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“What look would that be?” he asks carefully.
“The look of someone who’s been sexually abused,” I reply. “Because I’ve been there too often. You’re right, on one hand. We are the same.”
He doesn’t slow his movements. Doesn’t stop as he unscrews the cap and lifts the bottle to my lips, pressing it closer until I tip my head back and cool water slides down my throat.
I swallowed hard, water trailing down my chin as well. “I wasn’t sure about it, although I had my suspicions from the way you reacted a time or two when some of the men got too rowdy in the boardroom. Did Broderick mold you the same way he molded me, or did he pass you on to his friends, Blake?”
He tilts the bottle further, and water drips from my mouth, sliding down my clavicle toward my mutilated chest and pouring onto the floor. Blake isn’t laughing anymore. He’s not doing much of anything.
“Adorable, how you think it’s an insult,” he says at last. “I’m a survivor, Aria. I’m the head of the Syndicate now, and you’re still trying to prove you’re more than a hole. How does it feel to beat your head against a wall and get nowhere?”
Not too fucking great, if I’m being honest.
“We’ve both been used. You said it yourself: we’d be good together. So stop trying to keep me beneath you, and let me stand beside you.”
“It’s not going to work on me.”
“What isn’t going to work on you?”
I’ve got nothing left to lose. Nothing left to give, either, not even blood. Certainly not pride. I lost that so long ago I can barely remember how it feels. Even domination. The underground only helped slick a sheen of accomplishment over my lack of pride in myself, my work. My existence.
Blake has helped strip down even the thickest sheen from me until I’m left hanging here, a mess.
“Any attempt you make to get under my skin. So what? So what if I’ve been abused? There’s power in it if I want there to be.” Blake holds his arms out wide to his sides. “I’m a survivor. Not only surviving, but I’m the head of the Black Market Syndicate.”
“Are you repeating it for my benefit or for yours?” I want to know.
His gaze goes to ice-covered steel. “I’m going to take this company to greater heights than my uncle ever imagined.”
“You’re going to continue with his human trafficking scheme.” The thought still makes me clench even when my body has started to fail me.
“Continue? I’m going to grow it. There is too much money to be made moving those kinds of goods. I’m not going to stop until I’ve cornered the market on the East Coast and into the Midwest,” he continues.
I chew on my inner cheek to keep from yelling at him, getting nowhere. “Heaven help us,” is all I say.
“There is no heaven. Haven’t you learned anything by now?” he asks.
He’s unfazed. He’s got no emotions, and I realize then with a sinking feeling that everything he showed me while we were pushed together in our cramped little office space is nothing but lies. They were all carefully crafted to get me to lower my guard, and I admit, I suspected nothing.
Even with him pressing the chloroform cloth to my mouth, I suspected nothing.
“Apparently not,” I admit.
“It’s all going to work out.” Blake reaches behind him again, and this time, he removes the knife.
I start to shake, a visceral reaction to the clean, sharp edge of the blade.
“You’re starting to really enjoy the pain. I see it.” He repeats the statement from the first day as though to reassure himself of it. “Just like I used to hear you and Uncle Broderick going at it like dogs. He used to talk to me, sometimes, when he let his guard down. About how much you like being hurt while you’re getting fucked. How it’s the only way to get you off.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. In my head, I’m not here. I’m anywhere but. Maybe I’m on some kind of train with those wide glass windows designed to show off the best views of the scenery outside. The fancy kind of train where the seats are plush, and the food is top-notch.
I barely feel the first slice of the blade across my stomach. Blake isn’t pushing down, only dragging the point along my skin in a threat of what’s to come. A promise.
“Strange.” My voice sounds distant. “How you waited until your uncle was out of the way to touch me this way.”
“Can’t poach another man’s toy. You stepped out of line. No, it's up to me to make sure you fall back into it.”
I hear nothing, not a single solitary thing outside of the pounding of my pulse. But I feel the rush of wind from Blake’s sudden movement. He lurches forward, his shoulder jerked out of joint and breath hissing out between his teeth.
