by Bella J
“Say it, sis. Say you loved watching me kill them.”
“Please—”
“Say it!”
“Yes! God, yes!” I cried. “I liked watching you kill them. I didn’t want you to stop.” Sobs erupted, hard and aching, pouring out of me all the way from my gut.
“There she is.” I felt him flex against me, and then the fear of hell ripped through my spine. “There’s my girl.”
“Glenn—”
“Let me tell you a little secret, Dahlia.” His fingers teased along the side of my face, his chest flush against my back. “Mom’s friends weren’t the only ones who visited me at night. She did too.”
I stilled, unable to fight after his words shook me to the core.
“That’s right. Mom visited me too. Told me I was her big boy right before she made me watch porn so I could get hard. Hard for her.”
My body trembled, and I closed my eyes, trying to keep the tears under control. “You never told me.”
He yanked at my hair. “Of course I didn’t tell you. Being raped by strange men was bad enough, but having your own mom forcing you to fuck her while she threatened to cut it off and feed it to the fucking dog, that’s not something you go around sharing with people.”
I pinched my eyes closed, my heart breaking for my brother all over again. Breaking for us. The pain we went through, the humiliation—God, it was so much worse for him. I realized that now.
“Glenn, I’m sorry she did that to you.”
He let out a maniacal laugh. “Don’t worry, sis. I got my revenge. See,” he jerked me around abruptly, pinning my back against the wall, “after you closed that door, I got my revenge.” He tilted his head, black eyes focused on me, his mouth pulled in an evil smirk. “Ask me how.”
I swallowed hard.
“Ask me how!” he yelled.
“How?”
He smiled, a gentle finger tracing down the side of my face, his eyes following the movement. “By giving her what she wanted. By fucking her, over, and over, and over again. We took turns, my friends and I.” He took my chin between his fingers, digging into my jaw. “And not just with our dicks.”
I couldn’t stop it. The picture he painted, the words he spewed out of his mouth, was so toxic, I couldn’t keep the bile down anymore. I gagged, and he grabbed my hair, forcing me to bend over while I threw up.
“Funny, I remember her gagging a few times that day as well.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He jerked me upright, craning my head back while my scalp burned as he pulled my hair. “Because tonight you showed me exactly how fucking thankful you really are.”
Dragging me across the room and over to the bed, he tossed me onto the mattress like a ragdoll. Like I weighed nothing. It felt like my heart was about to claw out of my chest, my stomach stripped and torn, about to bleed out of my body.
I tried to get away, my fingers twisting into the sheets, but he held me down, my stomach on the mattress, his body flush against my back. “Glenn, please. What are you doing?” I twisted, and flexed, and tried to get out from under him, but he was too strong, his hands gripping my wrists and pinning them next to my face.
“Ever since your tenth birthday, I was forced to listen to them rape you, forced to listen to your screams and your cries.”
Tears ripped from my soul, escaping down my cheeks. The fear, the panic, the uncertainty was something I hadn’t felt for a very long time. But it was back…and this time it was even stronger than before.
He eased his face closer to mine. “Every damn time I heard what they did to you through the walls of our bedrooms, I felt my hate grow stronger, bolder, harder. They were hurting my little sister, and I couldn’t do anything about it.” His voice cracked, pain dripping from his words. “Until…” He took a breath. “Until one night those cries turned into something different. See, I was sure it would stop eventually, that you’d give up crying since they were never going to stop. So, surely, you would stop fighting, stop crying. But you didn’t.” He moved, flexing his hips, and horror grabbed me by the throat, choking every ounce of air from my lungs.
He was hard. He was so hard, and I could feel it press against my back. I tried to jerk free, gritting my teeth, but it was no use. I was no match for him. He just gripped me tighter, pushed harder against me. “One night while I laid on my bed listening to them rape you, listening to you crying,” his lips brushed my ear, “I touched myself.”
