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“What are you looking for?” His voice startles me, and I huddle into myself more.
I don’t look at him when I answer, hoping not to provoke him. “I’m not looking for anything. I’m just sitting here, hoping someone can take me out of here soon.”
“Done playing, are we? You’ve been pleased to come in here to help me for days. Why aren’t you in the mood to help me now? Because it’s at your father’s bidding instead of your own? Do you know how fucked up that is? You only fear me when your father orders you to play damsel? Is that what you’re doing now, playing a role so I’ll bite and take you as his twisted form of payment?”
I inch into the corner, edging closer to the door even if I can’t get outside of it. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve never wanted any of this.”
“You weren’t in here offering to ride my dick mere hours ago? What was that? Charity? Or are you playing games with me? Doing your father’s bidding and making me think it’s all you? That you want to help me out of the kindness of your heart?”
“I—no, it’s not like that. I want—wanted to help you. He had nothing to do with it. He didn’t even know I’d snuck in.” My voice shakes, and I can’t keep the tears from sliding down my face. The salt stings the cuts there.
“No, why are you like this? Why did you stay after all this time? Why prostitute yourself when you could run? When you could go anywhere and do anything else?”
A fine thread of anger spools through me, starting in my gut until I’m clenching my hands around my knees. “You don’t know shit about my life or why I did what I did. You don’t know how many times I tried to get away from him. The last time, he broke my foot and let his guards play with me. The time before that, he kept me drugged for a month, so I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. They had to feed me.” I cut off the confession and stare straight again, not letting him get to me. It’s what he wants. The second I give in to my anger and go for him, he’ll have me in his hands, and I won’t be able to free myself.
“Smarter than you look, I see. What else did Daddy Dearest do to you? Call me curious.”
I keep my mouth shut and glare straight ahead. He’s trying to get to me, and it’s working. I hate that it’s working. The bastard.
“Should I tell you what my father did to me?”
I swallow, absolutely refusing to respond to him.
“He’d say he did everything he could to turn me into a man. Which included locking a little boy in a closet until he got over his fear of the dark. Locking a little boy in a closet for days at a time until the shadows became his friends. He shot me in the leg to show me what it felt like and to teach me to use a gun. He knifed me in the arm for the same reason. My father was the worst kind of sadist until the day I watched Adrian slit his throat in front of me. I was fifteen.”
I keep the questions in my head off my lips. A man like him doesn’t have an easy childhood, an easy upbringing. He wears his trauma inked into his skin. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t turn into the same kind of person his father was. That he doesn’t use that pain to hurt others. That’s something I’ll never be. Something I’ll never do.
“Nothing to say to that. It’s only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. I’ve been hurt in every single way that it’s possible to hurt another person. You’re not the only one who’s had a shitty life. But how you use that pain makes you who you are.”
The fissure of anger running through me erupts, and I finally look at him. “You don’t know shit about me or about what I’ve been through. Unlike you, I don’t walk around murdering people, selling them, or giving others weapons to do the same. I’m nothing like you, and from where I sit, I’m not the one squandering the gift of being alive.”
His eyebrow is raised, a twisted smile on his lips. “You think you’re better than me because you don’t use your pain to hurt others. Do I have that right? Soon you’ll learn it’s the best way to use that pain. Hurt the assholes out there determined to kill you or those you love. Use that pain to bring down empires and hobble kingdoms. It’s the only safe way to get it out. It’s the reason I can sit here calmly because I know your father won’t survive this situation. He thinks he can maneuver me, but he will learn a lesson quickly.”
