by Hazel Grace
Playtime.
Interrogation.
My fucked up torture games.
Regardless, I’m an asset to our group, B723. A secret government organization that only a handful of people know about.
A group of men that make sure the bad guys are six feet under. That the right person ends up in power to guide our country.
The unseen and unheard—that’s what we are.
“What the fuck do you want?” I leer as Bishop continues to stare me down.
“Screams,” he mutters. “Here? I don’t feel like killing a cop tonight.”
So...I forgot to gag her.
Rookie mistake. I’m a little overly emotional at the current moment; after all, my sister is the topic of why we’re here.
I needed a fast outlet—hence the pretty blonde.
Another blubber of anguish comes from her, but I ignore it.
“Then don’t,” I counter. “I’ll gag her and—“
“Too late.” His hand shoots out to grab my bicep. “She already blew our cover. Mills is downstairs checking the police scanner and—“
“How much more information do you want to spill in front of my victim, asshole?” I rip myself out of his grasp. “Get. Out.”
“She’s going to die anyway, isn’t she?” A pained and low squeal sounds on the floor, and the blonde is attempting to curl up into a ball in discomfort, fear—I don’t fucking know. Don’t care.
I hit him with an exasperated look because she’s going to do one of two things, depending on how smart she is.
One, she’s going to try to negotiate her fucking life for information. Two, she’s going to do what she’s doing now and plead innocence while hoping I believe her.
Needless to say, once you’re in my clutches, you don’t go home.
I took her for a reason.
I viewed her blonde hair glinting in the sun, making her look like a fucking entity that just crashed down to Earth.
One that was doing very unruly things to someone essential to me.
And little does the alluring celestial being know I’m a monster, not from the pits of hell because that shit is overrated, but from the depths of blackness.
I swallow things whole, never to be seen again.
She won’t be basking in the sun anytime soon now that I’ve cast my shadow over her.
“Please,” she begs for the millionth fucking time. “I promise I don’t know anything.”
“Calm down,” Bishop voices with sternness in his tone. “We’re going to go for a little ride.”
I perk a brow because I’m not done, and he’s not going to make me do any fucking thing right now.
Cocking his head to the side like a father who’s waiting for me to do what I’m told, I steal one final glance at my soon-to-be fatality that I, unfortunately, want to hate-fuck every ninety seconds.
Blood soaks through her jeans, and excitement instantaneously races through me.
I want to finish this.
I want to kill her with everything that I have in me right now.
The urge hasn’t been this strong in a long time. I’ve calmed down quite a bit from Reagan’s appeals and because I knew it was an addiction that I had to break at one point or another. I couldn’t be a sixty-year-old trying my match with someone twice as young just to get my ass kicked or killed. I’d like to leave with a shard of pride when I stop this charade.
However, I love screams.
Their submission.
That I have all the power in any situation like this. That no one can take from me anymore because I took control before they could do anything else.
But this time, it’s so personal and hits too close to home that a simple knife to the leg and waterboarding this woman is barely scratching the surface. It’s not chipping any of my uneasiness away.
My parents and two younger sisters were murdered when I reached the tender age of eight. I spent sleepless nights in the streets where I became an orphan overnight, all because a man in a suit wanted to annihilate a whole town.
He took my entire world and literally burned it into ashes.
Never again—ever.
I’ll obliterate this woman to gain any peace of mind before I let her go back and try again.
Following Bishop, he turns his back on her and faces the windowless walls. “We need to go. I’m not fucking with any pigs, and that scream could’ve woken the dead. We got minutes until a patrol car gets here, finds our cars, and then we’re stuck with a few more problems.”
“This neighborhood is used to constant noise,” I retort. “There’s no—“
“The pigs are on their way.” Mills’s voice chants yards away from the stairwell. He gestures with his hand for us to go, but I remain still.
Bishop scoffs, disappointed as he shakes his head. “You’re an idiot. You know better than this, and you don’t—”
“Go fuck yourself,” I sneer. “I didn’t ask you to join in this bullshit.”
“And it’s technically not on our list of shit to do but—” He lifts his massive shoulders.”—here we are.” I take a step in his direction.
He’s right, I’m wrong.
Still doesn’t do anything to stop my need to swing on him.
Thing is—I can’t.
I won’t.
Bishop and I go way back to my early days at B723. He took me under his wing and screwed my head on straight. Became a piece of my second family, which doesn’t help with the craving of my fist wanting to meet his face.
However, I’ll restrain myself on this occasion because we literally don’t have any time to lose.
“Load her up,” I tell Mills. “I’ll take care of the rest.” Unlike Bishop, he does as I ask without any guff or bitching.
Her delicate moans and weak requests for Mills to help her doesn’t hit any piece of my anatomy.
She may look sweet and innocent. Something a man like me might like to break one night, drunk on tequila and lust while introducing her to all the different ways I could make her come.
But we know what this is—both of us.
Being in this business, she’s aware of what happens when you get caught—the fifty-fifty chance of making it out alive.
