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There’s a fireplace beside us, and it makes my skin damp with sweat. Red doesn’t seem bothered with the heat—he’s wearing a dark brown jacket and a cream-colored button-up shirt under, collar undone. His pants are made from the same fabric, and they seem to almost blend in with the armchair when I blur my gaze.
The guy fucking me switches to my asshole. Despite the medicine dulling every part of my body, there’s a stab of pain as he drives himself into that tight hole. My hands grab on instinct at Red’s pants, twisting the fabric as I hold on.
“Does that hurt, dolly?” Red asks.
I somehow manage to keep back my reply. That earns me a rough hand in my hair, Red yanking back my head to stare into my eyes.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes, it hurts,” I tell him, deadpan as ever. But now that I’ve got his attention, I might as well ask the question that’s been plaguing me since I became conscious a few hours ago. “Where is Gideon?”
Red’s smile makes my insides wither. “Oh, dolly, he’s dead.”
I stare up at the man lording his control over me, the sadistic, psychotic maniac who decided he was done toying with Fyre and me. The drugs he injected me with have killed any and all emotions inside me, or ruthlessly suppressed them.
“Dead?” I can’t seem to wrap my head around the concept.
“Yes.” Red strokes his fingers over my bottom lip, and then caresses my hair. My head bobs forward at a particularly violent thrust from the creep behind me, but I ignore him, ignore the pain blistering inside me. It feels too much like that ache Peter put inside me all those months ago. “I shot him in the chest. I’m afraid it was fatal.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Red’s smile falters for a microsecond. “I don’t need you to believe me, dolly.” His eyes move past me to his guest. “I just need a warm pussy for my guests. And when you’re all worn out in a few weeks, maybe a month or two, then I’ll hand you over to those guests of mine who prefer cold, gray pussies.”
My stomach lurches at his words. Weeks? No fucking way am I staying alive that long. I can already feel my mind shutting down. Then again, a body doesn’tneeda mind to stay alive. I could be catatonic, and he’d still probably find a use for me.
“He’s not dead,” I say, as if my words could somehow make it true. “You’re not capable of killing Fyre.”
Red cocks his head, and then slashes out with his hand. At first, I think he’s going to hit me, but it’s just a signal for his guest to stop sodomizing me.
“I haven’t come,” the man says, his first words since he stepped into the room.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Red says, but in the kind of voice that suggests the man would regret it if he did.
I don’t hear him retreat because the smoke-gray carpets in this room are too thick.
Red shoves me off his lap so hard that I tumble onto my back. I decide to just lie there, limbs sprawled, and stare at the ceiling. It’s a pretty one, molded in intricate swirls and whorls. I get lost in them for a few seconds, until Red comes to stand beside me, towering over me with his neck bent how he cranes down to watch me. I feel like a bug that’s about to be crushed by a big, black boot.
“I’m a kind man, Charlotte Ash. I could have killed you the first day I had you, but instead I spared your life. I could have handed you off to my most violent, depraved guests…but instead I chose those who would hurt you the least. I could have left you sober through all of it. Instead, I gave you medicine to dull the pain.”
He brought his wine glass with him, and he takes a long, slow sip from it before speaking again.
“But it’s obvious the heroin makes you brave and stupid, so from now on, you’ll just have to knuckle through.”
Heroin. Maybe it does make me stupid, because I honestly should have known.
I don’t know why I’m acting like a dog with a bone, but I grab Red’s pants and hold on tight. “Let me see him one more time. Please.”
Red chuckles, yanking his pants free with a sharp tug. “I’ve already disposed of his body, dolly.”
“Then you’d best dig him up, because I won’t believe he’s dead until I see his cold, dead corpse with my own fucking eyes, you lying sack of shit!”
The kick he plants in my stomach sends all the air out of my body with an agonizedwhoosh.I roll onto my side, groaning in pain as I curl into a fetal position. Red stomps down on my ribs, and I swear I can feel one of them crack with the impact.
“Like how I got to see Peter’s body after your Fyre was done with him?” Red yells. “You fucking cunt!” A third blow strikes me on my forearm as I huddle into a ball to protect myself, and Idefinitelyfeel that bone snap.
The pain is a sparkling iridescent wave crashing over me. I barely cling to consciousness, and I think if it wasn’t for the heroin still flowing through me, I’d be lost to the void by now.
My eyes flutter, catching jarring shots of Red as he straightens, takes a visible breath, flicks hair out of his eyes, smooths down his clothes with utter care.
