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That’s what this captivity has done to me, and I struggle not to put my fist through the wall just to feel something new.
Arching my back, I roll over onto my stomach and let my fingers graze the floor. Everything in my space is a sea of textures. Kane designed it. He spent hours scouring for information on how to make a place not just accessible for me but full of beauty and joy that I can reach out and touch.
I don’t know why he thought it would help. I think he was hoping I’d find my way back to feeling useful—and I did. But not because he hung textured paintings on the walls or that he wears suits with embroidery that’s invisible to the eye but discernible to my now overly sensitive fingertips.
No, I found myself and my way back to what I’m best at because I could. Because I’m a genius, and blind or not, I was always meant to be this man.
And I will admit that eventually, when we have Guido Romano on his knees, bleeding and begging for his life, I will take pleasure in being the last face he sees. I know the others feel the same as well. I know James wants both of his hands, and Ari wants his tongue. I want his eyes.
And Kane?
Kane wants everything Guido has ever loved—and everything he should have loved and doesn’t.
I can hear him approaching in the silence. I have sensors set up all over the halls synced to each of the boys. My phone will vibrate in their individual patterns, letting me know who’s about to invade my space.
Lately, it’s been James. He needs things from his partners that Kane and Ari are no longer capable of giving. Kane because he’s far too obsessed with his mission, and Ari because his tenderness has long since been beaten out of him. The killing blow had been the stroke of the knife across his throat meant to kill him.
He still has a scar in the hollow of his throat where he spent months breathing through a trach, and even today, he won’t eat in front of everyone because it takes him twice as long, and he still chokes if he’s not careful.
Those bits of vulnerability kill him, bit by bit. He takes it out on us, some days, when he’s not allowed to go out and hunt people the Walshes have put a target on. He touches me because he must, and I think somewhere deep down, he trusts me with his weak spots only because I’m full of them and I understand.
But James has never been ashamed of what he needs. Praise, because he was denied that so often growing up. Attention, because his own arrogance sometimes out shadows his self-preservation. Love, because no one ever has loved him before, and he’s willing to accept whatever fucked-up version of it us misfits can offer him.
And he wants to know he’s worthy.
I can’t give him everything, but I can give him some things. I can pin him down and fuck him raw and spank his ass red and make him thank me for it because he knows that doing it will make him such a good boy.
And God—God—he really is.
I realize I’m a little hard as the door opens and Kane walks in, but instead of greeting him, I just roll over onto my back and wait. His shoes click on the hardwood floor, and then I feel the coolness of a shadow pass over me before he bends down and takes my lips in a biting kiss.
He tastes so much like the boy I once loved. Cinnamon and spice from the toothpicks he always chews and something a little wild that he’s never aged out of. I can feel the texture of coarse grey in his hair now, though, when I run my fingers along his temples. I can feel the faint hint of wrinkles in the corners of his eyes as I lay my lips there.
We’re aging, and I wonder if he thinks it’s a gift that I can’t see it.
I wonder if he knows that I’m more hyperaware of it because I’m blind.
“Were you going to tell me about your little side project?” he asks. He pins me to the bench by my throat, but I don’t feel threatened. Nothing he could do to me would ever be worse than the night I woke up in the basement of this house, bandaged up and chained to the bed.
And Kane knows I’m not afraid of torture, and I’m certainly not afraid to die.
“No,” I tell him. “The boys asked me for a favor, and I delivered. That’s their business.”
“Alice is my business,” he growls and tightens his grip.
My cock gets harder, and I know he notices because his breath hitches a little right before he lays his other hand against my jeans. His palm feels good, but not good enough for me to submit.
“Alice is all of our business. You’ve made sure of that. And this whole thing sounds like a mistake you made. Not any of us.”
“It’s your job to know who has access to her,” he hisses, leaning in close. I feel a little spit hit my face. “How did you miss it?”
“I’m not a god,” I spit back at him, and without giving him a head’s up, I throw a punch. It lands somewhere near his throat—at least, that’s what it feels like when the flesh gives under my knuckles. He grunts and stumbles back, and I throw my feet to the floor so I can sit.
Without much warning, since he knows how to hide the sound of his feet from me, I’m thrown against the window. The glass will never shatter, of course. He’s made sure that nothing in this room is capable of shattering. But it bows and groans as our combined weight hits it, and his fingers dig into my jaw.
“She was almost raped.”
I want to tell him that will probably pale in comparison to what’ll happen the moment he lets Ari get his hands on her, but I don’t because I’m not actually sure about that anymore. Two long years of watching her—of invading her life and observing her when she believes she’s alone—has altered something in all of us.
