I’m sitting beside him but I almost can’t believe this is real. It’s slowly sinking in, the danger I put myself in. I drop my gaze, wipe my eyes.

I don’t know what I’m doing. Everything is so mixed up and I feel more out of control than ever.

“You want to punish yourself. Destroy yourself. I’m not going to let that happen,” Kill says.

I thought I was past this. Better off than Jones. I thought I had control over this. But seeing Kill, seeing that look in his eyes, the one that says he knows, he truly knows, it’s killing me. I want to hide, but at the same time, I need it. I need him. I need someone to know. To see me.

But the instinct to flee, it’s just as powerful.

I know it’s stupid, but I reach for the door handle, try it. It’s locked but he grabs my wrists anyway. Forces my hands on my lap.

“Just let me go.”

“You don’t want me to.”

“I do! This is kidnapping!”

He grins and it’s the Kill I first knew. The wicked one. Although really, he’s only ever been wicked, hasn’t he? Even when he’s tender?

“You don’t. In fact, I’m going to give you exactly what you need, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart. Whenever he calls me sweetheart, it’s like my insides turn to jelly. The way he says it, it’s not tender. He has no intention to use it that way. No, with him, it’s ownership. I’m his. Again.

I register the rest of his words then, take in the dark, intense burning of his eyes.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“You’re not looking for a hero to save you, Cilla. You’re looking for someone dark. You’re so fucking lost in there, you can’t even see the light to get out. I’m going to come in there and get you. That’s what that means.”

I shudder at his words, have no response. I sit quietly as we drive.

Contrary to where I think we’re going to go, we go to the penthouse. But when we arrive, Kill tells Hugo to take me upstairs. To put me in the special room while he takes care of something.

“What’s the special room?” I ask, my heart racing, too afraid of what he has planned, knowing full well he means what he says. That he’s coming into the dark to get me. Thing is, that means I’ll have to face it. Look at it head on. I’m not sure I can do that.

“You’ll see soon,” he says.

“No. I don’t want to go.”

But he’s already got me out of the car.

“I don’t suppose you do, but you are. But I’m going in there with you, Cilla.”

Panic has me searching the parking garage for an exit, but I know there isn’t one. Hugo is behind me and Kill in front. He steps closer, touches my face. “I’ll be there with you.”

The “special” room is the last one down the hall, three doors past my guest room from the other night. For as luxuriously as the rest of the penthouse is decorated, this room is purposefully bare and cold. Furnishings consist of a double bed without sheets or a pillow, although there’s a threadbare blanket lying on the bed. No nightstands, no lamps apart from the overhead. There’s an old and damaged side table and rickety chair along the wall that looks like it should have been thrown out several years ago, and above it, a mirror that’s cracked in one corner and tarnished. The single window has cheap, broken blinds rather than the lavish curtains of the other rooms. Even the paint on the walls is old. In fact, the only thing that’s new in this room is the camera in the corner. He doesn’t even try to hide this one. The lens has been trained on me since the moment I set foot in here.

I draw the blanket up and wrap my arms around myself. I’m sitting on the mattress with my back against the wall. There’s no headboard. I still have my dress on but it’s ripped along the side and I’m barefoot. That’s when the dress tore, when Hugo insisted I give him the shoes and I insisted I would not. He won.

An hour must have passed since I’ve been in here. I thought Kill would be here sooner, but he’s probably making me wait it out. Making me anticipate what’s coming.

Something has changed between us. It’s like we’ve crossed a bridge that collapsed into the chasm below as we took step after unknowing step on its rickety planks. What’s been happening up until this point, I realize now, was child’s play. That was the easy part. The part I could survive.

I know he’s here before I hear him. It’s like I can feel his presence now, I’ve become so in tune with him. A chill runs up my spine and I shudder. I always seem to have a very visceral reaction to him, even to the thought of him. It’s like my body reacts to him outside of the parameters set by my brain.

I hear his voice outside the door. Then Hugo’s. I can’t tell what they’re saying but I can distinguish between the two. A set of footsteps recedes down the hall. Hugo, I assume. When the key slides into the lock, I feel the cold sweat breaking over my forehead. The lock slides back. I push the blanket off and, as the door opens, I force myself to stand. To face what’s coming.

Kill stands in the doorway, still wearing his suit jacket. So proper. His gaze slides over me, takes in the torn dress, my bare feet. He steps in and closes the door behind him. The wall at my back is cold against my skin.

He releases me only momentarily from his gaze, hijacking mine again in our reflections in the mirror. He doesn’t speak as he slides off his jacket and hangs it across the back of the chair. Purposefully, he takes off one cuff link then the other, sets them on the table, the little sound they make is the only one in the room. He turns to me and my eyes drop to his hands as he begins to roll up one shirt sleeve, then the other. I look at them, at how thick they are, how muscled and powerful. Look at his big hands. Remember how they feel against my skin. How rough he is when he touches me. Takes me.

“I shouldn’t have walked away,” he says, startling me.

My gaze snaps back to his.

“I shouldn’t have left you that way.”

“What way?” I ask, backing into the wall even more when he takes a step toward me.

“I know the real truth, Cilla.”

