Redhead ran, but the others didn’t move.
T shook his head. “Nice try with the ordering us out. That’s not how this works and you know it.”
W sat down on the bed next to me. “Fine. Stay. You can just make her upset since not one of you can figure out when to shut the fuck up.”
“Everly,” J’s voice was low. “Just so you know, I don’t have a seat on the Alliance. We broke away. The Alliance has schismed. And even if I had one… I wouldn’t have needed to give away a woman I wanted to sleep with to get it.” He patted my hand. “Ben is a liar.”
I’d wanted to hear those words so much in the beginning; I would have killed for them to be true. But the truth was it didn’t particularly matter.
“You’re all liars. When it comes down to it. You all live your lives in one constant big lie. Every person you ever speak to, even your female family members, are lied to. And whether or not you meant for this to happen, whether or not you gave me to him, you took me from my perfectly good life and you set me up into a situation where I was exposed to this lunacy to begin with. I had a perfectly nice life.”
K touched the top of my head, running his hand through my hair. “Yes, we did. We absolutely did. But, Everly, you were never living a perfectly nice life. You were living the lie. When you’re better we’ll figure out how to make them pay. Even more than they already will.”
I closed my eyes. Maybe they’d just go away. I didn’t like what had K said. I didn’t like that it was partially true, and I was certainly not yet in a position where I wanted to think about the fact that my nice life had been the lie. I just wanted to not feel.
And I didn’t want any more Alliance, or whatever J was going to call it, in my life anymore.
The problem was they didn’t leave and without whatever had been in my IV before making me calm, I just couldn’t fall asleep. Eventually, I had to open my eyes.
They’d moved around, everyone taking a spot where they’d been before. W hadn’t moved from where he sat next to me on the bed. His eyes were closed, but I knew he wasn’t sleeping. Small details. I’d always paid attention to them. W snored when he slept or at least he breathed really deeply. He was silent. That meant he was awake.
T, who had taken the window seat, looked over at me. “Done?”
Next to me, W opened his lids. In fact, with his question, all gazes in the room fixed on me. My cheeks heated up. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what the fuck is going on.”
“Well,” K replied, leaning forward from where he sat by the desk. “Are you hungry?”
Food? My stomach growled with the thought. “I guess, yes, I’m hungry. I don’t think about food anymore. They fed me so sporadically.”
D jumped up. “I’ll carry you down. You don’t have to live in this bed. Someone else pick up the IV. We can make her comfortable downstairs.”
J raised his brows. “There’s a lot of people there. Are you up for that?”
My stomach clenched. I wasn’t the least bit okay with that. “Who is here?” Someone else they were going to give me to? Was there going to be some kind of auction? Some kind of…
W nudged me. “We’ll bring the food up. Pancakes sound good? I can make pancakes.”
“Why are you cooking?” I forced myself to sit up. “What happened to Constance?”
J’s face fell, but he straightened. “She’s who gave you to the Alliance, sweetheart. Apparently, she did try to warn you to go. In any case, she thought she was helping me. So I suppose in a sense you were given to the Alliance to secure my seat. A seat I declined when I found out what happened to you and then we destroyed the Alliance. Constance isn’t with us anymore. If she still breathes air, I don’t know. Marco is here. He’s the one who let us know. It is my fault you were taken, Everly. As I sat here, it occurred to me you were entirely right to place blame on me. I did this to you.” He shook his head. “We can do better than pancakes. We have a house full of people who work for us. Surely one of them can cook.”
With that, J left the room.
W leaned over and kissed my cheek. “We’ll bring it up here. Come on. Someone help me get a television in here.”
Everyone left except D who took W’s place on the bed. He didn’t say a word, just sat next to me, staring out the window. After a long moment, he spoke.
“Ben tortured all of us so don’t think for a second we don’t understand. But it’s different. I know that. At no time was I locked in the basement with a bag over my head. I got to leave and come back. Just like that imbecilic asshat downstairs. What you went through… Everly, you’ve got to tell me. I’m plotting Ben’s demise. You’ve seen me kill. You know I’m good at it. Did he rape you?”
