The Book of Red: ISAK & Red and bonus prequel Used

by Cari Silverwood

  Massive blood loss. Cardiac arrest.

  The knife had gone up under his ribs and reached precisely where I’d aimed. His heart. Surprising he had one. Emotions were for suckers. Hate though, a little hate leaked in. I kicked him in the face after I stole his gun. Stripped the holster from him quickly, extracted the knife, went through the door and down, out onto the sand.

  Wait.

  Maybe I should drag his body out of the lighted indoors?

  I dithered, staring back up the steps. And what about water and food?

  Sand under my feet. Freedom under my feet. Dithering...not the best way to act. I bolted for the boat and, grunting, heaving, pushed it out into the water then leapt in. The waves were small. Even the weather wanted me to go.

  Then fucking go.

  My calm had fled.

  I seated the oars and began to row. Getting out through the breaking waves wasn’t easy, and using the motor would’ve been better if not for the noise. I managed. A breeze tousled my sweaty hair. Only a few lights were on at the mansion. He’d return by car, most likely. I’d seen no headlights signaling his return. I should keep watch for that.

  I should try to get a half mile out? The motor would take me a lot further, fast, but would be loud. I’d need to judge when to use it, then head back to land at a wide angle, and find what? How would I leave this country?

  I paused to try to figure that out, with my head in my hands. One thing at a time. Planning used to be a strong suit but I was a little messed up. With more distance from him, I’d improve, wouldn’t I?

  After I seemed to have rowed a fair distance, I pointed the boat squarely into the waves to give myself time to start the motor.

  Waves slapped the underside, splashing spray into the air, onto my face, arms. The moon was rising, sending a dribble of light over the sea. The villa lights showed but I’d heard no sirens. Headlights had shone there but I couldn’t tell who they’d been or if they’d stopped at the villa.

  They’d call the police when they found Vitor.

  Unless Isak told them not to.

  It must be nine or ten by now.

  The motor... A big wave slapped the boat’s bow up then down.

  The air rang with a high pitched background whine that terminated in a need.

  He’d given me some hidden command.

  I froze, clutching the sides of the boat with claw-hands.

  I knew what was wanted. At the bow was a compartment. The moon couldn’t reach there and it lay in shadow.

  Water sloshed under my feet as I moved forward, dreading, ice and heat flushing my veins. He’d put something there, and I had to see what it was.

  Had to. I shouldn’t. Eyes wide, heart thumping...I reached.

  I flicked open the catch, opened the little compartment door. There sat a device. Sealed in a plastic bag to protect it.

  He’d left it for me.

  He knew I would be here. My hand shook but I picked it up. Weighty.

  It fitted into my palm and I pressed the arrow-shaped play button.

  What did I tell you? Follow my rules. Don’t try to thwart me or there will be suffering. Immense suffering. You’ve been bad, Red. Come back to me and I will show you how bad.

  “Then I shouldn’t come back,” I whispered, as if he were here beside me.

  Come back.

  I jumped. Fuck. Tears sprang. I dropped the device into my lap, and it almost slid into the water at the bottom of the boat, except I caught it, saved it. If it fell, he’d be gone. No voice. My fingers wouldn’t let go. Whimpering, I pressed it hard to my forehead.

  A recording but he knew me well.

  Now, Red.

  Mouth trembling, face twitching with muscle tics, I coughed. I swiped my face with my forearm, then pulled up my shirt and wiped off the sweat and spray and tears, again. Don’t do this. Shhh. Shhh.

  I very firmly told myself not to do this, again, then I started the motor in two tries, turned the boat, and headed back, jarring over the small waves, with the villa dead ahead in my line of sight.

  He’d known I’d do this, had planned this.

  He wanted me to try to get away. Why?

  Why?

  To break that so-called agreement between us? An agreement he’d set up.

  Maybe.

  Why?

  He could’ve done anything to me anyway, couldn’t he?

  Why, rattled through my brain as I drew close to the villa.

