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I cower, watching his hands, hating how his eyes linger on my body, on the bruises he left that haven’t faded. “I didn’t kill him.”
“No, suppose not.” His eyes narrow. “That would be your new keeper, wouldn’t it? New York’s finest pimp. Surprised to see you without him, actually. Doesn’t he keep his bitches collared?”
I sneer. “Don’t talk about him.”
“Oh, we’re gonna talk about him,” he snaps, his hand lashing out like a viper at my neck. He pulls me upright, nearly out of the tub, and I clap my hand on his thigh to keep as far away as I can. “You’re gonna tell me everything you saw in his little bitch museum.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard it called that, and for the life of me, I don’t understand. Chuck said hookers, yeah, and even Mayhem and Murder looked shocked. But what I saw was a typical art exhibit, a museum of fine arts with a performing hall at the back. I guess Ghost might host female artists, but how does that make it a bitch—or hooker palace?
What could I possibly be able to tell him that’s not public knowledge? The museum is open for guests, and I know they’re strapped for cash, but the admission can’t be that high. Am I supposed to tell him what thread count Ghost prefers? Is that gonna do anything? Or that he said I couldn’t go downstairs?
That’s gotta be it. They think he’s got something big down there. A sex trafficking ring, or an underground sex club. Yeah, right. If only they’d seen how he reacted to seeing me topless.
The old, untapped defiance rears its head, and I glare as hard as I can up at Damian. “I’m not telling you anything about him.”
His eyebrows shoot up, his grip tightening. “What’s this? You got a fucking attitude now?”
I flinch in spite of myself, trying to make myself smaller, squirm away from him. It only makes him angrier, and he shoves me flat on my back, holding my head under the water. Panic cinches my chest, and I cover my mouth and nose to keep from inhaling.
It works, but only for a little while, until my lungs pinch and scream for air. I kick my legs, clawing at his arm, but he holds tight, shaking my head with his grip.
My hands slip and I choke, the water burning my nose and mouth, which only encourages a violent bout of coughs that pull more water into my lungs, when he finally drags me back up by my hair.
“Never thought I’d see the day you’d turn into a little bitch,” Damian snarls while I gasp, hacking the dirty water out of my throat. “Ghost hit all the right buttons up there? Shift your loyalty to the dark side?”
He yanks me hard and I squeak, grabbing his hand to keep him from pulling my hair out of my head. I pivot my hips back, trying to lock my spine to keep him from putting me under again, but as he pushes, I start begging.
“Stop it!” I choke out, craning my neck back. “Stop, I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything.”
He scoffs. “You want me to believe you were too busy sucking his dick to notice a damn thing about the place? You notice everything, Lucinda. Drop the fucking act.”
He’s right. Fear makes me want to tell him everything, that Ghost spent an obscene amount of money on me, that he tucked me up away from everything and forbade me from exploring his space. If it were anything else, I would break.
But I won’t tell Ghost’s secrets, even if I don’t know what they are.
“Please,pleas—”He shoves me back under, my mouth still open this time, and he crams his thumb inside, hooking my jaw open. I clamp my teeth, but he’s safe from being bitten tucked in my cheek, holding me down by my face as water floods my mouth and nose.
White spots dance in front of my vision, my heart rate tripling as I lose my sense of direction. My chest burns as water trickles inside, my hands flailing uselessly in the air, trying to hit him and only finding the linoleum walls.
He yanks me back up and throws me back into the wall, drying his hand lazily while I roll onto my hands and knees and puke the water back out of my body.
“We didn’t do anything!” I choke, grasping at straws, anything to make him pause. “Okay, he didn’t—he didn’t do anything. I slept on his couch. He didn’t talk, he didn’t tell me anything, and I saw nothing in his place worth talking about.”
He narrows his eyes and keeps his hands to himself, thank God, but a manic smile splits his face. “You really wanna go this route? Treat me like a moron, and I’m just supposed to believe you. I’m not Chuck, I never have been.”
“Unless you wanna know what kind of soap he uses,” I pant, “I c-can’t help you.”
Damian cracks his knuckles, working his jaw. “I’ll send you back to him in pieces,” he hisses. “And when he finally snaps and tells me what you won’t, I’ll cut that pussy off and deliver it to him as a thank you. Clearly that was his favorite part, or you—”
“He didn’t want me,” I spit, glancing up at him, hating the tears on my lash line. I tell myself it’s all because I’m scared he’ll follow through on cutting me to bits, and has nothing to do with the truth in my words. “Hurting me won’t get you any-anywhere.”
“He didn’t…” He sounds skeptical, then mocking, almost pitiful. “…wantyou.” He scoffs, then cracks his knuckles against my cheek, giving me barely half a second to refocus my eyes before he’s strangling my throat. “You lying, little whore.”
Hate isn’t a strong enough word for how his hand feels on my neck, and it takes everything not to dissolve into hysterics. To remind myself I’m here, in the now, in a different danger than when he first came into my room and—
“You got it wrong,” I whimper out, my stomach turning. “Ch—F-Father got it wrong. Ghost told me to leave a-and he avoided me as best as he could the whole time. I made him sick. Just like you, just like all of us.”
Something makes him believe me. I don’t know if it’s the utter defeat I feel, lumping myself in with people I think so little of, people who don’t even view me as human, or something else, but the crazed smile turns into shock.
