Page 69 of Bared Betrayal

“How the fuck am I supposed to look at you, Kallie? Huh? After what you’ve been through, you expect me to look at you and feel, what—nothing?”

“I don’t deserve your fucking pity, Gabriel. I don’t deserve anyone’s pity!”

“Of course, you do.”

“Stop,” I warn him, stepping backward, anger rising in my veins. “Just. Stop.” My heart is beating so fast, every beat is an ache that drums against my bones.

“You could have told me.”

“Told you what? That my sister and I got kidnapped by a serial rapist and a motherfucking psychopath?”

He wipes a palm down his face.

“That I couldn’t keep my little sister safe and was forced to watch him rape her, forced to listen to her screams?”

“Jesus,” he mutters, turning away from me as he roughs a hand through his hair.

“What else, Gabriel, huh? What else do you want to know? How about how I let that monster rape me without even trying to fight back?” More hot tears start streaming down my face. “How I begged him to hurt me, to take me, and when he couldn’t get hard for me, I would suck his filthy dick and pretend to love it because if I made him come, that meant my sister was safe for at least a short fucking while.”

“Kallie. Fuck!” Gabriel slams his fist into the wall, and I suck in a breath, closing my eyes as my heart pounded in my throat.

“But no matter what I did, how I obeyed him, did everything he asked of me, behaved like his perfect goddamn pet, he wanted her. He would always come back for her, and after…” I choke on my words as salty tears explode onto my tongue. “After a while, he just stopped hurting me. Stopped taking me to his fucking torture chamber because he—” I slam my palm over my mouth, sobbing into it. “Because he wanted her. He wanted to hurt her. Rape her over and fucking over again.”

Gabriel leans against the wall and slips down until he’s flat on his ass, knees pulled up, arms hanging over them.

I walk closer, anger and rage, pain and grief flooding me to a point where I can’t even breathe right. “I couldn’t keep my little sister safe from that monster. I couldn’t protect her. I had to listen to her screams, her pleas, her cries. But the worst part…” I say, a mix of snot and tears dripping over my lips. “The worst part was the silences. The times her screams would stop, because I didn’t know if those silences meant he finally killed her.”

“Stop!” Gabriel launches to his feet, his blue eyes blazing, yet shimmering with I can only guess is unshed tears of his own. “What about your cries? Your screams? Your pain?”

I stumble back, and he presses forward.

“What about your pleas, huh? All you’re talking about is her, what she went through. What about what you fucking went through?”

“I got saved!” I scream back at him. “She didn’t.”

“She got saved that day, too, Kallie.”

I let out a mocking laugh. “You think because they pulled Maya out of that hellhole with me, she was saved?” I scoff. “It shows you know nothing.”

“Then tell me.”

“No.” I press my palm against my temple. It hurts too much. Everything. The memories. “I can’t. No.”

“Kallie.” He grabs my shoulders, but I jerk free, my mind in chaos. Flashes. Screams. Dogs barking.

“The dogs,” I mumble, closing my eyes.

“What dogs? Kallie?”

My head starts to spin. My mind contorted. “The dogs…barking.”

“Kallie!”

Dogs.Is that dogs barking? I don’t remember hearing dogs ever since I woke up in this hellhole. Maybe it’s the TV playing. Maybe the monster is in a mood for a different type of entertainment today.

More barking resounds from outside, and for a single moment it sounds…real. Is there someone out there? No. That can’t be. There is no one out there, and there is no hope. I can’t allow myself to feel hope only to have to cracked open like a delicate eggshell.

Faraway voices start to trickle through, and I try to sit up straight, every bone in my body aching, shivering.