Well, he’d come right out and asked. I sat up straighter. Somehow, I didn’t think that was really the kind of thing most people would just inquire. “Why? If he did, are you going to have him raped?”
D turned his head to stare at me. “Is that something you’d want?”
Was it? “He didn’t rape me.”
“I didn’t think so. Ben isn’t into sex. But he could have had someone else do it. Although, other people causing pain is not usually his thing either. He likes to inflict it himself. Sex is not his choice of activities. Not in any traditional way. I’m sure he gets off. Probably went upstairs and jerked off over and over after he hurt you, even though he says he doesn’t. He’s probably doing that right now even thinking about it, but his sadism isn’t looking for a willing masochist. No, he just wants to destroy.”
Those were not images I needed. “Thanks, D. Just what I wanted. An image in my head of Ben stroking himself off to my pain.”
“We’re back to D?” He sighed. “Fuck Kade and his ever coming up with that lame thing to begin with. Okay. Tell you what. Call me whatever you want, beautiful. Want to make me D? Make me D. But I’m the guy who’s going to cut off Ben’s penis and feed it to him until he chokes to death on it. No one takes what’s mine. No one hurts what belongs to me.”
That shouldn’t have felt nice to hear. All the years of learning the golden rules of life. Do unto others. Play nicely. Don’t hold grudges. Forgive. Maybe it was too soon for me to consider those things. It didn’t matter. The truth was that nothing had felt better in my life than hearing him say he was going to choke Ben to death on his own fucking penis.
I smiled at him. “Sounds good.”
D leaned back on the bed. “It really fucking does.”
“Coming in.” W walked in holding one half of a television, T holding the other. It was huge, and I didn’t know where they planned to put it. K ran in after them, moving the desk until the sixty-two inch monster of a screen stood on top of the desk. They then pushed the whole thing against the far wall.
T turned around to grin at me. “J is getting someone to cook dinner. Some kind of fall themed soup and a cobb salad. We’ll all watch in here.”
“Things aren’t okay.” I didn’t know why I said it, but they needed to understand. “I’m never going to be okay. So if you guys want to go back to your world domination, I don’t have to be here. I can go home. Or somewhere else if that’s not safe. Surely, K, if you don’t wish me harm, you can put me somewhere they can’t find me, where the satellites can’t find me.”
He sighed. “K?”
“Yeah… she’s back to that.” D yawned. “Are you going to set that thing up or do you want me to do it?”
“Answer me.” I wouldn’t let them get lost in something else. Not when I knew what I said was true. There had to be somewhere I could go that wasn’t here, that wasn’t with them, where I could be okay.
K shook his head slowly. “I know that you’re going to think I’m lying. Right now, you don’t believe us, and you’re smart not to. We’re very bad people. Judson didn’t get you taken alone. We all did that. And it’s because of that you have to believe me when I say to you there isn’t anywhere in the whole world, not underground or above it, that you will ever be free from t
hem. Not without us. I’m afraid you’re stuck with us, Everly.”
I sank back in my bed just as D jumped up to walk over to the television. “I’ll get it working.”
The familiar numbness of late filled my veins. I let it overtake me. If this was the future I had to look forward to, then there was no future at all.
Chapter 3
Ben descended the stairs, giggling the whole time. I trembled in my spot in the basement. Why was this happening to me? What was he going to do today? Last night he’d strapped me to a table and burned me with cigarettes until I’d begged him to stop. I didn’t think my begging had stopped him. I think he might have run out of cigarettes. Two of his so-called Initiates helped him.
I… I woke up in a cold sweat, my whole body shaking. I jerked sideways off the bed, which my weak legs didn’t want to do, and collapsed onto the floor. I couldn’t see. How would I when I had a bag over my head? No, I didn’t. It wasn’t… I was… I was…
People were talking to me. Too many voices. I covered my ears with my hands.
