“Why would we need her pussy anyways? Her ass feels like a fucking dream.” Bile rises in my throat as my tears fall soundlessly, ignored beneath the laughter filling the chilled air around me. A hand fists in the back of my hair, yanking hard. A cry tears from my throat as I am dragged to my knees, my lungs seizing, my bones burning as though they’ve been set alight beneath my skin. I tilt my head up, blinking through blood and tears at the tall figures close in around me. They don’t speak. They don’t have to. For the first time in what feels like forever, I do.
“Kill me,” I whisper, my voice breaking under the force of their depraved gazes.“P-please.”
“Awe. Where’s the fun in that?” Gio says teasingly, stepping in closer.Too close.
“Grab the chain,” Cameron orders. Something inside me cracks open.No.Not again. They’re going to… Not here. Not like this. A sob rips from behind my lips, my hands clawing weakly at the air. At nothing. At everything.
“Please! I’m sorry! Don’t tie me up in here…please.” The words fracture as they leave my split lips, catching on blood as it fills my mouth. My voice cracks, shattering into a useless, strangled exhale before it can even sound like the desperate plea thatit’s meant to. Cameron jerks my head back by my hair and pain rips across my scalp, already raw from Gio’s earlier assault. A violent shudder rips through me as Cameron’s hand clamps around my jaw, his fingers biting into my skin as he forces my face upward. My eyes lock onto his, and something cold unravels down my spine as he watches me with a quiet, assessing hunger. There is no emotion in them. His eyes. There is no warmth. No care. There is only indifference. An absence so complete it turns my stomach. My old life was filled with monsters, yet I had never seen anything this empty. I’d never known anyone to possess such evil until I was kidnapped and forced to remain in this godforsaken place.
“Someone fill her fucking mouth already,” Dash says, before slamming his boot into my left kneecap, causing me to collapse forward, my head burning as Cameron yanks me back into an upright position. Blinding pain explodes through my entire body, writhing in agony and swinging in Cameron’s grip as he holds me there, almost suspended by my hair. I scream as their torment becomes unbearable, my throat raw with emotion and the certainty that they’re going to chain me up again, only this time, I’m not so sure they’ll let me go. Even if I’m good. There is no escaping them. There is nowhere for me to run, to hide, no corner of the world they wouldn’t find me.
My heart burns, my eyes sting, and every inch ofme feels like it is slowly dying. Except it doesn’t end. None of this ends. Because an end would be too easy. Harry steps in, the cold bite of metal wrapping around my waist. Every frozen link scrapes against me, a reminder of when they first dragged me here and locked me away. I don’t try to fight the hands clawing at my body. I don’t have anything left to fight with. Little by little, they’ve hollowed me out, peeling me back in careful layers until I became exactly what they wanted. A vacant thing dressed in old, lace curtains. A quiet, obedient object kept only to move when summoned.
Knowing my father is still alive and that he had nothing to do with me being here should make me feel relieved. Happy. It should be a mercy, but it isn’t. It only leaves me lost, knowing way too much and understanding none of it. Cameron said there was someone else behind all of this, and I know he only revealed that information because he thought I wasn’t fully coherent, but I know what I heard. It means this isn’t over. It means there’s still a chance I’ll get out of here.A trade.I hate how quickly I latch onto that, how something desperate inside me reaches for the dim flicker of light before I can crush it down the way I’ve learned to. I don’t want hope. I don’t want to feel what doesn’t exist if there’s a chance that it will be ripped away again. I’ve survived too long to be that stupid, still, I need something. Anything to getthrough what they’re doing to me. I can do this. I’ve done worse. I can keep going, keep breathing, keep enduring until the day comes that they decide they’re done with me and send me home.
