Chapter
26

Time faded. When there wasn’t a clock marking the seconds, minutes, and hours, time didn’t matter. I couldn’t see the sun or the moon, so I didn’t know the days. I could only mark time by Lorcan. When he came, when he went, and what he did to me. Each breath marked that much longer I lived and he wouldn’t let me die.

Each gasp a moment Caesar left me behind.

It was foolish of me, I knew, to hold on to him. My captor. My beautiful, cruel captor who took my body, loved my blood, and sought to hurt me. I should have hated him just as much as Lorcan. But I didn’t. Somehow, Caesar was a nebulous mix of intrigue and hate. Of pain and pleasure. On the one hand, he’d taken me from school, away from the choice I would have made to marry Matt and never love him. Caesar erased my old existence—a life I only realized after having lost it wasn’t any sort of life. And he hurt me. Broke me into pieces, laughed in my face, and opened my soul. But then he held me close when I was cold, hated to see me cry, and took drastic, violent action against those who caused me pain.

When exactly had the Devil become a saint?

When had things shifted so I now looked for Caesar to come to me, to exact retribution? My head lulled to one side on the grainy mattress they’d left me on. My hands were too mangled to tie up and, with my toes broken along with some of the fragile bones in my feet, I couldn’t run. I was useless, suspended. Besides, I didn’t cry out anymore. I didn’t fight. Lorcan didn’t like it. He’d left me in a tangled heap on the remnants of my own vomit, urine, and blood and waited for infection to take me away.

Maybe that was what I waited for, too. But I wanted to see Caesar’s face. I wanted to know him, touch him, and feel him one last time. Because, as pitiful as it was, I’d been most alive next to him. I’d fought, I’d run, and then I’d chosen to give him my body. I’d sucked in the darkness and shot into the blazing sun as I came. Me, I chose that, amid his chains. And I wanted to choose how I finally died. In my final moments, I wanted to smile up at Caesar, call him a fucking lunatic, and watch him blow up the world. With my fading eyes, I wanted to see the world turn red in his anger.

What had the world ever done for me but feed me broken promises and given me shit? From a junkie mother, to a cracked-out brother who pimped me, to a pedophile who ruined my psyche. I never had a fucking chance to be anything remotely normal. My time at college only served to be a fleeting dream, the true nightmare. Because you had to wake up eventually. The dream didn’t last for a lifetime. And in that shattering of dreams, I found I’d been sleeping all along. Passing through one day to the next on borrowed time.

My vision blurred with tears as they fell from my eyes, trailing down the side of my face to soak the mattress. The darkness in the factory swallowed the world around me. They’d left me in the one room now, with nothing but a sliver of light dancing on the floor from some unknown source. The act of pure surprise entertained Lorcan; he never wanted me to see him coming. I didn’t care anymore. I sighed, and my chest rattled, watery and sluggish. Eventually, sickness would finish me off. I felt it coming. Fluid in my lungs made it hard to breathe, and I slept more and more throughout the day. Slept like the dead. I’d woken so many times to Lorcan or one of his thugs between my legs. They used me as they saw fit, but I was too broken. Sick and fading. Lost and not willing to be found.

A groan interrupted my thoughts, and I searched the darkness. Sound here echoed off the walls, and I struggled to ascertain where the sound came from. Then a lighter clicked. The single form of flickering light highlighted a bloody spectacle. A body hovered on the ground, broken and battered, blood dripping from the mouth. The face was so battered and swollen I couldn’t make out who it was. They trembled on the floor and hugged twisted fingers to their chest. Another whimper, this one quiet and mournful, leaked out. The flame danced in the air toward the second body, finally flaring bright as a cigarette was lit. Thin, white smoke curled in the fire, and then the light was tossed to the corner of the room.

Everything in me froze.

A flame exploded deep inside a barrel I’d never known was in the room with me, and a bloody Lorcan shook on the floor. But I didn’t care that his legs were at awkward angles, that he was naked, bleeding from every orifice. I didn’t care that he cried and moaned in pain. No, the only thing that took up my vision was the man in the chair next to him. His black jeans were stuck to his legs, and his white Chucks were covered in bright-red. Darker, almost black rivulets of blood slid down his chest, mixing with the artwork on his torso. Covered, he was covered in hell, and the red, sticky mess stuck to his cigarette as he smoked. His eyelashes were even clumped together, and his hair fell into his eyes, liquid dripping to the floor.

Caesar.

Battered and bruised, my heart labored in my chest, a smile swimming on my painful lips. I didn’t imagine a knight in brilliant golden armor riding in to save the day. No, not me. I saw a black knight, wrapped in blood and vengeance, not promising me life but the easy peace in the end. I couldn’t move, my body too weak to do more than breathe, but I tried to smile at him.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” I whispered.

