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“Well, tough shit. I have a full schedule today, you haven’t even seen the fucking doctor yet, word in the house is that you and your brother haven’t said a single word to each other, you look like death that hasn’t even been given the consideration of being warmed up, and in about an hour, Carter is going to get a checkup that could very well end with results that destroy you. So, you’re done. I say so. Get yourself a mug of coffee, drag your ass to my office, and let’s get it over with.”
I rub my eyes, trying to decide if I’m going to argue or not. Turns out, I’m way too fucking exhausted.
“Fine.” I close my bedroom door behind me, not bothering to hide the wince as the skin on my back pulls. “But, so you have something to think about while I get myself coffee, I have talked to Carter. And he fucking hates me.”
Unlike everyone else in the safehouse, Ace and I have been living here for a while. It wasn’t always our headquarters, but when the operation shifted into the final phase, we moved in. We took turns watching the phones in case we received any calls from Travis or Jake. When Ace was on watch, I was refinishing hardwood floors or glazing windows or repainting walls. When I was on watch, Ace was installing new heating and cooling systems or wiring the alarms or setting up surveillance. He was better at anything with plumbing, so that was his territory. I landscaped, creating a garden my mom would have fucking loved.
Once Carter got taken, I stopped sleeping. I spent nearly all of my time on watch, wanting to be the one who got the call if anything went wrong, even when some of those calls damn near killed me with the details I had to listen to. That meant Ace did most of the finishing touches on the house.
Dr. Singh and Dr. Deacon moved in when the final pieces slotted together and we got a date finalized for when we’d be able to get the survivors into the house. At first, I thought they were moving in early to get themselves settled before their lives were bombarded with a group of deeply traumatized people who would need all of their focus.
Then I realized they were there for me. They were there to make sure I could handle the final stage of the operation.
Suffice to say, today isn’t my first appointment with Singh.
“So,” Dr. Singh says after letting me sit for a few minutes, just staring at the painting above his desk that I haven’t seen since he talked me through scenarios until we agreed to the details of my own rape. “It’s been a crazy few days, hasn’t it?”
I give him a look. The kind of look I think you can really only give someone who has put pencil to paper with you and discussed if you’d be willing to be double penetrated or if you’d need one of your best friends to step in somehow and make up an excuse to put a stop to it. He puts his hands up in surrender, correctly interpreting the look.
“Should we start with why you think your brother hates you, then?” he asks with a tilt of his head. “Or your time as a captive?”
A captive.
It’s a nice way to put it, I suppose.
Bullshit, but nice.
“Or we can talk about why you haven’t gone to see Dr. Deacon yet.”
I look down at the mug in my hands, steam swirling up from the dark liquid. “You act like it isn’t all connected.”
“Oh, I’m aware it’s connected. It’s a tangled web that you promised me—promised me, Maison—you’d let me help unravel once you got back. It was the only reason I cleared you to leave this place and give yourself over to a group of men who wanted to tear you apart. Who nearly fucking succeeded at that. So, don’t make me bad at my job. Stick with your promise.”
“Yeah. I—that’s fair.” I rub the pad of my thumb along my mug’s handle, my stomach turning too much for me to even try to take a drink from it. “Can you just tell me where to start? I don’t know where the fuck to start, Doc.”
He nods. “Let’s start with you. I think getting you sorted is going to make whatever the hell is going on with you and Carter easier to handle.”
I laugh, but it’s a hoarse, awful sound. “I could really use easier to handle.”
“I know, Maison. I’m going to get you there.” He eyes the open notebook on his desk before his gaze comes back to me. “It seems everything went according to plan until Jake changed things in the dungeon. Did you struggle with anything up until that point?”
“The minute I stepped inside.”
“Why?”
“Because Carter was right there. I didn’t see him, but I knew it. God, I swear I could feel him close by. And these two complete fucking idiots were wrangling me while waiting for orders and I could have easily won a fight against them, gotten their weapons, made a break for it, went and got my fucking brother and rescued him, and I didn’t.” I put my mug down on the desk with a slightly too-hard clink, my hands starting to shake at the memory. I brush my thumb along my battered knuckles, split and bruised from an hour of going bare-knuckled against the heavy bag in the basement. The zip of pain from the touch feels good. Grounding. “Yet again, I didn’t fucking save him.”
“Okay. Play that out for me. You take those two down. You’ve got their weapons. Now you have to infiltrate a compound that’s already been alerted to your presence. A compound with secure doors that all lock with at least a code, some with fingerprints as well. A compound with at least thirty men in or around it, all armed. A compound with nearly two dozen innocents—including your brother—who might get caught in the crosshairs of a fight.” He pauses dramatically. “And on the off chance you somehow manage to pull it off, what happens to the operation? To the hundreds of slaves that would no longer be saved because you ruined the ending?”
“It doesn’t make it easier,” I tell him, feeling miserably frustrated. “Logic doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
“Maybe not,” he says, his voice softer now. “But it removes the blame. And that’s a start.”
I shake my head, hating the way my throat feels too tight. “I don’t know how to remove the blame, Doc, but that’s not it.” Before he can argue, I add, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be free of blame. I don’t know if I deserve to be.”
“Maison, you couldn’t have done anything differently.”
“I could have not taken this job,” I say. “I knew the risk. They told me that having a family was a liability. But I was cocky and proud and determined to do something that would actually make a difference, and I fucking took the job anyway. And then there my brother goes, kidnapped, tortured, and raped repeatedly by one of my best friends, his head completely fucked up, and now he hates me. And sure, if I had done things differently in the past few months, I could have risked hundreds of lives, but if I had just not taken the job from the start? Someone else would have taken it. Someone who could have done what I did and brought things to a close just the same, without Carter having to go through any of this.”
