AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When I come down off this high, I open my eyes and look over at Andrew. I expect to see shock or disgust on his face. But instead, I see raw lust and anger, as though I had been somehow selfishly withholding this from him all this time.
My gaze shifts to Seven. He's standing next to Andrew again, but he's watching me.
“Take her to the car,” Seven says.
Declan lifts the ropes binding my arms off the hook. I'd lost track of how much that hurt, hanging there, but now I'm newly aware. He unties the ropes and rubs my wrists, then he brings each one to his lips, kissing the chafed skin. He lifts me up and carries me out of the factory. The sun has disappeared behind the trees, and I shiver against the chill in the air.
He settles me in the car and takes off his suit jacket and puts it on me. He takes a first aid kit out of the glove box and rubs an aloe gel into my wrists where the ropes rubbed me raw in my struggle.
Classical music flows into the car as he turns the key in the ignition. He turns the heat on.
“Stay,” he orders.
I nod. Why would I run now?
FOURTEEN
Iwatch the clock on the dash as it marches on. Two hours pass before Declan returns to the car. In the glare of the headlights I can see his shirt is covered in blood. I'm surprisingly horrified by this. I knew they were monsters. But I've never seen it in this visceral, violent way before. He and Seven just spent all this time torturing a man to death while I sat out in the car in the dark. This is what they have inside them.
As bad as Andrew was, it still twists something in my gut to know the amount of suffering he just endured. It's so stupid because he had every intention to carve me up like a turkey. Declan takes off the bloody shirt, pops the trunk, and stuffs it inside before getting into the driver's side.
He starts to pull out of the huge parking lot.
“Wait... what about Seven?”
“He's doing clean up and disposal. He'll meet us back at the house later.”
I almost ask how the hell he'll do that if we take the car but then I realize he's going to take Andrew's car... and get rid of it.
We drive silently away from the meat-packing plant and onto a lonely abandoned road. I'm lost deep in thought. I was with Andrew for two years. I thought he was an asshole, a piece of shit. Was he also a sociopath? It's so tempting to try to shift him into that category. He was going to torture me to death. I have no doubt of that.
We want to believe every violent terrible person iscrazy.We want to believe every sociopath is a crazed violent lunatic. But I'm not sure if that's true. We want to believe that there’s a special category of not-really-human who does bad things and that we can never be in that category because we’re sane. We’re real people, and they are not.
But just being with Seven and Declan, I've felt pieces of my humanity shut off. I find myself influenced by the way they see the world around them. And what just happened back there... me happily letting them get me off while Andrew watched... something is definitely broken and changed in me. But I'm not a monster.
I know now that Andrew is a monster. But is Andrew empty in the way Seven and Declan are? The idea that I could be safe with the men I'm with but in danger from someone who has no actual mental illness is unsettling.
While I'm thinking all this, I'm very aware that Seven is happily chopping up a body to dispose of. And I'm sure he’s happy about it. Possibly gleeful.
In college I took sociology because I thought it would help me in the advertising world. Psychology is the normal choice, and there's a lot of overlap, but if you want to sell a lot of a product, you need to know how people act in herds, not just as individuals.
I remember an experiment we learned about called the Milgram experiment. It showed that normal, good, moral people in shockingly large numbers will obey an authority figure to act against their own conscience to harm a random innocent person. So I'm not sure I'm any more unsafe with these men than I would be with some “good” person.
At least every decision Seven and Declan make comes absolutely from their own will with no other influence. There’s a strange safety in that. I stare out the window, clutching Declan's coat around me as I watch the trees move by in a blur outside the window. Night has settled in more deeply, growing comfortable in its cloak of darkness. The full moon rises over the treetops, and there’s a strange peace in this moment.
“Are you all right?” he finally asks.
At least I don't have to make up an excuse for being home late. I can't believe that's the thought I'm thinking right now. What have these men done to my mind?
“Yes, Master. Thank you for coming to get me.” I almost say thank you for putting the tracking device in my collar, but that's too crazy even for me. Absently, I trail my fingertips over the metal band around my throat that just saved my life.
When we get home, Declan takes me to the master bathroom attached to Seven's room. He runs a hot bath and lights some candles for me.
“Take a bath and then come downstairs. I'll make you something to eat.”
“Thank you, Master.”
He just nods and leaves. I take off the suit coat and lay it across the bed in Seven's room, then I turn off the bathroom lights so there’s only the soft glow of the candles and get into the tub.