“Everly.” Arms came around me. I hated being touched. I’d told him—that doctor—to not do that. But these arms—whose were they?—they seemed okay. They were strong, steady.
I lifted my head to stare at J. He had me in his arms, and he rocked me back and forth. I shouldn’t have needed his help, shouldn’t have wanted him to hold me, and yet I placed my head down on his shoulder. “Everly, look at me. When you can, look at me.”
It took me a long second, but I lifted my gaze to his. He nodded at me before he spoke again. “You’re going to be okay. Not the same as before. No one goes through what you went through and comes out the other side again. You’ll need some professional help, eventually. But you will be okay. And the people who did this to you will be punished. You will be a different kind of fine. If you can’t do anything else, believe me about that.”
I don’t know why I did. “All right, J. I’ll believe you.”
He shook his head. “What’s my name, Everly? We start with that. Say it. You know it. And things will go better if you stop dehumanizing us. We’re terrible people but that is what we are, people. Start with that.”
I swallowed. “It was so much easier to make you monsters to go with the monster who held me in the basement.”
“I know it was, and I am a monster. But I’m a monster with a first name. You can hate me as Judson, too.”
Why was it so hard to talk?
He spoke quietly. “Say my name, Everly.”
“It’s Judson.”
He nodded once and then kissed my forehead. “Good girl. Did you hurt your hand with the IV? Let me look.”
And just like that it was over. The memory haunting my dream fled and I was okay, on the floor with five gazes all focused at me. I wasn’t alone. I had monsters with me, but they weren’t the one who had locked me in the basement.
“Maybe tomorrow I could try to come downstairs.”
Warden knelt down next to Judson. “Sounds like a good idea. And you could try to eat a little bit more, too.”
I was going to be some version of okay. For whatever reason, Judson saying it had made me believe it. I pulled myself off the ground. “I think I’m okay. Not hurt. Thanks.”
Judson put his hand on my cheek. “That’s good. Back in bed. It’s three in the morning. Nothing good happens at three in the morning.”
I’d been alone in the bed when I fell asleep, all of them sitting around the room staring at the television now occupying a huge amount of space in this room. “Where did you guys even find a television this big to bring up here? Do you have hidden televisions all around the house or in the basement?”
“We took it out of the living room.” Trace yawned. “If we’re hanging out in here, we don’t need it down there.”
Another question I’d not thought to ask presented itself. “If the house is full of people where are they all sleeping? The upper floor was still empty.”
“They’re not sleeping here. Nothing is frozen so they can take boats in and off the mainland. This is for the five of us only. It’s headquarters, so to speak,” Kade answered. “They’ll all be back in the morning.”
My mind whirled at the logistics. “They’re safe going back and forth?”
“No one is safe.” Derrick put his hand on my forehead for a second. “But they’re as safe as they’re going to be. This is war. Right now, the battle is tech stocks. Up and down every day. People losing millions upon millions. We’re winning. Warden is a genius.”
The thought didn’t bother me as it had before my… time away. Shitty things happened every day. If someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or investing in the wrong stock, that just fucking sucked for them.
“Good work.”
He nodded at me. “Thanks.”
“What’s the end game? How do you win? What percentage of the world do you somehow conquer to call it a clear victory?”
Judson shook his head. “That’s morning talk. After coffee. Back in bed. Doctor’s orders. You’re still battling infection, and until you’re not, you have to rest and eat healthy food. When you’re not sick anymore you can figure out world domination. Although I think I was right to take you off that sedative. Your mind is clear. I like that.”
“I don’t feel sick.” I walked over to the bed.
“When your fever breaks, you’re going to feel worse. It’s funny how that works.” He patted the bed, and I got into it.
At least that made sense now. “I didn’t know I had a fever.”
“I know.” Judson nodded. “Into bed.”
