Page 32 of Silk and Sirens

“Are you sleeping with him?” she continued, her gaze sharpening, pinning me in place.

I took a moment before replying. “No.”

“Then how can you guarantee his loyalty?”

Selene reached for a remote to her right, and the distinctive sound of muffled rejections and flesh on flesh filled the air. I didn’t turn, refusing to look at the screen.

“I don’t need to remind you of your role,” she said, each word precise, deliberate. “You chose this. Chose to chase after those answers. To search for a sister who doesn’t want to be found.”

I clenched my hands tightly in my lap, ignoring the sounds of my own cries, sobs, and hollow fighting.

“Was it worth it?” Selene watched me with quiet amusement.

The volume clicked higher.

My fingers ached from how tightly I held them, my whole body locked rigid, as if I could somehow stop myself from falling apart. But I couldn’t give her the satisfaction. I wouldn’t.

Instead, I embraced the numbness spreading through me.

“Aren’t you going to watch?” she laughed lightly. “This is my favourite part.”

Even with the increased volume I was barely audible, sobs reduced to thin, broken breaths, nearly swallowed by the layered chorus of male voices. Their laughter. Their grunts. The low murmur of derogatory names I’d spent years building a resistance to.

Selene wanted a reaction, wanted to see me fracture under the memory as I was dragged back to the moment my virginity and autonomy were taken from me. But I’d got my revenge for what they’d done to me, starting when I was just fifteen. I had hunted them down methodically, until there was no one left. All except one.

But still, Selene kept the footage.

Still, she pressed play.

“Why am I really here, Selene?” I asked, proud my voice didn’t waver.

She studied me as if I were a mere bug she debated whether to squish. Because this, forcing me to relive that particular memory, was excessive, even by her standards. A detective spending thirty seconds in my home didn’t justify this level of cruelty.

I expected her to turn the video off before the last part, the part that landed me exactly here in this moment.

But she didn’t, instead turning it up once more.

“Watch the screen,” she demanded, and I felt Renley’s presence, his hands landing heavy on my shoulders.

So I turned, watching the young girl on-screen covered in blood, mine, lie naked on a mattress that had been tossed to the floor. My hair was a few shades lighter back then, but it was unmistakably me. The same eyes. The same mouth trembling as tears carved slow, shining tracks through dirt-streaked cheeks.

I was alone, but I knew it wouldn’t be long until Luke appeared with a cigarette in hand. He’d redressed since he’d raped me, then watched from a chair as he invited others. For hours he didn’t touch me, watching, waiting until they were all done before he joined me again. Used me even as I begged him to stop. But I had been too exhausted to fight, so I’d laid there, my cries now silent as he thrust on top of me.

He’d promised me he’d help search for my sister when my father had all but erased her from his life, burying her absence under work and silence. But instead, Luke used me as nothing more than a toy, a plaything he’d planned to hurt, over and over. He mistook my desperation for weakness, my hope for something he could exploit when their plan to use my father failed.

“Are we done?” I asked, knowing what was about to happen next.

“I’m just reminding you what you wanted.”

The laugh that almost left me died somewhere in my chest. “I never wanted this.”

“You should have thought of that,” she replied coldly, “before you killed my son.”

My hands trembled on the screen as I slid them down Luke’s back, my fingers finding the cold weight of his gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He hadn’t even bothered to remove it before pushing inside of me. I watched as I lifted it without him even realising, holding it to the side of his head. He didn’t even stop thrusting before I pulled the trigger.

I turned to meet Selene’s gaze, hers hard, angry, while mine remained calm. I’d fallen for Luke’s charm and promises. I’d left everything for him, not knowing he was part of one of the oldest crime families in the UK.

The same family who kidnapped two young girls with the intention of using them as leverage against their prosecutor father and failed.