The Devil rolled his shoulders and blew out a thick cloud of smoke, choking me. “I haven’t smoked since prison.” He lifted the cig and flicked it away. “But I felt the need to tar my lungs a bit.”

He looked over at me before he looked down at Lorcan. “I did it all to him, Ash. Every break, every hit, every cut. He’s felt everything I could make him feel for you. I wanted to make sure I did before I made him bow at your feet.”

I blinked. Was this how people died? They saw what they wanted most in the world and got a taste of happiness? If so, I could die with a smile on my face. I closed my eyes.

“I’m okay with dying now.”

“Well, I’m not. Look at him, Ash. Look at this pathetic sack of flesh and know he was punished for ever touching you.”

Death and Hell, I heard both in Caesar’s voice. He sounded so close, so real. But he couldn’t be here. He’d forgotten about me, left me when I called for him, allowed Lorcan to hurt me. I shook my head, not wanting that dream to end but knowing it would have to.

“Just let me have this,” I begged.

“Look. At. Him. Ash.”

Caesar’s voice boomed through the room, and my eyes snapped open. I couldn’t deny him and looked to Lorcan, who was cowering and kissing the ground near my twisted feet.

“I made him beg, cry, and scream. And you know what, Ash? I’m still going to kill the fecking bastard.”

Caesar reached down, a tested fucking Viking, and gripped Lorcan’s chin. He forced him to his knees and then wrapped his arm around Lorcan’s throat. “Slow or fast, baby?”

Caesar caressed Lorcan’s chest with a blade that glinted gold in the firelight. I watched, mesmerized, as he hinted at the spots he could plunge the blade in to end it, how much he could make it hurt, and the way Lorcan cowered.

And then my gaze locked with Caesar’s.

My eyes screamed things I couldn’t voice out loud. Needs I was ashamed of having but couldn’t hold back. I screamed for him in a way my throat could not produce.

But Caesar heard it; he read it in the depths of my soul. I knew it when he smiled, wild and terrifying, his eyes widening so I could see the whites. “Slow it is, beautiful.”

Lorcan grunted and squealed as Caesar pushed the blade slowly in his stomach. And he didn’t stop there. Lorcan was a pin cushion, a wailing, gurgling pin cushion. And as Caesar pushed the blade in and out, across his stomach, through his back, over the sides, and even upward from his groin, I felt more alive. Vindicated, even, by the brutality when Lorcan finally stopped breathing. He had broken me, but in the end, he was the one who died. Caesar tossed him to the ground with a thud before he came toward me.

“Let’s go home, Ashy Lashy. The doctor is waiting.”

“I’m going to die, Caesar. There’s fluid on my lungs,” I warned him. “You were too late.”

He bent and lifted me into his arms. Even that hurt, curling into his warmth. He was too hard, and the agony took my breath away. But I saw him, felt him. I would have that wish when it was over. I just needed to give him the words trapped inside me, the ones he needed, even if he didn’t want to hear them.

“Your heart stops when I tell it to and not a second before. You’re gonna live, Ash. I’ve killed too many to not save you.”

I lifted my useless hands. I wanted to touch him, feel him against my palms. He leaned into my touch before he sighed hard and closed his eyes. “I’m just another Yolanda for you, Caesar. And you know what? I know she didn’t blame you. Even if she screamed and cried. Even if she wished you’d saved her. You know why?”

He didn’t say anything, but he paused.

“Because I don’t blame you, Caesar. I don’t blame you. I pity you.”

His bloody face swung to mine, confusion and hurt hovering in his gaze. “Pity me?”

“Yes. Because you can’t keep what’s yours safe because you are destruction. You attract those who like to break things. You can only retaliate after it’s already been destroyed.”

It hurt. It hurt so bad I couldn’t breathe. I tried to fight as rough hands gripped my fragile fingers and snapped them, the bones broken and ground into dust. My toes burned as hot pokers drove down inside of them. The crunch of bone and joints popping filtered through to my ears, but I couldn’t scream. I was trapped in the darkness, hovering in a foggy state where the discomfort was magnified. My heart thundered, echoing too loud in my ears, bursting my eardrums.

It hurt. I couldn’t do this. Not again. Something sharp and pointy bit into the flesh between my legs, close to my anus, and I wanted to run—to throw my body away—but I was paralyzed. My extremities throbbed, and my blood heated until lava scalded my insides. Nowhere to go, no way to hide. Something pushed down my throat, scraping my esophagus and tearing its way to my stomach. The urge to gag and spit swelled in me, but my muscles did nothing.

“It’s okay, Ash, I’m going to fix you. I promise.”

Caesar, what have you done?