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1
KAI
It’s quiet in the dark. Fuck, I haven’t had this much silence in my life for years. It almost makes my ears ring. Every heartbeat seems to pulse in that noise until I take a long deep breath and let it out slowly. This isn’t the first time I’ve been cornered, and it won’t be the last.
My cell is a solid, thick kind of concrete, so there’s no getting out of it until I’m released. So I wait. Adrian and Valentina won’t let me rot in here. For all the things I’ve done, I trust them with my life.
Dried blood crusts on my jaw, but I don’t waste the little water they’ve given me by washing it off. My knuckles are bruised from fighting the bastards, but I couldn’t do much while being held down with someone’s knee in my back as they battered me black and blue for answers.
My mouth twists into a smile. There’s no way in hell they’ll be able to drag the answers out of me. That’s something they don’t understand.
I scrub at the dried blood, now itchy, with the heel of my hand. Which is pretty much the only part of my body not bruised.
When I took my friend’s place on the chopping block, the council promised mercy, and I suppose not putting a bullet in my head immediately after my confession was their form of leniency. These people don’t know the meaning of mercy.
And when I get out of this cell, I won’t be the one to teach it to them.
It’s been a week by my estimation, hazy though it is. The only time I’m actually alert is during the short window in which they drag me out of the cell, hose me down, feed me a Viagra, and strap me to the head councilwoman’s bed. She’s even more disgusting than I gave her credit for. Worse, she assumes everyone wants her. So even though I’m drugged and tied down, she thinks it’s a seduction and not a rape.
When I get out of here, I’m going to make her pay for this and for what she orchestrated against Andrea. Her attack could only have been sanctioned by Henrietta, as she asked me to call her while she rode my dick without my fucking permission.
I close my eyes and squeeze them shut so at least I can tell myself the darkness is my choice. This is how I get through anything. Grab some part of it and make it mine. I’ll get out of here and do the same.
Rose pops into my head, as she always does, and I feel myself calming and breathing deeper. It’s a trick I learned when I first took her to my apartment outside the penthouse. If I stay calm, she stays calm. If she stays calm, then things don’t get broken, and I don’t have to cradle a crying, screaming girl for way longer than my sanity can handle.
Adrian warned me not to touch her, and I’ve mostly kept that promise. If I had to put my hands on her, it was for medical care or comfort and nothing more. Even if I’ve thought about it.
There’s a sound in the hall. The problem with concrete is it echoes loudly, and I have excellent hearing. It’s not the click of high heels, thank fuck, to alert me that she’s asked for me again, nor is it the heavy drum bass of the guard pacing back and forth in front of my cell for the past two hours.
I think it’s night. At least it feels that way by the chill in the air. I’m wearing nothing but the clean boxer briefs they gave me this morning after Henrietta was through using me. Time is harder to discern. The guards change shifts every eight hours, and there are four who regularly rotate outside my cell if their gait is anything to go by. I call one fatty with his heavy clomp clomp clomping step, and one gimpy because he has a sort of drag to his step with every turn. One is skippy since he seems to run back and forth in the hallway, moving quickly, like he is trying to get a workout in during every guard shift. The last one is the meanest, and I just call him motherfucker. His steps are normal, at least for this lot, but his fists are rougher than the others, and he’s not afraid to hit me.
My guess…Henrietta had been sleeping with him before she decided to get herself an upgrade.
I focus on the steps again, but there are several now. One I’d recognize anywhere. I’ve been listening to them pace the halls of the penthouse for years.
I tuck my legs up to hide my nudity and brace my arms across my knees so he can’t see the bruises there.
The door is thrown open, but it’s not Adrian who walks in. It’s Valentina. Ah. She’s light, tiny, and I usually can’t hear her walking around unless she’s angry.
She takes a step into the cell with Adrian right on her ass. The guard closes the door behind them.
“Careful,” I warn. “Now that they’ve got you in here, they might not let you out again.”
Adrian digs his cell phone out of his pocket and flips on the flashlight so we can see each other. “This place is a shithole. Don’t they know concrete isn’t great for holding cells? It’s too damn hard to heat.”
I shiver as if proving his point, but it’s more out of adrenaline from seeing them than the actual chill in the air. “What are you doing here? The live stream I did should have given you guys time to get away.”
He snorts and shoves the hand not holding his phone into his pocket. “You really think I’d leave you just like that?”
I wave at his wife. “To protect Valentina and your child? Of course I do.” Maybe he’s fucking with me for defying his orders and coming after him even though he expressly forbade it. “And I sure as hell didn’t think you’d be dumb enough to bring her back here, under any circumstance.”
He meets my eyes head-on and shrugs. “It seems I can’t deny her anything. Her only request every day for the past week has been to come here and get you out. Considering I also want you out of this hellhole, I was inclined to make it happen.”
A bright light surges in my chest. “We’re leaving?”
“Not yet,” Valentina says, closing the distance between us. I stare at her, almost on equal height with me sitting on the bench and her short stature.
She strikes out, slapping me hard across the cheek. She caught a little of my ear, too, causing it to ring.