I climbed in, and a second later Kade settled next to me, covering us both up. I hadn’t told him he could lie down with me, but I didn’t mind it either. I rolled a little bit away from him. “I don’t want you to get sick.”
“I have an immune system of steel.” He pulled me closer. “And I don’t want to wake up to see you jumping from the bed like that again. Might have taken ten years off my life.”
They’d all stayed in this room with me, together. None of them could be getting any rest. “You guys have to world dominate tomorrow. It’s okay if you want to leave me alone.”
Still, none of them moved. Trace turned off the lights. When had we put them on? He walked over and kissed my forehead. These weren’t gentle guys, and the action struck inside of me like someone lit a match.
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t think about that right now. With Kade’s arms around me I did feel better. I’d work on finding my feet again soon. Tonight I just had to breathe. Trace left the side of the bed and went back to where he lay in a sleeping bag on the floor.
They were sleeping on the floor? I shouldn’t care that they were on the floor, but I still had my grandmother in my head, where she got to nestle close to Ben in my conscious mind, telling me how terrible I was. It was always my job to see to others’ needs. I really had to work on that when I wasn’t sick and beaten up. Not tonight.
“Guys, you can’t any of you be comfortable. I mean you don’t have to sleep on the floor. I’m safe here, right?” Because if I wasn’t, I would leave. I’d get up right now and…
Kade wrapped his arms tighter around me. “You’re safe. We’ve all been looking for you for six months. Just for tonight, everyone wants to be close. That’s all. Don’t read danger into it.”
Okay. That did answer how much time had passed. I’d wondered. That meant it was past my birthday. “I’m a year older.”
“We know.” Warden spoke from across the room. “Your birthday was not lost on us. Try to get some sleep, Everly. We can work out the big problems tomorrow. Or start to.”
Maybe it was because I couldn’t move, not even to take a deep breath, but it suddenly didn’t matter, because if Ben came through the door with a cigarette and a crow bar, Kade would take care of it. For tonight, I pretended he would do that. Tomorrow, I would deal with reality.
I closed my eyes.
I didn’t dream. Or at
least I didn’t think I did. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t remember anything and at the very least I didn’t see Ben anymore. Or I didn’t think I did.
Kade’s arms still held me close and I really hadn’t moved. His breath felt warm on the back of my neck and the even, steady sound in my ear told me he was still deep asleep. Across the room, Derrick snored like he sawed wood. I smiled at the sound. No one would ever be unaware Derrick was in a room if he was asleep. He’d better never need to hide for days on end.
The others breathed quietly. How early was it? I needed to roll over to see. Somehow, I managed to do so despite Kade’s strong hold. He muttered something and adjusted, drawing me up against his chest. I could see that the light through the window was dim, not the bright of midmorning. The sun might even just be coming up. I squinted against it for a second before I gave into staring at Kade’s chest. His t-shirt was dark colored. I couldn’t tell black or dark blue and didn’t remember from the night before.
My head pounded a little bit but only enough to be annoying.
Kade pressed his nose down on top of my head. He spoke in a whisper. “Too early. You haven’t had nearly enough sleep. You’re still safe.”
That must have been what I needed to hear because I did go back to sleep.
The next time I woke up it was because The Letters were awake. They spoke in low tones, but it was enough to rouse me. I’d gotten very attuned to sound. I’d had to be. Every squeak of a floor meant imminent doom.
“Good job, guys. You woke her.” Kade sighed even as he rolled a little bit away from me. “She feels cool to me, Jud. Want to take her temperature?”
Judson walked over, stretching his arms over his head so that I could see the lower part of his abs. He yawned. “I was just going to. Believe it or not, I went to med school, studied, passed, and then even went on to have a specialty. I’m pretty fucking good at this.”
Kade groaned. “Thanks for your resume. We’d all forgotten for two seconds that you are a doctor.”
I sat up. It had been a long time since anyone took my temperature. At least that I could remember. “My head hurts.”
Dark Truths: Kiss Her Goodbye #2 Page 3
