Page 134 of Drowning in Darkness

He grins and retrieves a small black box. There’s a collective hiss in the room that signals I’m not going to enjoy whatever he’s about to do. That much I already knew, but the creativity of his punishment throws me.

He presses a button, and pain arcs through my legs. My spine snaps straight, and a scream reverberates around the glass box and bounces back at me in an endless echo. When it stops, I collapse to my knees, hot tears dripping down my cheeks.

The sick fuck electrocuted me?

I hang my head and draw myself together with steady breaths. He must have had it installed in the floor or something. It’s pain. Just pain. A simple communication to my brain about the danger I’m in. But I got the memo, so I need to shut it off.

“Better,” Christopher says, like I willingly put myself in this position.

The door to my cell swishes open, and he steps inside. I stay focused, still, coiled. He’s going to have to work harder than that to get me to submit. His shoes appear in my eyeline as he stops in front of me. “You’re all the same. Pathetic, weak.”

My hand snaps out and wraps around his calf, and I sink my teeth into the flesh. He howls and kicks me hard in the face. My nose crunches, and my vision dances with black dots. It’s just pain, and I know how to dole it out, too.

But I can’t help but fly backward, and I hit the wall behind me. It leaves my vision fuzzy, my reactions slow as the aches demand my attention. Christopher snags me by the hair, using it to drag me across the floor and presses me against the wall. I realize too late that there are cuffs embedded in the thick, unbreakable glass.

“Remember, you did this. I’m only reacting to your behavior.”

My brain isn’t working at top speed right now, so all I can do is watch as Christopher leaves my cell. It’s surprising. I expect him to beat me some more. Hell, I know rape is in the cards. Why isn’t he doing that?

But the question is answered when he enters Nancy’s cell. Christopher doesn’t even look at her. He looks at me as he yanks her up off the floor by the hair, holding her up like a doll.

“No!” My scream echoes in the tight chamber. I know he isn’t going to listen to me. Christopher said I did this, and now I understand. He saw us talking. He heard the conversation, at least some of it, and he could tell how much it meant to me to keep these women from further harm. So he’s going to use that against me. He’s going to make me suffer by hurting them because they won’t trust me, they’ll blame me, and there will be nothing I can do about it.

“Stop!” I’m not sure why I’m bothering to yell. Instinct maybe. The need to do something, anything.

Christopher shoves Nancy against the wall, pushing her battered eye into the glass. He lifts her left arm out as she struggles, the wrist that looks broken, and he punches it. He punches it over and over, while Nancy screams until her throat gives out.

I fight against my binds, but it’s useless. I can’t break free. All I can do is watch until Nancy falls unconscious, until Christopher spits on the back of her hair and walks out. Until he passes by my cell, grinning from ear to ear.

It’s been about two days by my count, which I’ve tried to maintain track of even though my head gets mushy and floats off my body, looking to distance itself from the pain. But I don’t want to forget, don’t want to let myself slip into that void where I know the other girls are.

I’m getting out of here. We all are.

Still, I haven’t had anything to eat in a long fucking time, and it’s adding to the agony thrumming through my bruised—and potentially very broken—bones. I’ve been given water, which is questionably discolored, but I know if I don’t drink something, the end will come all the quicker.

I’m not giving up. I’m not there yet, and I pray I’ll never reach that place.

Worse though is that the water means I have to pee, and there’s nowhere in this glass cell to do so. I know Christopher has done it on purpose, and he’s probably loving it from wherever he’s watching. Because I know he’s watching us.

I hold out for as long as I can, but the pain that comes from holding it for god knows how long eventually wins out. I shuffle over to the corner, facing away from the other cells. I’m not going to get pee on this dress and have to have it on me, so I force myself up, and it aches.

Christopher hasn’t broken me yet, though. I’ll do what I need to get myself up off the floor, holding up the dress and getting my underwear out of the way as I relieve myself. If anything, I let myself take a tiny bit of joy in peeing on something Christopher clearly spent a lot of money on. Take that, asshole.

Decently clean afterward, I leave the corner and move as far away from it as I can, curling back into myself. The cold and hunger drift back in, the relief of peeing fleeting. The hours stretch on and on and on. He hasn’t come in for a while, which is oddly irritating.

Waiting seems to be as torturous as getting beaten.

I hate him, hate all of this around me, and I rest my head against the glass wall, closing my eyes. I hum that stupid song the bird from The Lion King sings when Scar has him imprisoned. It makes me chuckle, and I need that right now.

FORTY-EIGHT

JAMES

There are choices you agonize over, and then there are choices your heart made long before you were asked.

Two days, four hours, and thirteen fucking goddamn minutes. That’s how long it’s been since the most infuriating woman to walk the earth made the drastic, bold, and dangerous decision to insert herself into Christopher Burnside’s world. It’s clear now I’m burned. He’s known about my loyalties for some weeks, if not months, but he hasn’t yet made a move for the throne on account of him disappearing off the face of the earth with the woman I freaking love.

“Sit down,” Camryn demands. “You’re making me nervous.”