I hear him, but I don’t want to think about that. All I know is I need to get out of here. Away from him. From his words. From the way he’s looking at me.

“I know,” he repeats.

“No.” I walk around the bed to the window. I can’t let him see me now.

“Look at me.”

He’s close behind me. I shake my head.

When he touches me, I jump, turn to him. I shake my head again, back away, but there’s nowhere to go and I’m going to be sick.

“Jones is in bad shape,” I say when the wall hits my back. I rub my face, cover it. I can’t talk about what he just said. I can’t have him look at me. Can’t have him see me. Not now.

“I think he’s in better shape than you.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want this.”

“I know everything,” he says. “All of it.”

I double over and hug my stomach. My hair hangs like a curtain between us, shielding me from him.

“Cilla,” his voice is low. Dangerous.

I realize I’ve moved into a squat when he crouches down. As much as I want to crawl into his arms and bury my face in his chest and sob until I drown, when his fingers brush my hair, I slap his hand away. Look at him.

“You don’t know anything,” I spit. I stand, try to slip past him, but he catches me around the middle, draws me to him, my back to his wall of a chest.

A sob escapes but I swallow it. I can’t let this happen. Can’t let it start. Because if it does, it won’t stop.

“Let me go,” I beg. I’m shaking, I’m freezing. I’m too hot. I can’t look at him. I don’t want to see what I know will be in his eyes because I believe him. He knows. He knows all of it.

He sits on the bed, draws me onto his lap. I keep my face averted as he cradles me.

“It’s not your fault,” he says.

I break then. That’s the moment. It’s the kindness. The fucking tenderness in his voice.

“What he did to you. To Jones. What he made you—”

“Stop,” my voice is unrecognizable. I’m hiccuping and sobbing and my ears are full of so much noise. So much chaos. “Let me go.”

“No.”

He keeps his powerful arms around me, hands holding me fast, hugging me to him.

“Just please let me go.” His shirt is drenched with my tears and I don’t know how there can be so many of them. After so many years, still, all these tears.

“I’m not letting you go, Cilla.”

I know he’s not. I know. But he has to. I can’t do this. I can’t. I force my gaze up to his, force myself to harden. “I don’t need you,” I say. I try to push his arms off. “I don’t want you. Not like this.”

“No, you want me hard. You want me rough.”

I’m confused.

“It’s what you need. It’s the only way you can bury it. That ends tonight, sweetheart.”

He lets me off his lap, stands up, unbuckles his belt.

I shake my head, I don’t want to fuck. I turn and try to crawl away, but he catches my ankle.

“It’s not a fuck I’m thinking of,” he says, as if having read my mind.

When I hear the whoosh of his belt through his loops, I crane my neck back to find him standing over me, doubling the belt, gripping the buckle.

“I think what you need is pain. And maybe then you can let it out. Let it fucking go. Because holding it, Cilla, it’s killing you.”

I don’t understand and I’m still trying to process when he sits back down, hauls me over his lap so my legs are hanging off one side, and my torso is lying on the bed.

“Forgive me,” he says before he rips the dress.

I scream at the sound, at the cool air on the backs of my thighs before the line of fire that is his belt lashes my ass.

Everything stops and I suck in air. But when he strikes again, I fight. I fight hard, trying to get off him, slide off his lap, trying to cover my ass. But he’s too strong and he grips my wrists at my low back, drags my panties down my thighs and lashes me with his belt again and again and again.

I can’t breathe. I can’t keep up. The strokes come hard and fast and I can’t fucking breathe.

“It hurts!”

My heart is racing, I’m dripping sweat, my ass and thighs are on fire and still he holds me, his muscular thighs at my belly, his hands trapping my wrists and hugging me to him at once.

“Let it go.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and fuck, it hurts like hell, and I want him to stop and I want him to hold me forever.

“You can, Cilla. I’ve got you. I’m right here. You’re running like hell but you’re in a fucking hamster wheel. Just let it fucking go.”

“I can’t.” I always thought it was Jones who was too broken to be fixed, but maybe I was wrong, because right now, this—whatever the fuck this is—it’s breaking me apart. Shattering me into a thousand little pieces.

“You have to.”

I hear him and he’s still whipping me and all I can do is bury my face in the mattress and sob and sob because I can’t hold on anymore. I can’t hold this any longer. It owns me. It’s been killing me even when I’ve been thinking that I could control it. That I’d locked it away. It had only been growing. Like a cancer, it had metastasized, infecting all of me with its horror. Because what he did to us, what he made us do, brother and sister, it’s sick. It’s unnatural. And I can’t breathe for the sobbing. I’m drowning. Drowning.

A sound that’s more animal than human breaks from my chest and my ass throbs but the belt is gone. Kill lifts me in his arms, sits with his back against the wall and lets me curl into him, lets me bury my face in his chest as much to hide myself as to feel his arms around me.

“Let it out. Let all of it out.”

I do. I don’t have a choice. It’s like a tidal wave, a fucking tsunami of pain and anguish and fear and its coming out of me and I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. And all I can do is cling to him. Cling like he is the only thing keeping me afloat, because right now, he is. If it weren’t for him, for his arms around me, I’d drown.