  Because...doing this had let the monster have fun.

  He’d turned on floodlights so I could see...them. I passed the first one floating in the sea. The first upturned white face, though she rolled as I chugged past, her clothes swirling, a wave washing over her.

  The girl with the chestnut hair. No blood coiled in or stained the water.

  Perhaps she’d drowned.

  Perhaps an accident. Knew it wasn’t.

  I motored further, crunching the bow into the sand, and found three wallowing near the shore. All dead, drowned or strangled or poisoned, what did it matter how it had been done?

  I heard him walk up behind me as I stood staring, mind blown by grief.

  “What did you do?” I choked, blinded by tears.

  “This is the suffering.”

  “What did you do?” I demanded, if quietly.

  “They volunteered, as you will. Recorded a video, wrote their little notes, and walked into the sea.”

  “I won’t.”

  But I was lying, wasn’t I.

  “Tsk. You’ll do whatever I ask. You know that.” He put his hands to my shoulders. “Go out there and talk to them. Don’t kill yourself. See what you’ve done, this night.”

  The cruelest thing he could have asked me to do, was this.

  I couldn’t say no. Of course I couldn’t. I waded out and kneeled in the small surf, among the bodies. The sting from my wounds faded in, out.

  There were five in all. All of the girls were gone.

  They washed against me.

  Trailing hands, swimming hair.

  Mouths sucking on my skin as their faces rubbed past my thighs.

  Suffering, it was this.

  The young girl mocked me most.

  Small fish nibbled on them, scales flashing in light.

  Crabs found the fingers of the one who strayed closest, her eaten hand delicately feeling the sand on the bottom. Loosened pieces of her skin eroded and washed away, drifting in the froth and eddies.

  What did you do, Red?

  I wept forever. Though warm and soft, the ocean drained everything of use from me, my hard-fought righteousness, my worth, my sanity, and left me empty.

  And he came and took something from inside me, from my head, rummaged inside me and took.

  “There. Wasn’t hard. I have my answer now, broken girl. My extra broken girl.”

  He kissed my nape and swept me up. Water dribbled and dripped from my swaying arm and hand. Down below were his feet and sand. I spewed water and watched it fall away in a trail as we walked.

  Upside down, I watched the girls get further and further away then I shut out the world.

  Warmth.

  His eyes bored in from above and fingers hooked at my mouth, probing teeth, tongue. “Don’t die on me, Red. I can make more of you but I like you. A lot.”

  Then he wrapped me in blankets on the floor. Cocooned in pain.

  “And I really have to fuck you once before you die.”

  His boots walked away.

  Silence. I shut my eyes again.

  CHAPTER 13

  Eventually he dragged me across the floor, fed me something, and had me crawl into his suitcase. My hair was tied back. Told to kneel, I was strapped into cuffs and their chains were threaded into braces inside the case. My head was strapped to the upright side of the case. Then he closed the suitcase to the point where only a slit of light showed. I whimpered as he drew the chains tight, locking them down, holding me in place, at wrists and ankles, thighs and stomach.

 
“Hold your breath, girl.”

  The case was zippered and clicked shut, the darkness made absolute.

  When I screamed for air, he opened the hole near my mouth. Angling my eyes downward, I saw the light, saw it reflect off my hands.

  “Please –”

  “Shhh. No talking. This is my command.”

  But not his will. I could feel no absolute need. He expected obedience of my own volition.

  “You will not scream. You will be good. You will have air and light when needed. You will submit to what I do. And for now, it is this.”

  He left me, walked.

  I heard him fumble at the other end of the case and saw new light wash in. He’d opened another hole. Without warning, his cock shoved into me and I heard him grunt.

  “Ahhh. You feel good, Red. Fucking good. A pity he isn’t in me any more to enjoy you.”

  He?

  A moment more and I was beyond thinking.

