the frame.

It’s the racks of whips on display on the wall that capture my attention. I had no idea how many different shapes and sizes whips came in. There are curled-up bullwhips, whips that look like black swords, braided whips that end in frayed leather, and an entire rack of what look like black leather fly swatters. There’s another rack with paddles of different shapes. One of them is shaped like a hand. A sadist with a fucking sense of humor.

Instruments that frighten me because I don’t recognize them.

Something that looks like a pommel horse is positioned ostentatiously, and nearby is an ob-gyn chair with stirrups; a table full of dildos; rolling carts with terrifying metal tools on them. There’s also a sink, and a cart next to it with a neatly folded stack of towels.

He points at a section of the wall with a bar of wood screwed into it easily a foot above my head. There is a big metal ring set into the wood, and two chains dangle down from it, with black leather cuffs on the end of each chain. It looks as if it’s designed so that a person can be spun around in any direction, and there are also chains on the floor with cuffs at the ends.

Panic explodes through my body, making me jerk with fright. “No!” I cry out, and back away. He’s on me in a flash. He grabs my wrist, bends my arm up behind my back until I scream, and walks me over to the wall.

He spins me around and pushes me so I’m backed up right under that bar of wood, forced to face him.

He’s almost right on top of me, and I have to tip my head back to glare up at him.

“I was nice to you at dinner. No more.”

I just keep looking up at him, trying to murder him with my eyes. You call that nice?

“Yes, that was me being nice.” His shark smile shows too many teeth. I flinch, startled. Did I unknowingly say it out loud, or is he just frighteningly good at reading what I’m thinking?

“Time to learn the rules, Tamara. The faster you learn, the less pain you’ll be in. You are not allowed to fight me. You’re not allowed to disobey me. You’re not allowed to speak to me disrespectfully.”

He thinks I’ll show respect to a serial killer?

I spit in his face.

He smiles, slowly wiping it off with the palm of his hand, then wiping his hand on his pants. “Did you think that was a freebie? Because I’m already going to punish you? It wasn’t. You’ll receive additional punishment for that.”

“What the hell does it matter?” I say bitterly. “Your word means nothing. You’ll hurt me no matter what. I already know you’re a liar. You’re a rapist,” I say, looking around the room, my mind reeling in horror at the thought of how many women he must have tortured to death in here.

He laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous. I would never stoop so low as to force a woman to be with me. I’m a sadist. I get off on hurting people. That includes sex. I use an anonymous account to pay money to escorts. I bring them here and do whatever I want to them. They wear a hood the whole time. They never have any idea who they’re with.”

He reaches up, and I flinch, but he just strokes a lock of hair out of my face. “Men who rape aren’t even worthy of the name. They’re lower than dogs. A real man doesn’t need to force a woman to want him. Women are drawn to real men, and they’ll do anything for them, not because they have to, but because they want to.”

A little bit of my fear retreats. I pray he’s telling the truth. If he’s lying—if he’s brought women here and raped and tortured them—then there’s no hope for me. So I have to believe him, for my own sanity’s sake. And it makes an odd kind of sense. He’s so damn arrogant, I suspect he wouldn’t condescend to force himself on a woman in that way. At least that’s what I tell myself, frantic for any scrap of comfort.

I open my mouth to speak, but he shakes his head.

“You will always address me as Master. You will only speak when spoken to. Speaking is a privilege. For that matter, breathing is a privilege. And you may find that out very soon.”

A chill runs through me, but I refuse to let my fright show on my face. I shape my features into an emotionless mask and stare at him.

He carries on. “The time will come, and it will come very soon, when you’ll beg to call me Master. You’ll beg me to fuck you. You’ll beg to sleep at the foot of my bed.”

“Are you out of your damn mind?” I shout at him. “I will never do any of those things.”

His eyes glow with vicious happiness. He flashes his brilliant smile again, and the light gleams off his perfect white teeth. “Remember those words.”

Then he grabs my arm and spins me around so I’m facing the wall. I thrash and struggle, but he chains up first one wrist and then the other until I’m pinned there, helpless, face pressed against the cold white paneling.

Oh God, oh God…what the hell is he going to do to me now? This is going to hurt so much. I blink frantically. Don’t cry, don’t cry. He doesn’t deserve your tears.

He adjusts the length of the chains so my arms are stretched over my head with just a little bit of play—I can move them maybe an inch or two. He walks away, and I yank pointlessly on my chains a few times before I finally give up.

He takes his time, which is a punishment in itself.

When he comes back, I spin around so I can see what’s coming. And then I’m sorry I did. I can’t help myself. My muscles jerk as I scream with terror and thrash against my chains. Because he’s holding up a sharp, shiny silver knife.