But with all I’ve done for this job, I’ve got no chance of getting out unharmed.
Unfortunately, blondie and I won’t have that revenge fuck. I’d strangle her before I got the chance to come.
And I don’t fuck dead people or little bitches who attempt to kill mothers, sisters, and my whole entire existence.
Cracking my eyes open, the ache is what registers first. Then my death-grip on my newly discovered weapon I confiscated early. Both are the same, and where I left them before I involuntarily fell asleep or passed out from the agony of what is now my reality.
But the man who wounded me, he wasn’t sitting in front of me when I drifted off and away like he is now.
The same intensity is glossed over his eyes as my captor hunches over the back of a chair, inhaling on a cigarette while studying me intently.
Like a predator, debating if he can take me.
He can.
I’ve never hit anyone in my life. Never sparred in an argument or thrown punches at someone.
And under his intense stare, every breath of mine is strained, attempting to contain and control the distress my frame is alluding to.
Emric.
Now that I know his name, it gives me something to call my anxiety and the numbness that pricks and stings at my body.
If looks could maim and kill, he would have me on life support right now.
Tightening the grip on the broken broomstick that I found when one of his accomplices carried me down to this damp and old basement, I attempt to push myself closer to the cool wall behind me.
He’s a few feet away, filling the space with apprehension while my body is on high alert. He’s the nuclear bomb, and I’m trying to get out of town while he has it on lockdown.
His full frame is in
timidating, waiting for me to make a move. He’s still in the same clothes I saw him in last time, so I assume it’s the same day since he flung his metal blade into me and delivered the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt in my life.
“You think that stick is going to protect you, sweetheart?” One of his brows lifts in earnest. As if I’m truly serious to consider that this pathetic piece of wood is going to keep him away from me.
The answer is not exactly, but I feel a little safer with it in my hand,
Tilting his head to the side, he waits for a response I don’t have because it’s stupid. He would break this thing in half with one swift crack over his knee and probably stab me again with it.
Regardless, I’m aware my knuckles are white from clutching onto it so tightly, but I’m not loosening my grip. He can taunt me all he wants with his dumb questions, but it’s all I have, and it’s mine now.
“I need…to go to the hospital,” I mutter, keeping his gaze and trying to forget what he’s done so far.
As if that’s ever going to happen.
I dare not look at my wound, although it’s numbing and throbbing at the same time. I’m not the sort of person that can stomach blood, let alone tend to a knife wound.
I’m that wimp who can barely tolerate a spider, let alone an open gash that needs stitches.
But the knife would have to come out first.
Yes, it’s still there.
The man who’s called Mills was careful while carrying me inside this house. I thanked him by screaming at the top of my lungs the moment he moved me from the backseat of the SUV we drove in which earned me a scowl, angry scolding, and the threat of tossing me down the stairs on my ass.
The end of the cigarette that’s now between Emric’s fingers burns red as he pulls in for another inhale. And when he blows out the smoke, it’s blatantly done in my direction, wafting of skunk.
He’s smoking weed and getting high while I’m bleeding out on the dirty floor of a random basement.
Emerging from his chair, Emric kicks it to the side, the deafening screech of the wood scraping at my already battered nerves.
He towers over me, which isn’t the ideal situation because I appear like prey again. He draws the air that I can inhale and siphons that away from me too especially when he takes a menacing step forward.
Gaping down at me, he watches me stare up at him.
No cocky smirk or amusement lines his features. The singular emotion that stands out, however, is hatred that I’ve already become acquainted with.
The only thing I’ve learned about him or have received.
“Swing while you have a chance,” he provokes, taking another step so that, if I did try to hit him with it, I could reach.
“What do...I get if I don’t miss?”
Shut up, Stormi.
“You’re not going to get a cookie, but I can make your death a tad bit quicker for the effort.”
My whole body tenses at his monotone words and the fact that nothing has changed.
I’m nobody to him.
A human life that has the similarity of a rock. You can throw it, skip it, paint it red, it’s still just a rock.
A thing.
I’m no match to his brute strength or the crimes that he thinks I’ve committed.
He’s out for evident revenge and someone to point the finger at, but he has the wrong person.
I’m the girl that draws hearts on pieces of paper when I get bored and read books when there’s nothing to do at the library. The closest I’ve ever come to harming someone was the one time I stepped on the neighbor’s cat.
Other than that, I’m a damn lamb about to get sacrificed for the sins of another.
And the frightening part of Emric’s promise is that he looks like a killer. His tattoos give him an “I like pain” vibe because why would someone get inked on the side of their neck?
A psychopath.
He probably lifts dead people instead of iron weights with the size of his muscles. That and the fact that stabbing a person and drowning them doesn’t phase him at all. He could strangle a giant with his forearms, poke your eyes out with his thickset fingers, and pummel you into the cement with his stocky shins.