“Jesus,” I sobbed, and I tried to fight by thrashing and kicking, screaming like I had the devil’s touch on my back.
“That’s right, little sister,” he continued, cool and calm, like there was nothing fucked up about it. “I jerked off while you got raped. And after that, whenever Mommy came to visit me in my room, I didn’t need to watch porn to get hard.” His split tongue slithered along my ear, down the skin in my neck, and I shuddered, my entire body trembling. “All I had to do was think about you and your screams that became like a fucking melody to me. That’s all I needed to get hard for mommy dearest.”
He thrust against me, and I bit into my tongue, the taste of blood blasting through my mouth—the taste of repulsion and terror.
“You feel that? I just have to talk about it, and my cock gets hard for you.”
“You’re sick!”
He laughed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“You have to stop this, Glenn. You need help.”
“No. What I needed was my little sister to be on my side, to be loyal to me. But you betrayed me.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did!”
“How? How did I betray you?” I continued to thrash, but it seemed like my fight only made him stronger.
“By not telling me the Kings were about to fool me by letting Onyx become president. A little fucking loophole they found with our deal. You didn’t tell me!” he yelled, and stars exploded behind my eyes when his fist collided against my skull, my teeth clattering together. The blow resonated in my head, my tongue bleeding and temples aching. I stopped moving, a numbness flooding over my body. There was no more strength in me, my limbs paralyzed and my mind dizzy.
Flashes. Images. Pain. I couldn’t focus. Everything was a blur. Except him. His face.
Onyx.
Through the haze, I heard him speak—my brother. The man who was supposed to protect me. Who promised me he would always keep me safe. Then why did his breath feel repugnant against my neck? Why did his words slice through me like broken glass, cutting my insides to pieces? Why did his touch feel vile, corrupted, sordid? Wrong.
“Onyx was right.” His words became clearer. “You are a clubwhore. And what kind of president would I be if I didn’t give my clubwhore the attention she deserved?”
When I felt his hand between my legs, tears followed, like lava flowing down, erupting from the flames that burned me to ash.
“Please.” My voice was barely a whisper, my head on the verge of exploding. “Don’t do this.”
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long, little sis. Ever since I realized you look just like...her.”
“No.” I sobbed, and my arms tingled, my feet prickling as my strength slowly returned. Everything inside me begged my body to fight, and I jerked my arms, trying to loosen his grip. I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t dare. There was no way I’d be able to look into my brother’s eyes and survive it, not while he was doing this to me.
“Fight me, Dahlia. Fight me, scream for me the way you screamed for them.”
“Don’t—”
I jerked my head from side to side, my body flailing and thrashing. Somehow, I managed to free one arm, and I tried clawing at his face from over my shoulder, hitting, scratching, tearing at anything I could get my hands on. But he was so much stronger than I was, like he knew my every move.
Of course he did. He’d been a victim himself. He knew how one’s instincts reacted, what it made you do.
Pushing him off me, I tried to struggle up t
he bed, but he grabbed my ankles, twisting me around with a violent jerk. No matter how hard I tried to keep him from forcing me on my stomach, he was just too strong.
I kicked and screamed, but it was no use. The second he had me on my stomach, I tried to reach for the headboard of the bed, but he pulled me down, and then I heard it. The tear of fabric as he ripped my dress down the back.
“See, Dahlia. I’m not as bad as you think I am.” He climbed on top of me, his knee pressing hard into my back, forcing me to stay in place as he twisted my arms behind me. “I told myself I would never hurt you, not unless you gave me a very good reason to.”
I continued to fight as he tied my wrists. Whatever he used pinched my skin around my arms, and then he straddled me. That was the moment I realized there was no way I’d be able to fight him anymore. Not while he had me pinned in place with his body and tied up.
“Glenn, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m teaching my little sister a lesson.” He leaned down, his chest flush against my naked back, gently brushing my hair from the side of my neck. “A lesson I’ve been dying to teach you for so long.”