  The stretch and occupation of my pussy was enough to flood my body with heat, to make me gasp and strain backward toward that hole, to help his cock fuck me deeper. Wetness already, stuck the back of my thighs to the suitcase. The squelch as he jammed into a moistened hole echoed inside the case. My mouth stayed wide, my eyes snapped open then closed, as the feeling of a mesmer possessing me took hold.

  Nothing I could do. My nipples hardened instantly, my breasts swayed in time to his fucking, and drool ran down my chin onto the harness cradling my jaw. Nirvana had nothing on this animal shoving his dick into me.

  His thrusts rocked the case, shifting it across the floor until it wedged into a wall. The bang as the case hit triggered me into orgasm, though not he. Isak fucked me for far longer. When at last he ceased and came, his cum filling me and joining the rest of the fluid running down my thighs, I was left moaning, with my head shoved into the front of the case. My legs felt weak and I would have collapsed if not for the straps.

  His disgusting orchestration of my lust horrified me, for I was awake to everything he’d done. Worse than that was his last whisper through the front hole.

  “I’m going to put a sign on this that says SLUT FOR USE and invite my friends to use you before we leave on our world trip. A going-away surprise for you, Red. I thought you’d like it. This is going to be fun.”

  He’d killed them all though, burned away his entire set-up with that terrible deed. Except me.

  “Why?” I pleaded. Had to know. “I thought you were selling me?”

  Please, please, sell me.

  “Not me. Him. I’m not Isak. I’m the other one. You set me loose, Red, my darling girl. You gave me the key and now I can break and use any woman I want to.”

  If I hadn’t tried to escape, I’d have been with someone else. Then the girls wouldn’t have died. Except he’d left that recording in the boat...which meant he’d predicted my escape.

  Did he plant that idea in me? Did he never mean to sell me?

  If I was a key, I’d made this happen. I should never have come here. I’d made him kill the girls. This was all my fault.

  All of it.

  Every death was on me, and each and every terrible thing he did from now on.

  Maybe I should’ve cried more tears but I had no more tears to give. So tired. I closed my eyes and let the straps take my weight.

  Then he clipped the holes shut and towed the case across the floor, whistling as he went, and the wheels rolled and went round and round.

  ISAK & Red

  Burn out the bad to get to the good.

  Red belongs to Isak. She has survived and become his talisman, reminding him of what he once was – a vaguely good and normal man – even as he drags her around the world, using her.

  He still has the big suitcase and sometimes he needs to see his toy in there.

  Holding her hand will never make Red forget the killings, the depravity, the madness. Can a monster ever turn back into a man?

  He must be f***ing joking.

  Contains dark themes, kink, a HEA, and graphic sex.

  Triggers guaranteed.

  The continuing story of Isak and Red from “Used”.

  CHAPTER 1

  ISAK

  I wasn’t sure what he wanted, but it probably meant I was going to have to kill him.

  This man, this weaselly, goatee-bearded man, was supposed to bring me my suitcase, get paid, and leave me the fuck alone. Instead, he was sitting at my little white table in this second-rate, beachside resort, trying to extort some sort of information or promise.

  He could have left the suitcase somewhere and arranged a drop-off time so I could pay him. That would have been simpler and less dangerous – for him.

  “So you see, I’ve heard things. Got friends in Brazil, Spain, who saw you this year. Helped you.” He clicked with his mouth, winked. “And after looking inside that suitcase, I can see it’s likely true.”

  Likely? He was not sure, but someone had noticed something. Let him go or kill him?

  When had I been careless, though perhaps it was fated? Travelling had risks, and sitting still was boring.

  I grunted, while over his shoulder I kept watching the bikini girls frolicking and gossiping in the pool. The lighting around the pool was good, and I could see the bounce of their tits, the joy in their faces as they told crazy stories and clinked those plastic glasses together. Their giggles had grown loud. They’d look good in my bed, or on my floor, leashed, collared, begging for me.

  The resort manager had come out once to tell them to stop drinking alcoholic beverages in the pool.

  I’d flicked an eyebrow upward, and the woman had stopped dead then walked in a small aimless circle, before returning to her office. Making women forget shit was the least of my abilities.