He is the big, evil monster that came out of the closet and eventually caught me off guard. Except I won’t be waking up from this nightmare. It’ll end with me dead without getting out of Oakdale and finally doing something with my life when I get my degree.
“I don’t understand...what you think I did,” I manage to gradually push through my lips. “But I didn’t hurt anyone. I don’t have...” I choke on my next choice of words.
I don’t have friends.
Besides the cute guy who gives me a smile from time to time when he comes to study at the library or the girl who asks me if I have an extra hair tie—that’s about it.
Emric advances closer. “Do you have a twin?” I slowly shake my head as I identify where this conversation is going—nowhere. “Then I’d say my twenty-twenty vision is still pretty accurate.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” I counter quickly. “I didn’t hurt anyone. Do I look like I could do such a thing?” A soft gasp breaks from my lips as both of his legs stand on either side of me.
Slowly, he begins to lower himself, descending over me and, while my worry is that he’s going to touch the blade residing in my flesh, I fear he’ll do something else.
His scent encircles my space. It’s not a cigarette that he’s smoking but a blunt. The skunk-like smell hitting my nostrils as he pinches it between his lips and carries itself into my clean air.
I hate him even more now.
“When are you going to start talking? I’m not a patient man—” He dares to steal a look at my leg. “—as you can see.”
“I already...told you.” My voice still sounds broken and weak.
As much as I’d love it, I can’t be cocky and self-assured like him right at this moment. The mocking self-assurance he illuminates because I bet if the tables were turned, he’d still be acting the way he is now.
Brave.
Confident.
A man of so many words, but when he speaks, he sucks the whole room of its power.
He illustrates that nothing scares him.
A man’s man, one who has no heart or sympathy for those around him.
And now I have the misfortune of being in his midst.
He nods at my severed broomstick, taking in a deep hit of his weed. “Aren’t you going to hit me with that thing?” My nostrils flare because my own body betrays me every time he’s around.
Fear is a powerful entity that just takes over everything, and I’m not courageous. I’m a loyal and faithful servant to how it makes me feel.
Nothing clicks inside of me to get me to move or stick up for my own well- being in this situation that I shouldn’t even be in in the first place.
I’ve been manipulated and violated in so many ways that it’s pathetic to think that I’m used to it. I’ve permitted things to be how they are.
To let Hollis put his hands on me and not questioning Dad when he’d be gone for days doing whatever it was he did when I wasn’t even six-years-old—
“Where is my father?” I ask abruptly.
Not seeming too surprised with my question, he only blinks at me. “Not doing too hot.”
My eyes practically bulge from my head. “What?”
“You give me an answer to one of my questions...I’ll throw you something.”
“I don’t have answers. You have to believe me.” My knuckles tighten around the wooden rod. “Please. I—” My words are cut off as pain immediately shoots throughout my leg and right up into my gut.
A loud growl permeates past my dread as my chin bows into my chest, trying to get past the sudden burst of pain. My teeth rattle before I clench them tightly together to keep from losing consciousness in front of the monster before me.
My mouth opens, a silent scream wanting to rip through the air b
etween us, but nothing leaves.
Nothing ever makes its way out.
The spasm of pain ticks, drives, throbs everywhere, and dizziness starts to emerge through my head.
Then Emric’s hand begins to twist something, and I flick my eyes up to see it.
The blade that was sticking from my thigh for the last, at least, twenty-four hours, is now in front of my face—with my blood, fresh and caked along its jagged edges.
Bile churns in the empty pit of my stomach, and I’m going to throw up.
I know it.
And if I do, I’ll be in for another round of hell on Earth with the man before me.
Prompting myself to swiftly move before I can think anymore about it, I reach for the blanket that Mills brought down to me. My hands bump into Emric’s leg, trying to insert pressure on the wound, but he doesn’t withdraw a muscle to get out of my way.
I need to stop the bleeding before it’s uncontrollable. My imagination is already picturing it pouring out of me like lava erupting out of a volcano.
Pulling my leg closer to me, I clamp my eyes shut at the agony, attempting to block it out. Emric remains grounded to his spot, ever the looming nuisance.
“Did I mention how beautiful you were?” My eyes fly open, watching him watch me.
My face twists at his sentiment, gentle off his lips, and…am I losing my mind down here?
Did he just compliment me after yanking the knife out that he thrust into my body to make my wound worse?
“It’s a damn shame that I’m going to have to fuck your face up.”
My jaw tightens to keep unwanted tears from shedding because he might as well just slap me in the face again.
“Move,” I rumble, trying my best to ignore that he’s blood-thirsty for retribution, and I’m the main course.
“For what?”
“I need to tighten this blanket around my leg, or you and I won’t be having any sort of conversation at all.”
Nothing.
I don’t expect him to care, but I do, and I require it still attached to my body.
“Now.”
Emric’s lips slowly heave into a perilous smirk. “I knew you weren’t as innocent and sweet as you appeared to be.”
Without prying his gaze from me, he rips the sock off my foot and lets it float aimlessly in the air by the tip of his index finger.
