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“Let her go!” Mark roars like an animal and starts to thrash in his binds, reacting to Lester’s words. “Me in exchange for her, remember?” His legs kick the guards who try to secure them, and the cross swerves a little from the pure force of his rage.
But when Lester grabs the whip from the guard and brings it down on him, my heart stops. I jolt, hearing a cracking sound like thunder resonating in space. Horrified, I see a red welt of blood seeping from the broken skin across his naked chest. I scream.
My throat aches, but Lester keeps flogging him without any mercy. When he finishes, thick silence feels like a void. I gasp, trying to draw in air that seems not to exist anymore. The metallic taste of blood seeps into my lungs.
“Forgive us for the delay, but my slave needed a reminder.”
They chuckle as if he said something funny and begin to bid like nothing happened.
The movie starts to play on the screen, and my insides tighten, realizing what he meant to do with the record. He’s playing our stolen moment of happiness as a promo advert for these sick fuckers.
A whimper leaves my lips, and helpless tears slide down my cheeks.
Our eyes meet across the room. My heart stutters in my chest as I see love reflected in his tormented gaze pulling me in, pouring all
the warmth into my chilling soul. His skewered skin gapes open, bleeding, but he still finds the willpower to adore me.
Mark mouths to me, “I love you,” bleeding those three words at his feet.
I manage to mouth back, “I’m sorry.”
We both stare at each other, while our hearts, tangled together in a firestorm of rage and hate, love and lust, resentment and helplessness, are about to be undone forever.
He shakes his head as tears start to pour down his cheeks. “I need you to listen to me, Lovebird,” he huskily pleads and my mind zeroes on his words instead of on the widescreen movie of us two, playing in high colors and sounds. “You need to find a space deep inside of your mind, where you were once happy and whole. I need you to go there and hold onto that memory, no matter what happens here. Do you understand me?”
I gape at him. My heart rebels against the thought of leaving him like this.
“Do this for me, Cassandra, please.”
And I whimper, shaking like a leaf.
“Do it right now,” he demands. “For me, Lovebird. Do it for me. I won’t be able to survive if I know you’re here.”
“Mark.” I gasp as my voice box no longer seems to cooperate.
Instead, my eyes are drawn to his chest, where a beautiful island hovering in the air is tattooed on his chest like a piece of heaven. A safe harbor, protecting his beating heart, is tied like a balloon to the center of his breastbone, where an unusual scar is running down like it was made with a scalpel.
“Go to your sons when they were alive and stay with them. Find Logan and let him protect you. Hold onto every beautiful memory you’ve ever made. I know you can do it because that’s how you survived their loss. Find that place again and stay there, okay?” he croaks as if it’s hard for him to breathe through all the emotions bombarding him.
I nod, incapable of causing him more misery by telling him the truth. After the car accident, that place doesn’t exist anymore. It was shattered, and the new me returned to mend the wounds and find peace.
The island on his skin draws my eyes back to it as a beacon, and I get lost in the artistic details, watching him struggle with his old demons, slowly returning to consume him.
“Not here,” I hesitate, not knowing how to express myself to give him strength. “Meet me at the island,” I croak the words, motioning with my eyes to his tattoo, hoping he will understand where I’m inviting him.
His eyes fill up with tears as he swallows. His throat bobs. “I will be there,” he reassures me like we’re capable of creating an alternative reality to escape this nightmare. And perhaps we are, we just have to hold onto the hope.
32
Veracity
~Cassandra~
The mind is a magical galaxy when it needs to protect you from something horrifying. It is capable of creating incredible things, soundless walls, and safe spaces to hide. My eyes skip through the people moving around me, arranging the contraptions and toys for my unmaking. The sounds blend and mesh into noise, filling my eardrums as my mind floats into this hollow space between reality and illusion.
When Lester catches my gaze, a laugh filters through my chapped lips.
“Soon your laughs will turn into sobs and then into pleas, beautiful Cassandra. When your pain will become a dark pleasure zipping through our veins. You will sing for us.”
