Chapter Seven

Jacob

It was horribly cold outside, like Mother fucking Nature was pissed at me for letting my father once more hurt my girl. With each step, leaves crunched under my feet, and I wondered where summer had gone so quickly. But then Father was yanking the frail body forward, and I stumbled to keep up.

Dead weight was heavy, no matter how slim the form.

Celia was quiet now, her blood drained out of her on the floor in front of Alana’s cage. Now, she was a skeleton wrapped in alabaster skin so fine I could see bruising from weeks ago still bright and tracing a path of her abuse. Her dark-brown hair was caked with congealed blood, and it almost looked like rust in places. Her eyes, though, they were the sickest part. They were wide open and guileless, as if in death she finally got the release she’d been searching for.

My father hadn’t owned her soul as much as he believed.

Her death fucked with me. Somehow, she’d become my friend. My confidant who knew my how I loved Alana. Alana didn’t stop screaming until she passed out, and I was helpless as I watched the way she tried to hold her body away from the ever-increasing pool of blood in her sleep as it seeped against her body.

“Move it, boy, or we’ll be out here all night!”

I shuffled faster with my package, gripping the grainy cover tighter in my fists to haul her to the other side of the barn. The closest neighbor was over three miles away, so we had plenty of land to get rid of the body. Father had a pit where he kept lye in large quantities to decompose the bodies quicker and keep the smell down.

“I’ll have to scope out another girl, but it’s been too soon since Alana was taken and since I killed that bitch’s mother.”

“Keeping the snatches from eight months to a year and a half between them has kept the cops away from our door. Atlanta is big with the big press too. Macon, Georgia is already uncomfortable with the sequence of events of missing girls.”

He stopped, looking at me over his shoulder. “You’ve been paying attention.”

“I told you I would. Willacoochee has enough farmland to keep us hidden, and the money in the family keeps us operating, but touching Atlanta or Macon again could be risky. Athens might not be too bad, or even Savannah, the direction is different. Might take a minute before they even connect one missing girl to the others.”

He scrubbed his chin for a moment, eyeing me approvingly. “I like the idea of Savannah.”

A new toy coming in wouldn’t bode well for my girl, though, and I’d have another one to save. He was already angry she’d lost his kid. That she was strong enough to kill it and defy him. If she were mine, she wouldn’t have done it. She would have been happy to have my child. Would have loved it. I didn’t want him to bring a new one in too soon and risk getting rid of Alana. I wasn’t ready to get rid of him yet. Didn’t know his business, how he ran the money or kept things moving. Without that knowledge, I wouldn’t be able to keep Alana safe, and that was what mattered.

“Still, it’s too soon after everything. And you still can get good use out of Alana. She hasn’t learned her lesson yet and isn’t broken. The bitch killed my little brother and she needs to pay. Dying quick and easy is too good for her.”

Father picked Celia back up and kept trudging forward toward the gravesite. We’d shoveled out the deep top layer the day before, exposing the sixteen other bodies I could still faintly make out. But I knew there were more down there. That my mother’s body rotted in the grave too. She was probably nothing but bones now.

“She is going to pay. Long and hard. She wants to die, I know that. I’m going to keep her alive until she’s so broken she only wants what I need. Until I’ve got her fat and pregnant again. Then, when it’s time, I’m going to rip it right from her stomach, let her feel every moment of it. Watch her bleed the fuck out. Doc will make sure it’s a boy. Anything else will be terminated before she can have it.”

Time. Death and time. That’s all I could give her—I could provide—but it would have to be enough, for both of us. Right? I dumped Celia over the foul corpses, struggling not to puke while I thought about death and time.

The death of my mother came long after it should have because my life had bought her time. Celia’s throat was cut because she’d stolen time from my father. Time to raise the perfect son. To gain a true heir the way he hadn’t with me. And then I thought of my father’s death at my hands. I would bury him along with his prized bodies. I’d cut him into pieces and place a part of him in each of their mouths so they could taste his death. He’d be part of them instead of the other way around, and I’d have all the power.

My cock stiffened as I shoveled dirt over Celia. It pounded, sending sharp darts of pleasure and desire as I imagined Alana on her knees, sucking it down, deep in her throat. It burned me up as I imagined her bloody and tied up, waiting for me to take her, hurt her, fucking degrade her with my seed spurting all over her wounds. I’d make sure we were combined that way.

Maybe I’d even make her drink my blood too. She’d started to like the fucked-up shit my dad did to her, that I’d one day do to her.