“You look your best when you’re bleeding,” Cameron murmurs, his voice low, his gaze fixed on the blood trailing down my face. I don’t react. I can’t. I hold myself perfectly still in his grip, my every tender muscle locked, even as tears burn behind my eyes, and all I want to do is crumble. I try to focus on something else. The wall. The floor. Anything but his cold hands pressed against my skin, and the pain threatens to swallow me whole. “Black and blue. Pale as snow.” His thumb drags down my lower lip, forcing it open. I flinch before I can stop myself, the movement small enough he doesn’t catch it. If he does, he ignores it. “But these lips…” He slowly smears my blood across them, and my stomach starts to coil. My chest is pounding now, and I can’t tell if it’s from the pain of my broken ribs, or the panic clawing up my throat. My breathing grows tighter, my vision blurred. “The only time they look any good is when you’re choking on my cock. But right now, I’d say they’re perfect. Covered in blood.”
My body jerks as the cold chain wraps around me, metal biting into my skin. Pain rips through my torso with every pull, stealing even more air from my tired lungs. I bite down hard, copper flooding my mouth,and hold my breath to keep from making a sound.Don’t give him any more than you already have, Winter.I squeeze my eyes shut, as if doing so would somehow make me disappear into nothing, but the chain yanks hard, the force rattling through me, causing me to cry out and my eyes to fly open as Cameron’s grip grows tighter than ever.
“Did I fucking say you could hide, Snow?” Cameron’s voice shatters over me as the chain tightens again, the others wrapping it around my body as I cry in silence.
“Did you hear that?” Gio whispers, crouching down to my level at my opposite side, his presence swallowing the only free space in my vision. “Plans have changed. Which means so has our use for you.”
Why won’t they let me die?Pleasejust let me die.
“I want you to watch,” Dashiel says coldly from somewhere behind me. “Watch as we take our time finally fucking your virgin cunt.” Hands claw at the back of my dress before I have a chance to process his words, my body jerking as the fabric tears from my body in one, jolting rip. Cameron’s fingers find my jaw again, digging into my skin even harder than before as he holds me in place. I want to scream. I want to tell them all to stop. That I will arrange for my father to give them whatever they want if they take me to him, but I can’t find the words.
“It seems you need to be reminded exactly who’sin charge here. Maybe then you’ll think twice before you disobey our orders again.”Hands clamp around my hips as Cameron lets go of my hair, sending me crashing head first to the floor. I hold out my hands to break my fall, and pain shoots through my knee as it scrapes against the hardwood.
“Stay down!” Harry barks, and I do as I’m told, my body shaking from the ache flaring beneath their forceful hands as they each start to touch my skin. The cool air hits the exposed flesh of my back, and I tremble despite myself. From the pain. From the tears that so uselessly fall before turning into an uncontrollable sob. The chain now around my waist pulls tighter against my torso with each movement. My dress is bunched and twisted around me and my restraints, half on, half off, leaving me exposed. When the air hits my bare backside, I squeeze my eyes shut in time, bracing myself just before the first blow lands.
“Don’t you ever—”whack.“—try to run!”whack.“—from us again!”whack. The burning sensation scatters across my skin, and I tell myself not to recoil as a rough finger invades me, trailing a line down my sensitive flesh and in between my bottom. I hold my breath as the burning forms into an abrupt sting, as he forcefully enters my body. An arm wraps around my middle and all the breath leaves my lungs as my ribs threaten to shatter beneath my skin. “Shut the fuck up! You don’t get to cry. You don’t get to doanything but fucking take us like the useless, dirty slut you are for thinking you could leave!” But…I wasn’t going to leave. I know better not to. I say none of this as he adjusts his grip on me, pinning me against him as he starts to thrust and thrust, taking the last shred of hope I may have had that I was closer to my freedom.
I leave before they break me. Slip somewhere deeper, somewhere none of them can follow. The burn of their hands dulls first, then the ache, then the raw bite of metal against my skin as my body moves and jolts from them taking me. It all fades, little by little, until there is nothing but noise behind me. The dark behind my eyes opens into trees instead of paint-chipped walls. Into air that doesn’t suffocate me. The hushed forest opens up for me, stretching wide and endless, leading me home. To the tall, waiting house. The one that belongs to Death.
