by Esme Devlin
Impossible.
My heart rattles in my ears. My palms become moist. Goosebumps prickle at my arms.
We reach a room, if you could call it that. Maybe a cave would be better, but there are doors leading off in all directions, not just holes, actual wooden doors.
“What is this place?” Stevie asks.
Shaun shrugs. “You were both so desperate to know, so we’re showing you.”
“It’s a mine,” Calvin says, looking around the room. “Hundreds of these, connected by shafts, tunnels, passages.”
“The coal pits aren’t anywhere near here,” Stevie replies.
“Who said it was a coal mine?” Shaun asks.
“What other mine could it be?”
“It’s a diamond mine,” Calvin says.
Just like that. All the secrecy, all the lies, all the deceit. I look down at the ring on my finger and wonder if this is where it came from.
“Bullshit,” Stevie says. “There aren’t any diamond mines in Scotland.”
“None on record,” he tells her. “And we like to keep it that way. You aren’t the first people to discover the secret, though.”
“Do you want to know what happened to those people?” Shaun asks, his voice cold.
I shake my head. I don’t want to know.
“Follow me,” Calvin says, opening one of the doors.
I don’t want to follow. I’ve followed enough. I drag my heels in the dirt but Shaun just pulls me forward, his grip on my wrist so tight I fear he might break it.
Stevie grabs a hold of my free arm and tries to pull me back. “Fuck! Come on, Lace,” she screams. She wants to run. She’s not stupid.
I jerk my arm, trying to rip it free from his hand but it’s clamped around me, his grip solid. Calvin doubles back and takes a hold of Stevie’s neck with one hand, the lamp swinging precariously in the other one.
And just like that, she drops my arm, and the pair of us are forced forward through the door and down another passage, this one narrower than the first.
I’m panting from the struggle, I close my eyes because I can’t fucking see where I’m going anyway — and I don’t want to see.
I just want to get it over with.
We reach a room and they force us against the wall, hard jagged rock that’s moist to the touch and glistening in the glow of the lamp.
Shaun clamps a shackle to my hand, so quick I barely have time to process what is happening.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
We’re screaming now, screaming and kicking and thrashing but it’s pointless. Their lamps rest on the floor and they use both hands to restrain us, forcing the clamps closed around our wrists and bending down to get our ankles.
I look along the wall, and see a row of the same shackles all along, as far as the light touches, each pair getting smaller than the last one until they’re so small they would fit a child.
A child.
I feel lightheaded, like I can’t get enough oxygen into my system, the same as I felt when I woke up chained to his basement.
The fight is useless. My body goes limp. Defeat weighs down on my head just as heavy as the metal clamps around my wrists.
They stand back, admiring their work and I hate him. I don’t think I’ve ever hated someone so much in my life before.
I ran from my dad.
I ran from Liam.
I ran straight into the arms of a fucking monster.
Do I really hate him, though? I look at the ground because I can’t focus on hating him when I’m looking at him. I try to summon it up inside me.
He deserves my hatred.
“We don’t know anything,” Stevie says.
But we do. We know everything now. That’s why he won’t kill McGuiness. That’s why everyone who’s someone on this town is in on it. That’s why they own the whole town and everyone and everything in it.
It all makes sense now. He tried to go through me to run my dad out of town, because my dad would have turned McGuiness’s company around. My dad would have ruined all their efforts.
He can’t kill Liam or his dad, even after what they did. If they kill them, the estate just goes to the next in line. They want to buy it. They want to own the whole town, and the diamonds that sit in the mines under it.
McGuiness is the only thing that stands in their way.
“This whole place would be underwater if it wasn’t for the pumps,” Shaun says.
I swallow the lump in my throat. It’s just a threat.
He made a promise.
“Do you know how long it takes to flood a mine when it’s being decommissioned?” Calvin asks Stevie.
She shakes her head.
“Months,” he replies. “But a single chamber? If you turn the pumps off, maybe a day?”
“They would always be left for a week before they were switched back on, just to be sure,” Shaun adds.
“Terrible for production, but it’s kinda poetic, don’t you think?” Calvin says.
I think I might throw up.
“We’re not going to tell anyone,” I say through a sob.
“Course you’re not, princess.” Shaun replies and his tone is so fucking gentle that waves of nausea roll through my body.
I can’t be sick. Not in front of them.
I try to think of something else. I take myself to a beach, one of the ones we visited on vacation when I was little. I take my head far, far away from this damp, stale cave full of death and decay.
“You said what happens would be up to us?” I tell him.
“It is. Which is an opportunity most people shackled to this wall don’t get. But since you happen to be my wife, and she’s about to become Calvin’s, you can think of this as your one and only chance to prove you weren’t going to shit on your promise to me.”
“You made promises too. You said you wouldn’t hurt a hair on my head,” I tell him, swallowing.
“I’m not going to,” he replies.
