“What the fuck did we tell you, huh?!” Gio’s voice booms above me, echoing through the stillness though it’s nothing more than a distant howl. I can’t hear anything over the ringing in my ears, and the choked gargle forcing its way past my bloodied lips. “Where’d ya think you were gonna go,Snow?!” he yells before his boot connects with my ribs again. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s done it. “Gonna keep quiet, huh? Well, I guess I’ll find other uses for your fuckin’ whore mouth!” He kicks me one last time, before his arms push into the edge of my vision, blurred from the pain of his assault. My scalp burns as Gio grips my hair, forcing me to my feet. I want to beg him to stop. I want to tell him that I’ll do whatever he says, ifhe releases his grip on me, but I can’t find the words. They’ve never worked before, anyway.
My body is tired as it scrapes across the snow, my thoughts spiraling with a million reasons why visiting my friends today was a bad idea, but each thought comes too late.Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.My head is throbbing, ragged and useless, collapsing in on itself beneath the crushing weight of pain and regret. I knew better.I knew,and still, I left. Like I’d forgotten what they’d do to me if I didn’t follow the rules. I waited until they left for work this morning before slipping out, the same way I always do. Careful and quiet, placing each step where it won’t be seen. No evidence of where I go when they’re not around. It’s the only way I exist outside of them. I didn’t know that the weather would be this bad, forcing them to turn around on the highway and return to the farm. If I had, I wouldn’t have risked it. The dogs didn’t bark once. I’ve learned to feed them before I leave to prevent them from causing a ruckus at my return, but they chose today, of all days, not to bark at their arrival.
“Did anyone see you?” Gio spits through breathy pants, still dragging me, the burn sharp enough to cut through my lungs, but I swallow it down. I don’t miss the slight panic in his tone, still, I don’t answer. I can’t tell him where I was. If I do, it won’t just be me he punishes. He’ll find them.My friends.And if he findsthem, he’ll find my dark angel too, and who knows what will happen? The thought splinters something inside me. I can feel it cracking, shifting, breaking apart in places I’ve tried so hard to keep sealed. I press it down.I have to.That part of me, the part that still feels and remembers what it was like to be whole, I locked all that away for a reason. For my survival. But they’re still there somewhere. Lost in the spaces where I pretend to be someone else.Theirs.And my friends, they’re the only thing keeping me from slipping completely, the only thread tying me to something that resembles a person. Holding me together. And if they take them? If they takehim, there will be nothing left of me worth saving.
I should have listened.
I close my eyes, sealing away all thoughts of anything bad happening as Gio yanks my hair even harder, twisting it around his arm until there’s no hair left to wind. I know what’s about to happen. I fight back the urge to cry out, because what purpose would it serve? My screams have never saved me before. If anything, I suspect they savor it. The sound of me breaking. And something about the way Gio is hurting me ignites a quiet, small rebellion in the hollow of my chest. If they hunger for my pain, I have the power to starve them of it.
“Get the fuck up!” Gio growls, his voice edged with contempt as his grip cinches tighter, tighter, andthen he wrenches me forward without warning, hauling me across the threshold and flinging me through the narrow cottage doorway as though I’m weightless. As though I am nothing at all. I strike the hardwood violently enough to feel it fracture through me, the impact splintering breath and bone, tearing a hoarse, broken sound from my throat. Shame wells inside my chest at my traitorous reaction to the pain. I am tired, and I ache, not just from their assault, but for an ending. I’m no longer yearning to be rescued, because those hopes only break my heart over and over and over again. No one is coming. There is no knight in shining armor waiting for me at the end of the line, no promise of happily ever after at the end of my story. There is only me, the walls of this cottage, and the fields covered in a thick, blanket of white outside. And if anyone were foolish enough to try to save me, I know somewhere deep in my battered soul I would pay for that mercy in ways far crueller than the death that I pray for.
I focus on the uneven rhythm of my breathing, dragging each inhale through the pain of my chest. I’m not certain I’m capable of anything beyond the shallow ghost of an exhale. My freezing palms stay pressed to the floor where they landed and I try to push myself to my knees to take some of the pressure away from my ribs, but it’s no use. I don’t have the strength. Just a sharp, useless tremor that dies before Ican even try to move. I let myself sink back down, my cheek pressed to the floor, and fix my gaze on the worn, splintered timber.
Boots step into my line of sight, stopping just short of my fingers, close enough that if they twitched I’d brush against them. I don’t. I stay exactly where I am because there is no way out of this for me. The floor creaks as the man before me shifts, then begins to circle my unmoving body.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk…” Cameron’s voice cuts through the room and I stiffen on instinct. “What’s this I hear about you leaving the farm, Snow?” he says, draping the words in a careless nonchalance that does not sound convincing. I am done for. And if there is any humanity left in him, any at all, I can only hope he makes it quick.
“Bitch can’t run if we cut off her legs,” Dash mumbles, edged with irritation and dulled by boredom, while the low ripple of amusement fills the room around me, making the walls feel like they are shrinking.
