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“You can’t do this,” I whisper. I know it’s probably not true, but it’s what I’m thinking. “You can’t. Why would you do that?”
“Because I can. I most definitely can. You had a tough few years. It’s hard on someone mentally, you know?” I do know, but this? Fuck. “You forget, one of us is a lawyer, and it isn’t you. If I need to manufacture a reason, I will, but I don’t need to. I would advise you against telling me what I can and can’t do, Leni.”
“You can’t do this.” I repeat, but this time my voice is weaker and trails off at the end.
“But cheer up,” he continues. “Things don’t have to be that bleak. I’m ready to make a deal with you.”
“What kind of deal?” This can’t be anything good.
And it isn’t. “For the next few days, you will do what I want. Everything I want. You will submit to me, be available to me whenever I desire, and you will offer no resistance.”
I don’t need to ask what sort of submission he’s referring to. He’s already shown me.
“You do this until your mother returns, and you can go to school.” Oh, fuck me, I didn’t even consider my education to be in jeopardy here. I didn’t imagine he would go that far. I should know better already. “I’ll even pay for everything. Your dorm room, fees, books, whatever your scholarship doesn’t cover. I’ll take care of it. But only if I have your full participation between now and your mother’s return.”
What do I do? Say no? And what happens to me after that? I don’t want to think about it, but I’m pretty sure my future would involve nothing but humiliation, being forced to do whatever he wants, and living under his thumb while he makes every single decision about my life. Where I go, what I do, who I see. I won’t even be able to go to the doctor on my own without him having a say in it.
He’s got me where he wants me. And the smug bastard knows it, smiling wide, pleased with himself. “What’s it going to be?” he prompts when I can’t squeeze a single word out of my tightened throat. “It’s up to you.”
“Okay,” I whisper as his face goes blurry, thanks to the tears I can’t hold back.
CHAPTER 25
I might have agreed to James’s offer—which really wasn’t an offer, more like an ultimatum—but that doesn’t mean I get free run of the house. “You were still a bad girl,” he reminded me after we finished our little meeting this morning. “Bad girls have to be punished.”
That means no phone and no internet. Somehow, he shut that down, too. Whether it’s just my machine that’s affected or the entire house, I don’t know. I find it hard to believe the guys would be okay with having their internet taken away, though.
But if it meant making me feel even more like a prisoner? Maybe they’d put up with it.
Do they have any say once their father decides what he wants? I don’t honestly think so. But that’s something I can’t figure out. I’m not even sure I want to. The whole thing is so twisted I’m afraid I’ll start to lose it a little if I give it much more thought. Because James doesn't want to just use my body; he wants something more twisted and sinister than that. He wants to humiliate me, take me apart into small pieces, until I’m nothing but a puppet in his hand. James is the puppetmaster, and his sons are his strings.
They’ve shown me a level of depravity I didn’t know existed until now. I can’t help but turn it over in my mind, trying to make sense of it. I think James wants to own my soul, break my mind at the very least.
Now the question is, am I able to cut the strings? They don’t exactly seem like excited, enthusiastic participants, but they don’t refuse him, either. Are they into this, or is he forcing them the way he forces me? Has he put them through a lifetime full of this sort of depraved sickness, or am I making the mistake of trying to humanize them? Even now, I’m so desperate to think I might have an ally around here I would stoop to thinking of my stepbrothers as unwilling participants. They sure were willing enough when they were coming down my throat, weren’t they?
No, facts are facts. They’re just as guilty as he is. They probably share some genetic sickness, the three of them.
I have no way to reach out to my new clients and tell them I can’t tutor them anymore. Somehow, that brings me more pain than almost anything else about this situation. I was proud of myself. I had a plan laid out. I was going to do this for myself, earn a little independence. There was something I was good at, and people appreciated me for it.