“What’s the choice?” Stevie cuts in. I glance over at her. She looks calmer than I feel.
“Join us,” Calvin tells her.
Join them?
“Done,” she says.
He starts laughing, and Shaun chuckles too.
“This isn’t one of those times where you tell us what we want to hear and then go back on your promise the second you’re out of here. When you’re in, you’re in for life… so I’d advise you to think carefully before you give us your answer.”
I do think. I try to think. How the fuck can I think when I don’t even know what I’m joining? What does that mean?
But I know what the alternative means. We say no, the pumps go off, and this place floods.
They do say drowning is the most peaceful way to die.
“What are we joining?” Stevie asks.
“We don’t have a name,” Shaun says with a shrug. “We don’t need one.”
“We’re simply people of this town, working together for the greater good of this town. Our laws, our rule, our government,” Calvin says.
“Our blood,” Shaun says. “Our money. Our agenda.”
“Once we have the land McGuiness owns, the whole town becomes ours. Things will be easier. We can be rid of the people who are in the dark, or against us. The only people we need to hide from are the government, and they take no interest in a small ex-mining town like ours, now the coal has dried up.” Calvin says.
“You’ll let my dad go?” I ask Shaun.
“Of course,” he replies.
“And what if we want to get out? What if we want to go to university and have a life and travel?” Stevie says.
“There is no getting out.”
That answer from Calvin doesn’t shock me as much as I thought it would. I think deep down, I’ve known for a while I wasn’t getting out of this place. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but I know I’ve been lying to myself.
Shaun isn’t someone you just walk away from.
“I’ll
do it,” Stevie tells him.
I look over at her, then at Calvin. His face breaks into a smile and he takes a few steps forward, closing the distance between them. He parts her thighs with his knee and yanks her head back with a fist in her hair, devouring her mouth.
I watch her whole body stiffen.
Then I swivel back to Shaun. He’s staring at me intently, like he’s trying to read my thoughts.
Choices. Decisions. Options.
Why do I always think I have them?
Will I ever get them?
I feel something inside me breaking down and I don’t know what it is.
My strength maybe? The will to fight?
Stevie’s doing it. She’s given up. I glance over at them again, he’s pulling at her skirt, trying to lift her leg up which is still shackled to the wall. He’s like an animal, a vicious savage who needs to devour her.
I remember when Shaun fucked me like that.
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
“I don’t want this,” I tell him.
He takes a step closer, slow and calculated.
“What part of it don’t you want?”
“None of it. All of it. I can’t be a doll, Shaun. I can’t be in a cage.”
He takes another step, his face softening. “Just say the word. I’ll give you everything you ever wanted. Everything you ever needed. If everything you want and need is inside the cage, then how can it be a cage? It’s a home.”
“It’s not a home when one person rules it.”
He chuckles. “I’ll make you the queen. The second you have my son, my dad loses everything, and I gain it all.”
“What do you mean?”
He takes another step, and now I can feel the warmth of his breath against my cheeks. “That’s just the way it works. My grandad passed it to him when my mum had me. I’ll pass it to my son when he has a son of his own. What do you want, Lacey?”
What do I want? I don’t know what I want. I’ve never known what I wanted. A home? Maybe. But not a cage. This feels like a cage.
“I wanted you,” I whisper the words because in my head, that will somehow make them less painful.
I wanted Shaun without all of this. Without the manipulation, the secrets.
Without the threats.
I wanted him.
I try to hate him, really I try. But summoning hate for Shaun is like collecting water with a sieve.
It’s like a candle in the fucking wind.
I do want a home. I want a family. I want to be wanted.
I want a love so deep that it drives me to edge of insanity.
I’m weak and I’m an addict, and the smell of him as he presses his body up against me reminds me how close I am to my next fix.
Maybe I’m just as mad as he is…
Chapter 20
SHAUN
“I wanted you, too.”
I whisper the words right into her ear and feel her whole body shiver next to me.
This is all so fucking fucked.
There are rules that must be followed. Rules that would break my heart. Rules that would break the promises I made to her.
But this isn’t about me, or her. This is about everyone. No one gets out.
I’m trying to keep her safe.
If you do the wrong thing for the right reasons, is it still wrong?
I wouldn’t have to think about any of that if she would just agree. It’s always been coming. This was her fate since the day she walked into this town and decided to fight instead of leave.
She was always going to join us, eventually.
Her threats towards me just sped up the process.
I told her from the start I would always do what she needed, and if chaining her to a wall and threatening her is the only way, then that’s what has to be done.
“I’m scared of you,” she says.
I swallow. She never used to be, and I told her that wasn’t smart.
“I’m scared of losing you,” I tell her.
It’s the truth.
“So why do you keep doing this?”
I look down at her, tilting her chin up with my finger. Her eyes are wet, her lips are parted.