I know it isn’t real.
I know I’ll never walk these paths again. Never feel the earth beneath my feet or hear their voices the way I used to. But they’re there anyway. My friends. Waiting right where I left them. Shadows of lonely lost souls between the trees, whole, untouched… Free. Guiding me forward. I hold onto that version of them. Of me. The last thing these men didn’t take. Out here, my body is a distant thing somewhere far behind me. Whatever they’re doing doesn’t reach this place. Doesn’t reach me. And then, I see him. Standing at the edge of the clearing, the field that separates his home from this purgatory. Cloaked in his usual darkness, surrounded by white stained red. Like he’s stepped out of his grave just to find me. Watching me. Always watching me. Not a stranger. Not a man. The one with blood on his hands and kindness in his heart.Death.
My death.
My chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with this torment, because if he’s here, if he’s come for me, then it means it’s finally over. I don’t have to fight anymore. Slowly, I walk toward him, through the cool air heavy with the familiar scent of sin and frosted meadow, wrapping around me like something warm and safe. He doesn’t move. He simply waits. Like he always knew I’d come back. Perhaps that was his test. A test to see if I’d return to him. Maybe this time, he’ll actually take me. Maybe this time, he’ll free me from this place. I wonder if, after this, I’ll wake up and none of this will have ever happened. Like it was just a cruel nightmare. I only hope that he’s still waiting for me if I do.
CHAPTER NINE
RAVEN
Present Day
It’s too fucking quiet.
That’s the first thing I notice the second we pull up outside the docks, and silence like this always means that shit is about to get bloody. The second the SUVs cut their engines, we move. Doors open carefully instead of being thrown wide, every man spilling out into the dark while the glacial harbor wind cuts through the port hard enough to sting my leather clad skin. Cold salt hangs thick in the air, mixing with diesel fumes and the rotten stench rolling in from the tide dragged low beneath the docks. Towering cranes loom over the shipping yard, their rusted frames disappearing into the frost swallowing the harbor whole. I roll my gaze over them briefly to check for shadows. You never know who might be lurking around, especially if what I think we’re about to walk in on is anything to go by.
The intel came through about a week ago after one of Lucian Mortello’s men intercepted movementalong the eastern ports. Fake manifests. Unregistered shipments. Containers moving through routes connected to businesses that technically don’t exist anymore. The kind of trail that desperate men leave behind when they’re trying to disappear. At first, we thought it was weapons. Maybe narcotics. Standard underground bullshit that we’re all familiar with. But then came the footage. Footage Vaelric’s men managed to infiltrate after tearing through the port’s surveillance systems and rerouting the feeds directly back to us.
There’s a big part of me that wishes I never saw what was on those recordings. The things those low life fucking animals were doing inside those containers. But I did see it.We all did.Which means that every single man standing here with us tonight walked in carrying a giant fucking axe to grind and enough rage to fuel an entire nation. Women locked inside steel containers no bigger than bird cages. Dragged out of shelters and halfway houses that were supposed to fucking protect them, before disappearing completely. Bruises and blood. Zip-ties and sedatives all laid out beside camera equipment. But it was the men speaking in coded language Ezekiel recognized instantly from his days undercover. And all of that pointed to The Royal. Or what’s left of them nowadays.
The scrape of a boot against the snow-coveredconcrete echoes behind me, loud enough to wake the fucking dolphins. My jaw tightens instantly. I glance over my shoulder just in time to catch one of Ezekiel’s new men adjusting the rifle strapped across his chest before he shifts closer to the containers beside us. Careless imbecile. Like he isn’t standing in the middle of a goddamn trafficking operation, or whatever the hell this is, where one wrong sound could get innocent people killed.