“Is that what you did to Neon?”
He stilled.
“I know what you did to her. I saw her.”
“She was merely collateral damage.”
“You fucked her up, Glenn. You raped her, and now you want to rape me too.” I stopped thrashing, taking a deep breath as I tried to calm my wildly beating heart. “You turned into one of them. You’re no better than the men who hurt us, than Mom and Dad, who never protected us.” With every word, my fear turned into fury. “I was a fool to ever think you loved me.”
“But I do.” His lips brushed against my ear. “I do love you. Don’t you see that? I’ve always loved you, but you hurt me. You betrayed me.”
“No, you’re betraying me. Remember that day you came to my room after my tenth birthday? You promised me that the day you were big enough, you would make it all right. You won’t let anyone else hurt me. But now you’re hurting me.”
His tongue traced along my ear. “You deserve it.”
“Then do it. Hurt me. Rape me. Kill me.” All my strength drained out of me as I surrendered to the darkness, my body sagging into the mattress. “I’m done fighting. There’s no need to fight when you’re already a rotting corpse.”
A heavy silence fell around us, and I allowed myself to take a breath. But as the air settled in my lungs, I felt his hand slowly travel down my side, fingers wrapping around my knee before jerking it up, spreading my legs wide. The warm summer air felt like ice against my nakedness, and I wanted to die right there. If there was a way for me to end my life in that moment, I would have done it without hesitating.
I bit my lips, the saltiness of my pain coating my tongue. After years of being free from that hell, I found myself thrown back there again—by another person I trusted. Another person who had sworn to protect me, yet now he was the one about to hurt me.
Forcing one of his thighs beneath my leg, keeping me in place, I knew this wasn’t the first time he did this. He moved like a fucking expert, anticipating my every move, knowing exactly how I would fight back. My brother had done this before. The man I trusted with my life had destroyed others the same way we were ruined.
“Don’t worry, little sis,” I heard the sound of his zipper, and my blood ran cold, “I’ll do better than all those men. I’ll make you enjoy it.”
“God, please. Glenn, stop,” I sobbed, trying one last time to struggle against his hold, but it was no use. I was that ten-year-old girl again, unable to fight, no match against the demons hellbent on taking me. Ruining me. Destroying me. Leaving nothing but dead butterflies in their wake.
Strong thighs kept me in place, a hand keeping my arms from moving when his fingers traveled up the inside of my thigh, like devil claws infecting my skin.
When I felt him drag his hard dick down the slit of my ass, I gagged, choking on my own cries. I was sure my tears had turned into blood, the way it ached in my chest, my stomach twisted in barbed wire while my body burned.
Trying to force my legs closed was my last desperate attempt to stop him, the skin around my wrists burning as fabric cut into my flesh while I struggled against the bounds.
But it was no use. I already felt him nudging against my entrance, his heavy body keeping me pinned down.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded, out of breath. “Don’t.”
A cold palm flattened against the side of my face, forcing my head deeper into the mattress, making sure I wasn’t going anywhere.
“After this, you’ll be mine in every. Fucking. Way.”
The familiar burn started—the ache, the pain, the humiliation. I felt it, starting at the apex of my thighs as I felt my own brother on the verge of desecrating my body in the worst way possible.
“Jesus,” he whimpered, pushing his lips against my shoulders. “I get it now. I get why all those men came back for you night after night. I’m not even inside you yet, and I could come right now.”
“Oh, God.” I wept, the sheets already soaked with my tears. I tried to stop him somehow, holding my breath and pushing down hard to keep him from forcing himself inside me. But all I felt was the warmth against my legs as I pissed myself while my brother’s grunts started to fill my ears like devil’s breaths.
In those moments, I did what he had taught me to do. I turned it off. I became nothing, a void unable to feel a thing. I was that ten-year-old girl again, only this time I didn’t pray for someone to save me.
I prayed to die.