“Because it’s the way it has to be. But it won’t always be like this. If you could see that, you’d say yes.”
“I said yes to you before. Too many times. And I’ve always ended up deeper in your web.”
I bend down and kiss her forehead. “Then make the web yours. Say the word. I’ll give you everything. I’ll make you a queen.”
She looks over at her friend, at my friend, at what they’re doing. My eyes drift over too and I see he’s released one of her legs. I pull her chin back over so she’s facing me. “Me and you. One team. One being.”
She swallows and sniffs, staring at me.
“Five.”
Sometimes she just needs a little push.
“Four.”
My legs go between hers, forcing them apart. She’s still staring. She sniffs again.
“Three…”
Does she need this is much as I do? I want to get lost inside her. I’m about to say two. It’s on the tip of my tongue.
She nods her head.
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” I warn her.
“I’ll join.”
A smile breaks across my face. She’s not smiling back, but that doesn’t matter.
“Good fucking girl.”
Good fucking girl and thank fucking fuck.
I would have broke the rules, for her I’d break the whole fucking world into pieces. But that would have been the death sentence for both of us, eventually.
No one gets out, not even me.
I exhale a breath for what feels like the first time tonight.
“Come here,” I say, but the words get lost somewhere down her throat. My fingers are in her hair, my body pushes hers hard up against the wall. She tries to lift her hands but they catch on the chains and I feel my cock pulse.
She’s helpless, so fucking helpless and it has me harder than I’ve ever been in my life.
Not because I want to hurt her.
I don’t want to hurt her. I want to be the one to save her.
I break the kiss, bending down to remove the clamps off her feet before crossing the room to find the backpack.
“Calvin,” I shout. He’s ball deep. “Calvin, it’s time.”
He turns around and looks at me, almost in a daze, and Stevie pants behind him trying to catch her breath while she fixes her skirt.
He walks over and I pass him a dagger. It’s a piece of art, one of only three in existence. Carved in bone and encrusted with some of the first diamonds ever found, it’s as sharp as a razor. It cuts through skin like butter.
One of them cut me, although I can’t remember it anymore.
I unsheathe my own blade, almost identical to the one I just gave Calvin, and Lacey catches a glimpse of it reflecting from the lamp.
“What are you doing?”
Her voice is panicked, but she tries to hide it, bless her.
“Just a wee nip. You’ll barely feel it tomorrow,” I assure her.
Her eyes go wide, and so do Stevie’s as Calvin storms back to her.
I approach, holding out my hand so she can see it. Then I take the blade and slice it right across my palm.
She shakes her head, but I’m already holding her hand in mine. I spread her little fingers out and watch her face as she squeezes her eyes closed. I make a cut, half the size of my own one, and then I clutch her hand in mine, pressing them both together.
“Forever,” I whisper. “You can’t break a blood promise.”
She opens her eyes and looks at me, and I wonder if the pain has cleared the fog in her head.
If it was fog that made her say yes then I don’t want it to go anywhere.
I drop the dagger at our feet and undo my trousers, taking my cock in one hand and squeezing my other hand around her smaller one. It sting
s but it’s not unbearable.
Not for me, at least.
I push myself inside her and then pull her up until her thighs wrap around me.
“It hurts,” she whispers.
“I know, princess,” I kiss her gently, lovingly, like I’m sorry. “I’m going to take the pain away.”
And that’s what I do, the only way I know how to.
I fuck her against that wall like we’re the same person. We’re not alone but you wouldn’t know it. There could be a thousand people behind us and I wouldn’t give a single solitary fuck.
My hand squeezes around hers and she moans into my mouth, her eyes pressed shut tightly, her tongue lazy, her hips grinding against me while I bring her to a place where the pain doesn’t matter.
My little princess.
Soon to be my queen.
I do my trousers up. She’s breathless, panting, staring at me like I’m her next meal.
I take the clamps off her wrists and she fixes her skirt. Then she does up the two buttons on her white shirt that popped out, leaving dark red smears of blood all over it.
She takes a step forward, wiping her mouth with the back of her bloody hand and making more mess than what she’s fixed.
Her eyes are locked on me.
She looks wild. She looks like she’s lost her mind.
Maybe we both have?
I should have seen it coming. I should have expected it, but I’m fucked, and I underestimated her.
She rears her hand back in a fist and swipes at me. She’d have cracked me right in the neck if I hadn’t corrected my position just in time.
I laugh, because I deserve it, but she looks unhappy that she missed my neck and caught my chest instead.
I barely even flinched.
“Again,” I tell her.
She does it again and I give her my arm this time.
“Again.”
She tries again, right in the stomach. I was already clenching — it’s a reflex. She’s hurting herself more than she’s hurting me, but if it makes her happy then whatever.
She keeps going, again and again. She was panting before from the fucking but now she’s breathless, gasping for air and her eyes her wet, her mascara running down her face and mixing with the smears of blood.