  “What do you call it? You can make girls do stuff for you that nobody else can? Yeah?”

  I didn’t even bother to shrug.

  “You know, like this one.” Sam or Frodo, or whatever his name was, pointed at Red where she lay near us, propped on her elbows and her belly on the sun lounge. Her red hair spread across her mostly bare back. The petite blue shorts showed off her superb ass. When bitten, licked, smelled, she had this indefinable essence of sex that no other female possessed. I assumed that perception was a me thing. Just me. I’d never figured out why.

  I both loved it and hated it.

  By now, she would hate me with the heat of a thousand, thousand suns.

  Her tits were nicely displayed in that clingy crop top. The main difference between her and the other girls? I owned her, down to the last hair on her mostly gone pubes, the dimple on her face, and the molecules of her DNA.

  I sipped my rum, listening to the tinkle of ice cubes and appreciating the cold where the square-shaped tumbler angled into my palm.

  “They tell me she climbs into that fucking great suitcase for you.” He waggled his eyebrows, leered. “And those holes, those straps, I seen them.”

  “Did you now.” The man was annoying. Even I heard the vast difference between my gravel-toned words and his bunny-rabbit voice. “Take the cash and go. Last chance.”

  He snorted, leaned back as if he was staying a while. “Hell, no. You don’t want the authorities to know about your illegal entry to the top end of Australia? Ducking under the radar in a small plane wasn’t cheap. You need friends here. Like me. You talk to me. I have connections.” He came in closer, rubbed together the thumb and fingers of one hand. “Money. Sex industry and… and trafficking. Fuck, the things we could do. We could make millions. No paying the sluts, just click your fingers—”

  I shoved back my chair and stood. “Not here. No talking here.” Then I walked away, hearing Red rise, glimpsed the sway of her lithe figure as she followed. The man’s chair screeched as the legs of it ran across the paving.

  “Okay! Wait.” He hissed and I guessed he’d knocked a shin on something. “Wait.”

  I let him catch up and paused near the edge of the pool. The three girls came over, water sloshing, eyes gl
eaming with dedication. I judged them all to be in their late teens to early twenties. Red bikini, white bikini, black bikini, and all the same fashion make, as if they shopped as a trio, too.

  This would not need words, or not many. The resort was nearly empty, and no one else was sitting out watching the stars or the women. It was just us, the asshole, and the girls. No CCTV either.

  “Where is the suitcase?” I had to have it, same as I had to keep Red.

  “In my Range Rover. Outside in the guest parking. Locked in.” He emphasized the last part.

  “Thanks.”

  “Not a worry, man. Now about this—”

  “Keys to the Rover?”

  He grinned, patted his pocket. “Look, I’ll give you it gratis, just talk to me. Okay?”

  “Sure. I can do that.” Silently, I mouthed drown him and toss up the keys to the girls.

  My face was turned away from weasel-man and in shadow. He never knew until they wrapped their girly hands about his ankles and dragged at him. Three buxom girls can drown a man… if they don’t mind using every bit of muscle and every bit of breath to accomplish the task. Sacrifice works wonders.

  I backed away so as not to get wet.

  His cellphone spilled from his hand and swooped to the bottom of the pool. I hadn’t noticed it, but the thing was best drowned. He was stupid enough to have been recording us.

  For a sliver of time, I considered making Red join in, to help hold him underwater. She was ex-CIA and could out-fight this giggling trio. But if she did this she might drown, and so…

  I would be rid of her.

  My eyes seemed filled with swarming black, my stance cold and monolithic.

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

  Could I?

  The keys landed on the paving beside my shoes, clinking, splattering water.

  I wasn’t touching the scene. This was an ongoing crime but watching was free. The man flapped at the water. His head lay beneath the surface, but an arm wrenched free. He connected a punch before the weight of the three women pulled him down. One of them screwed a fist into his mouth. The hair over his face swished as he struggled to shake her loose. Blood twirled outward.