AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
ALIX
* * *
Istare at the email that is going to destroy my life:
“This video goes to one hundred media outlets, the Dover police, and the FBI at 11:59 pm on August 15. The only way to make it disappear is to deposit one billion dollars in the Credit Suisse account designated in the subject field above. In addition, we require a climate-controlled private gallery within the Diamond Freeport suitable for storage of up to one shipping container of pharmaceuticals.”
A countdown at the bottom of the message spins wildly as seconds melt into minutes, measuring out fourteen days before my world goes up in flames.
And beneath it all, the video runs on an endless loop. It’s eerie—black and white and completely silent. But what it lacks in color and sound, it makes up for with detail.
I can make out ever strand of my platinum blonde wig. Every pleat in my Marilyn Monroe halter dress. I can even see the beauty mark that was painted on my cheek.
From my place, kneeling obediently at Klaus Herzog’s feet, my knife flashes. The man I called Master slumps in his chair until my stabbing frenzy drags him to the floor.
Blood.
Rivers of it.
Oceans.
Herzog’s death is hideous and disgusting and terrifying and I’d do it all a thousand times over, because killing him was the only way I could ever be free.
The video reaches its end—a head-on shot of my blood-spattered face, crystal clear and utterly undeniable. I look drugged, or maybe like I’m sleepwalking. Somehow, that makes it worse—if I screamed or sobbed or puked, I’d be acknowledging the horrible thing I did.
Instead, I’m a zombie.
There’s no hint of the Alix Key who came to the Diamond Freeport of her own free will three years earlier. The Alix Key who was a good girl, who spent her entire life saying no—to sex, to drugs, to anything she wasn’t supposed to do. The Alix Key who stood by her twin brother Leo, despite his endless battles against addiction, despite losing family and friends and fiancé.
There’s not even a hint of the Alix Key who found power and pleasure in the bed of Travis “Trap” Prince, the owner of the freeport tax haven, the man who forged the Diamond Ring, a coalition of his richest, most powerful clients—including Klaus Herzog.
Staring into the face of the robot on the video, I don’t see a good girl. I don’t see a newly awakened woman. I see a stranger, dead to the world.
The recording ends again.
And starts once more.
I remember how the knife felt, heavy in my hand. I remember the metallic smell of blood, mixed with shit after I sliced through his intestines. I remember the gleam of light on bone and muscle and organs I can’t name.
I was a slave for three long years because my brother sold me to pay off his debt to a drug kingpin. I was raped every day, in disgusting ways only a sadist could have dreamed up. I was fattened up like a pig for slaughter and when I refused to eat, I was drugged, force-fed, and given a boob job without my consent.
Clearly, I was insane when I sliced Herzog’s throat open with a steak knife. When I plunged that same knife into his belly. When I mutilated his crotch.
But somewhere between the first knife strike and the hundredth, shouldn’t I have come to my senses? Shouldn’t I have realized I was protected and safe in the freeport? Shouldn’t I have remembered that civilized human beings rely on police to protect them, on courts to convict criminals?
Herzog turned me into a monster.
I don’t deserve to be in polite society.
And I have no right to drag anyone else down with me.
The video starts again. Before I can rake my knife across Herzog’s throat, Trap’s voice rings out behind me. “Turn it off.”
In the past six weeks, I’ve become conditioned to obeying Trap’s direct commands—in the bedroom, at least. His words anchor me when I fear I’m too damaged to return to the real world. They awaken this body that I thought would never enjoy physical sensation again. His commands make me come.
So I’m not surprised when my hand moves automatically, hitting the red button to close the email. But I’m startled beyond words when I see the expression on Trap’s face.