My legs.
They can’t do that!I didn’t run.I always come back. I don’t ever leave.
“As true as that may be, Dashiel, you and I both know that removing her legs would only mean she’d be bedridden, and where’s the fun in that?”
“Doc, she’s been here too long. Not long enoughfor me to miss her if she was dead, so does it really matter?” Worthless. An object.Nothing.That’s all I will ever be. Cameron’s boots leave my vision, his heavy steps stopping somewhere, but I don’t dare try to look and risk drawing their attention. Instead, I brace myself for anything.
“Try thinking with that lump three feet above your ass for once, Dashiel.” The others chuckle and then stop abruptly, the room growing colder with the weight of Cameron, orDoc’spresence. “You know why she’s here. To you, she’s unimportant and she doesn’t have to be otherwise. But need I remind you, brother, thatdebtdoesn’t just clear itself. ”
Debt?
The word lands like a bullet tearing straight through my heart. Is that what this is? Am I just…currency?My hands curl into fists, my nails biting deep into my palms, but I barely feel it. Everything inside me twists, making me feel wrong and sick, their words burning me from the inside out, like an inferno I couldn’t put out if I tried.
“No one is coming back for her, Doc. I doubt the old bastard even gives a fuck. She’s hardly leverage.”
“Think bigger. Regret has a way of making people feel…generous,and when he learns we have had his daughter all this time, who knows what he’d be willing to part with to save her?”My father is still alive?He doesn’t know I’ve been taken? Did he think I had just been in Paris this whole time?
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, Cameron. Going back on our deal is a bad idea. Something ain’t right there, and we all know what’s at risk if this gets out,” Harry says. His voice is much quieter than usual, but I figure it’s likely muffled by the blood dripping from the gash Gio caused when he hit me in the head earlier, now pooling in my ears. I resist the urge to wipe it away but I am desperate to hear more. This is the first time any of them have mentioned my father since I got here, and I knew better than to ask questions. Even if the idea of any harm coming to him has been all I could think about for years. The fact that they are speaking freely could mean that they are finally going to put me out of my misery.
“Yeah, well that expired when their end of the deal wasn’t honored. So, tough shit if I outsource a new one.”
“You made a deal with the devil, and you’re pissed they didn’t meet their end of the bargain. Good one, Cameron.”
“Ha!” Cameron scoffs in amusement, his derision carrying across the room with the same authority he always seems to have over the others. “Here’s the thing about the devil,” he murmurs, and I flinch as his boots return to the spot on the floor I haven’t dared to look away from. “The devil is only powerful until thehands that made them, decide to unmake them.” His voice crawls under my throbbing skin, my pulse stuttering, dulling everything except the shape and weight of that sentence.
Who is he talking about?
It can’t be my father.
They just said they’d dangle me in front of him like carrots. For what? Money? Power? It’s all the same currency in our world. The world they stole me from. No, it has to be someone else. This devil…isn’t a man they fear. It’s a man they made, and I don’t think they’re talking about my bodyguard. He didn’t carry enough weight nor command the kind of power that would persuade any of these men to rely on him.
My vision swims, darkness creeping at the edges, but I hold on because not knowing why I am here feels worse than anything they could ever do to me. I’ve learned almost nothing about the seven of them, but they don’t strike me as the type who would gamble everything on one expendable piece. Not when the stakes look like me. The French Mafia princess, bleeding at their feet. Whoever is responsible for bringing me here has failed them in some way, and now they’re pissed. I can hear it in the tension separating me from them. Does that mean they’re planning a trade? Would my father even want what is left of me? Half a daughter? I was not worthy of saving then, so why wouldI deserve it now? He didn’t come for me. Didn’t look for me. I’m nothing more than a burden sent away to make room for his new life. Make room for new memories. To say goodbye to me was to bury a memory, the memory that I am the reason my mother is dead. And the fact that I am still here, and my father is still breathing, can only mean that I was never getting out of here. I was never going to be rescued. My life, my stupid waste of life, was only ever going to be this place. My future, if I still have one, was never meant for living. It was only ever meant forthem.
“So… what? Is that why you won’t let us fuck her pussy? In case we have to hand her back intact?” I don’t know which of them says it, only that the words settle over me, serrated and glacial, much colder than the snow rotting beyond these walls. I knew this was coming. I’ve been waiting for it. Watching their every move. Listening for it in every pause of their heavy bodies, and every slight change in their tone. To name the one thing they haven’t yet taken from me.
A slow crushing pressure rises behind my sternum, pressed heavily against the floorboards. It’s like my brittle heart is finally caving in. Tears well in my eyes before falling slowly onto the spot beneath my cheek. Piece by piece, they’ve left me with nothing. They have used me in ways I didn’t know existed. I would not wish any of this on anyone, not even my worstenemy. My thoughts falter becausetheyare my enemies. I don’t have anyone else to hate.
Only them.