Chapter Twenty-One
Onyx
Warm blood clung to my skin. Rage was pounding like a heavy metal song inside my head, my bones thundering against my flesh. Storming into the Python compound, the Kings and Sixes standing together, the way it had always been, just felt fucking right.
This was it. This was the day we’d been waiting for. The day my brother and I had been dreaming of since we watched our father take his last breath, courtesy of a Python blade.
There was no stopping us. It was war, and we were determined to win. But every time my bullets pierced flesh and the knife in my hand slit throats, all I saw was her. Her beautiful face, striking eyes, and lethal betrayal. The blade I used to kill these fuckers belonged to her. Such beautiful irony.
Even after her deceit came to light, I couldn’t help but worry that she might be here, that somehow she’d be caught in the crossfire. And my head still tried to make sense of why she never told Slither about me taking Granite’s place. My heart kept trying to convince my head that maybe she didn’t tell him because her loyalty had shifted. Her heart had changed—for me.
A guy could hope.
“Where’s Slither?” Ink yelled over the screams and grunts of pain.
“Fucker ain’t here.” A slimy Python came storming toward me from the front, but I saw him coming, and I jabbed my blade right into his gut, twisting the knife and feeling his warm blood gush over my hand. There wasn’t time for me to relish my kill, bask in the blood of my enemy. And since these guys wore the Pythons cut, they were scum like Slither, which meant they had to die…just like him.
Crow’s men circled a bunch of prospects, hacking away at them. The Sixes were our allies, but they were brutal. They were beasts, and they killed like savages—like motherfucking Vikings with huge-ass smiles on their faces.
“Where the fuck is he?” Ink searched around, and I could see the desperation on his face, the need to find the one man he had been waiting months for.
Looking to the right, I spotted a flight of stairs. “Yo, Ink. Up there.”
He nodded and rushed in that direction, and I followed. Granite, Dutch, and Manic knew how to take care of themselves. And with Crow fighting by their side, they sure as fuck didn’t need me or Ink.
Warning prickled at the back of my neck, and my instincts flared. I turned around, seeing a Python aim right at Ink’s back. Launching forward, I cras
hed into Ink, taking him to the ground. My jaw hit the edge of the stairs, pain thundering through the side of my face. But there was no time to shake it, catching the frame of a man coming toward us. His eyes were pinned on Ink, lips pulled in a snarl as he aimed his gun. Without thinking even for a second, I grabbed my gun, aimed, and pulled the motherfucking trigger.
The guy stumbled back, staring down at his chest, eyes wide with surprise. Why, I didn’t know. Fuckers around here should have known I never missed a goddamn shot.
He sagged to the ground, a corpse by the time his head hit the floor. Ink looked my way and gave a slight nod—a silent thank you between brothers.
We got up and rushed up the stairs, war still raging behind us. But Ink was like a fucking bloodhound with only one target in mind.
I was still figuring out why I was running behind him, searching. Was I looking for Slither, wanting to end his life? Or did I want to find her? Was I searching for Wraith to make sure she was okay, even if I wasn’t sure about the depth of her deception? Judging by the way my heart raced, my head filled with images of her, I knew it was the latter.
“Typical. Fucking coward. Hides whenever shit goes down.” Ink searched across the top floor. I was no fucking empath, but I could feel the rage ooze out of his pores. Part of me was unsure what to expect once we did find Slither. Ink’s anger ran too deep, and once he got his hands on this fucktard, there would be no stopping him. But the problem was, I wanted my own pound of flesh. Truth be told, I thought every King, and now Crow as well, wanted a piece of Slither.
We ran down the hall, the noise and chaos of the war downstairs slowly disappearing into the background.
Ink stilled as he stared at all the doors. “Fucker has to be here somewhere.”
I rushed up to the first door on the left. “We’ll break down every fucking door if we have to.” I reared back and kicked the door. Ink joined, and we had it in splinters within seconds. We broke door after door, but Slither wasn’t in any of the rooms.