“You like dead things? You’re damn near humping the fucking shovel. Is that what gets you off? When they’re already dead? When their snatch is dry and splitting, bloodless, because their heart isn’t pounding?”

I blinked and saw my dad was standing next to me, staring down at my pants. I shook my head, not sure how to answer. Telling the truth was out of the question. If he knew I still wanted Alana, everything I worked for would be lost. If I said I wanted the dead Celia, I knew exactly what he’d expect me to do. As perverted as I knew my wants were, something dead was not one of them.

But I could give him some truth.

“No. I was thinking about a toy. Training one. I like what I did to that one before, but I want to do more. Cut it and feel the blood on my skin while I fuck it. You like to beat them; I like the blood.”

“Every man has his desires. But bleeding a toy out will only make it so you can’t play as often. They can’t submit if they don’t have enough blood to function,” he lectured.

Making sure to check my tone, I turned toward him. “Is it any different than beating them until they can’t stand?”

“It can be, but then that’s the fun in it. It hurts all the more when you fuck them that way. They are there, in pain, awake, feeling every part of it. Not like when they are low on blood. Their bodies shut down on them. A shot of adrenaline can keep most people wide awake for whatever you want to do to them. Blood loss though? Too hard to fight the body’s natural reaction.”

“Then I’ll learn to cut shallow and painfully. Maybe skin a few pieces.”

My words caused my father to burst into a fit of laughter. It transformed his face. Made it lighter, kinder. I’d never seen him that way. I wondered if that was the face my mother fell in love with.

“You are a sick fuck. I’m glad to see it. You remember who runs the show around here. You will have your chance, but it’ll be when, and if, I say so. You can practice your cutting on a hog. I’ll get you one. Do it wrong on a toy and you can fuck up a year of good planning if she dies too quickly.”

“How about a deal?”

“What sort of deal?” My father stopped shoveling and wiped his head with a rag before leaning on the top of his shovel.

“I learn to cut right. Skin a dead hog until I get the mechanics right. And then start on a live one, practicing until I can keep one alive but completely skinned. When I can do that, then we get that toy from Savannah and I train her.”

Taking the time to hone my skill would keep him from going after another girl and keep Alana alive. I’d learn to cut so I could do it to him. Strap him to the slab in the Punishment Room and have Alana there. I’d give her the gift of his pain. Cut him up while he screamed and begged for mercy. Keep him alive and healing, only to do it again. And then, after he’s so broken he can’t do anything but close his eyes when I come, I’d cut him up in big fat chunks and do with them what I thought of before.

“That could take some time, son.”

Son. That was the first time he’d called me such with that tone of emotion. Like I actually meant something to him. As if he hadn’t raped me, hadn’t beaten me. As if it would change the hands of time and I wouldn’t want to kill my father any longer. Nothing had changed, except now, I was winning the game.

“We have to wait for the media to cool a bit anyway. Then we have to scout our girl and follow her. You and I both know you don’t pick the first girl you see, and you’ve got to plan the escape route, time, and everything.”

He chuckled. “That’s right. I like that idea since it doesn’t really go against what I would have to do anyway. You have a deal. When you can skin a live pig and it doesn’t die, you get to help me scope the next toy and train her. No new toys until then, unless you can’t do it. Then I get a toy on my own, and you go into this ground with the other worthless trash.”

He held out his hand, with that fucking smile, that asinine grin that should only belong to me. I shook his hand, my smile—darker, more real, and crueler—sliding into place.

Signing your fucking death warrant for touching her. Hurting her. When I love her. When she belongs to me. And she can’t know it, won’t understand it, because you’ve hurt her.

“Deal.”

Releasing that darkness from my soul and letting it flow through my bloodstream and swell in my heart was powerful. I was finally the monster my father had always wanted me to be. All because of a girl. Because of her. Alana. My baby. My obsession. And he’d die knowing what he’d lost, and the care he should have taken with me. He should have fucking bowed down at my feet, but he didn’t, and now it was too late.

I shoveled the last bit of dirt over Celia, wiping away her all-seeing eyes.

It’s okay, Celia. She’ll be okay. She’ll survive. And then I’ll have her.

A cold breeze swept up, ruffling the leaves and dancing on the back of my neck. As a chill raced down my spine, I wondered if it was Celia’s nails, denying my promise. Telling me that Alana deserved to be free, not owned by a monster like me.

Fuck you, Celia. She’s mine.