The room erupted in chaos. I blinked and it seemed as if a lifetime had passed in that mere second. The gurgling noise had stopped. So had my screams. But Jax bawled as he held the blonde’s limp body, his devastation pouring from his eyes in streams of grief. Blood stained his clothing, but that didn’t stop him from sheltering her in his embrace, rocking her as if she were merely sleeping.
Rafe’s gaze swerved between her and me, his glassy eyes round with horror, shock, disbelief. The ball gag kept him quiet, though his rage burst free in his fisted hands, in the veins cording his bunched muscles. In the violent way he pulled at the chains.
He was a caged lion, bound by metal and madness, and this place was a zoo.
I glanced at Jax and the blonde again, and something inside me cracked, allowing memories to creep inside. As Brock freed my hands, I saw sunlight and white lace curtains. Murky water, dark with the kind of death that bled out my mother. I collapsed toward the floor, and Brock caught me in his arms as if I weighed nothing.
“Take her to the cell,” Lucas said, voice booming off the walls. “I’ll deal with her in a bit.”
Brock and Vinnie herded me out of the room amidst Rafe’s smothered protests. Hysteria rose in my chest, refused to release. I squeezed my eyes shut as they hauled me down the hall, toes dragging the ground.
“C’mon, use your feet,” one of them said, hoisting me up. “Almost there.”
I lifted my lids, and the tunnel spanned before me in a line of hazy crimson. Blood dripped from the pipes like a leaky faucet, forming puddles where the walls met the floor. That liquid death expanded, stalked in a furtive slither. I was going mad. That was the only explanation because logically, I knew the blood wasn’t really there, but the deep red tore through my mind in a cacophony of whispers. I glanced at my forearms and gasped. Sticky red poured from the slashes as if the wounds had never healed.
“Make it stop!” My breath caught in my lungs, and I fought the grip of their fingers. “Get the blood off of me! It’s not real! Not real…not real…not real…”
Lucas’ minions shook me, propelling me forward. A door creaked open, and the haze of red morphed to black as I hurtled to the dirt. I scratched at my wrists, as if I could remove the blood with my fingernails.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Fuck if I know. The bitch is going batshit crazy.”
The light from the hall cast their figures in an otherworldly blur. My eyes burned with too many emotions that boiled, writhed, cut through me. I wanted to cry and sob and scream, but I couldn’t.
I needed to hurt.
As Vinnie attached my leash to the hook in the floor, I dragged my nails down my arms hard, sucked in shallow breaths, and dug deeper.
“I think she was broken long before we got to her.”
“Rafe…” Even saying his name incinerated me.
“Your boyfriend isn’t comin’.”
So much blood.
Pumping from Rafe’s neck in thick spurts.
No! They hadn’t killed him. My mind was only playing tricks on me, editing the continuous loop of knife to flesh slashing through my sense of reality.
Blond hair.
I grasped that piece of truth, because Rafe’s hair was beautifully dark, just like his soul. My mother’s face flickered in my mind, and I jerked my head back and forth, my thoughts overflowing with chaos, with bloody water and a bathtub full of dead mothers and lost hope.
Five in—
Can’t breathe.
I screamed, though the wail didn’t come from me. A wild animal thrashed inside my being, screeching its pain.
Someone hefted me up and sent a hard smack to my cheek. “Snap out of it!”
Gulping air, I returned Brock’s wide-eyed stare.
“You’re gonna sit on that bed and calm the fuck down. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, mouth trembling, and stumbled toward the bed. My legs gave out, and I plopped onto the cot’s thin mattress, ass flaming from the welts. Rather than fight the burn, I embraced it, wrapped myself in its blessed relief.
Brock pivoted, running a hand over his shaved head, and he and Vinnie left. The door shut with a quiet click, as if it didn’t want to ignite the screaming again.
I rocked back and forth on the bed, nails clawing my skin. I couldn’t wash away the blood. I was bathing in it, reliving it. Those fucking tears needed to burst from my eyes and drench my face. I needed to cry, but I was a brimming cactus in the middle of a desert, and nothing could extract my despair.
Someone inserted a key into the lock, and I jumped. I could have lost minutes or hours—I had no way of knowing. Lucas stood in the doorway holding the handle of a lantern. He set it on the floor before picking up a bucket he’d left outside the entrance. The door slammed behind him, and a soft glow filled the space. So did the malevolent shadow of his form. He came toward me with purposeful steps.
“Now you know what I’m capable of,” he said, bending to set the bucket on the floor. “I have no problem killing Mason. You have the power to keep him alive.”
“You want to fuck me,” I said, voice as dead as I felt on the inside.
“I can do that anytime I want. You’re helpless here, Alex, and you can’t stop me.”
“What do you want then?” I lowered my gaze and imagined blood all over the shiny black surfaces of his shoes.
“I want you to want me to fuck you.”
“That will never happen.”
“Are you sure about that?” He placed a hand on my chest, between my breasts, and gently pushed until I flopped to my back. Grabbing my legs, he slid them onto the bed before bending and spreading my knees. I closed my eyes and found that place I hadn’t ventured to in a while—the place where I’d sought refuge when Zach had pushed me beyond my breaking point in that cabin.
The scrape of the plastic bucket on rough ground pulled me from that mental sanctuary. I sensed him shifting, and the mattress squeaked under his weight. Water sloshed, eliciting a shudder, and warm drops dribbled over my breasts. Goose bumps broke out on my skin. My nipples tightened, begging to be touched, pinched…bitten.
I wanted Rafe. God, how I wanted him—to get me out of here, to make my body bend, to fucking love me.
Lucas’ sleeve brushed my stomach, and I silently cursed my body for displaying any sort of reaction. He ran the sponge over my mouth and chin, wiping away the musk of Rafe, and continued to my breasts.
“My men fucked up. They should have separated you from Mason upon your arrival.”
I scoffed at his tone. He made it sound like we were his guests. “Let us go.” I swallowed hard. “If not me, at least let him go.”
He let out a heavy sigh. The sponge dipped between my thighs, and his fingers followed. Unlike the brutal force of his touch the first time he’d thrust his fingers into me, now he dipped into my center with such teasing skill, something inside me twitched to life.
I hated myself for that twitch.
He caressed my clit, soft and light as a feather. I gritted my teeth. “Just fuck me and get it over with.”
His low laugh rumbled through the room. “I’m not fucking you today. But you’ll beg me to, believe me.”
Over my dead, bloodied body.
“My personal slaves learn to serve me with pleasure, Alex. Some men like to forcefully take. I like to forcefully take what is given.”
“I’m not giving you anything.”
“You already have. You gave me a piece of yourself months ago. I saw your potential, your passion. And now,” he said, pressing on my clit with firm pressure, “you’re giving me your reluctant arousal.” He burrowed his fingers deep.
“Do you think this will work?” I asked, disdain bleeding from my lips. “You’re a sick, disgusting bastard who rapes women. You destroy them.” I thought about the young girl one of his men had brought to screams for hours on the other side of the wall.
And I thought of the blonde whose throat Lucas had so carelessly slashed. He’d pulled that blade across her neck as if she were an animal, as if she meant nothing. She’d been someone’s daughter, someone’s sister…someone’s mother.
She’d had history with Jax and Rafe. They’d both cared for her.
“Why are you doing this to us?”
“Some people believe in that old adage, ‘an eye for an eye.’ I’m underwhelmed with that saying. When someone wrongs me or mine, I don’t stop at the eye.”
He might as well have been speaking in Pig Latin. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you need to grasp the reality of your predicament. You’re not getting out of here.” He leaned over me, and his breath hit my face. “You feel my fingers inside you? I will have my cock there.” He ran his tongue along my earlobe. I cringed, but a rough hand kept me from retreating. “Maybe I’ll keep Mason alive long enough to hear you beg for it.”
I spread my legs as wide as I could. “I have nothing left to give, so you’re gonna have to take it.” I was playing with fire by inserting that challenge into my tone, but I didn’t care. Maybe I was still in shock. Numb. Seeing red.
It didn’t matter. He was going to kill Rafe. If anything had the power to break my pieces, it was the certainty of his death busting through me like a wrecking ball. I’d rather die on our terms. Our time. I’d rather call Lucas’ bluff and die now than continue to bend.
He removed his fingers and stood. The sponge splashed into the bucket, and he reached for the button of his pants. “I’m visiting him next.” He paused, and my heart pounded out of control during those tense seconds. “You sent him to prison, Alex. Do you know what he did while he was in there?”
“No,” I whispered, barely able to get that single word out.
“Mason killed my blood, so I’m going to kill him.”
Now that he’d said the words, I wanted to bend.
Oh God.
“He’s not a killer.”
“Maybe you don’t know Rafe Mason as well as you thought.”
No, I knew Rafe. Lucas, on the other hand, I hadn’t known at all.
“If you won’t beg me to fuck you, maybe you’ll beg for his life.”
Fear seized me, choked me. I wanted to feel numb at the thought of Rafe’s death and my servitude living as Lucas’ adoring pet, leash and all, but I wasn’t strong enough. Pushing off the bed, I slid to my knees and begged in Lucas Perrone’s language—I yanked down his zipper and wrapped my lips around his shaft.