Page 3 of Beyond Hate (Beyond #3)

London

T ime was weird when you were in a room with no windows.

Otto had come in wordlessly earlier and taken my face in his hands—I’d frozen under the touch, but he’d just dabbed antiseptic on the cut on my head, and gently pressed a bandage to my skin.

It took me longer than it should have to realize I’d relaxed in his hold, that my body was falling into the sensation of someone taking care of it for the first time in… a long time.

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes lingered on the cuts and bruises.

A myriad of emotions spilled through his catlike gaze, so fast I could barely follow them, too deep for me to understand.

I was still silently staring at him when his finger brushed against my split lip, and he searched my face for a moment before he stood and left again, ignoring the soft sound of the word please coming from my throat.

It was like he couldn’t hear me at all.

Or maybe it was just the fact that he didn’t care . I had to shove down the feeling that tried to overwhelm me—the odd sense of peace at having someone take care of me—and remind myself that he’d kidnapped me. He’d taken me off the street.

He wanted to hurt me.

After that, the only way I could tell something close to a day had passed was because they flipped the lights in the room off at night and left me alone with the sound of the chained man rattling metal against the walls in the darkness.

The other one on the bed was silent, watchful.

I tried to talk to him, but the dark look he shot me shut me up.

His angry demeanor didn’t stop him from whimpering when he dreamed, though. The sound of my soft crying added to the noise like some fucked-up duet that made it impossible to sleep.

By the time the lights flicked back on, I felt hollow. I’d kept expecting to wake up, to realize that this was impossible , and maybe Hudson was right. I was delusional. I wasn’t important enough for someone to watch, let alone kidnap.

I never thought I’d repeat his abuse like a mantra of comfort, but it didn’t matter anyway.

I was still chained up when two women came in with trays.

One had a syringe, and she injected the man on the wall with it.

Initially, nothing happened… then he gasped, his eyes flying wide and his body convulsing.

I didn’t know much, but I had a feeling whatever they’d given him wasn’t actually supposed to help.

He looked more alive, but the low sound of him begging them not to give him another shot told me maybe he didn’t want that at all.

Maybe dead was better.

The other tray had food, and she placed it in front of the man on the bed without a word as she walked away.

Neither of them looked at me.

At some point, I’d managed to pull myself up onto the bed that was obviously meant for me, hiding behind the paper-thin sheet they’d provided.

I wanted to be home beneath my weighted blanket, wrapped up in some mindless video or a book. I wanted to feel safe… but the thought of Hudson’s burning eyes and the way he’d hit me reminded me I probably wouldn’t have had that even if I wasn’t here.

He probably wasn’t going to report me missing , and I had no one else who would bother. Til would think I’d quit, and my coworkers would probably just assume I’d finally done what they’d been telling me to do all along and left Hudson for a better life.

No one would care that I was gone.

No one would care that I was here .

No one cared .

The door slid open as I thought it, and those pale green eyes instantly skipped over the other two men in the room to land on me. I froze, caught in his expression, wondering… if I stayed still enough… if I stayed quiet enough…

Would he stay away?

Yes, I’m going to hurt you.

He’d sounded so…

Excited about it.

“Breathe, London.” Otto’s voice came out smooth, and it took me a second to realize he had a tray in his hand. “It’s not your turn to bleed today.”

He moved until he was in front of me, sitting the tray he held on the edge of my bed.

It was hard to tear my gaze away from him long enough to see what was on it, and I was half afraid to look—if it was full of needles and blades, or other things meant for torture, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep a brave face.

The only reason I glanced away was because Otto was looking at me expectantly, and his gaze held more weight than I could handle. My eyes dropped.

It wasn’t torture instruments. It wasn’t needles.

It was food.

More than I’d had to eat in a while, if I was being honest with myself. Hudson hadn’t kept much in the apartment, and if he noticed me eating fast food, he always gave me shit.

I eyed it as though he’d laid out a trap in front of me, refusing to move. Refusing to speak. Refusing to…

“Breathe.” He said it again, and the command in his tone forced me to draw in a breath that shuddered all the way to the bottom of my lungs.

I felt dizzy as I pulled my knees up to my chest, wondering if I could hide behind them.

“You were never this scared before, you know? You were brave—strong. Even when you had every reason to be frightened, you always stood so tall.” As he spoke, Otto idly picked up a piece of fruit and offered it to me like I was some animal in a petting zoo.

I didn’t move to take it. I wasn’t getting caught up in him touching me again. If I’d fallen into some weird, fucked-up mindset when he’d tended to my cuts, I didn’t want to think how I’d react if I let him feed me.

“Come on, Nikki. You should eat.” His voice was deceptively soft.

“I don’t know you,” I whispered. If I said it enough, would he believe me? If I offered to find whoever he was looking for, would he let me go?

“You will.” He leaned in, bringing the grape closer until the coolness of it slid against my mouth. “Open up.”

When my lips pressed together reflexively, his eyes narrowed. The expression was only there for a second before it melted away, replaced by a smile that was so much worse .

“All right then.” Otto was delicate when he sat the grape on the tray. I watched cautiously as he stood, pulling a knife from somewhere beneath the black sweater he wore. He watched me as he did it.

“Don’t.” It was the only word I could manage to squeeze out around the terror building like tar in my lungs…

because this was it, wasn’t it? This was where the crazy psychopath who had been stalking me for weeks killed me.

This was where I got to feel all the pain that I’d earned over a lifetime of never being quite good enough. This was where…

He flashed me that empty smile as his eyes flicked between the other two men in the room.

If I could have, I would have used the chance while his back was turned to hide, but there was nowhere to go.

There was nothing to do but watch as he walked across the room—there was nothing I could do when he flipped the blade carefully in his hand as he turned to look back at me.

His eyes dropped to the untouched tray of food on my bed before he slammed the knife into the shoulder of the man chained to the wall.

I could feel the scream he let out tear all the way through my chest, burning misery and guilt into my soul.

I didn’t eat a fucking grape, and he’d stabbed a man for it.

“Otto.” The pained gasp came from the man we both watched now. “Otto, fuck. Please. I did it because she said I had to. We all did it because of our mother. You know how she was. I didn’t—” He screamed again as Otto pulled the blade from his shoulder and slid it into his thigh. “Otto, fuck .”

“Marco… shhh… I have a question. If you answer, maybe I’ll stop hurting you for now.”

Marco’s eyes went wide.

“Anything… anything . I already gave you bank info, but I can tell you where we hid shit. I’ll tell you—”

“What was Nikki’s favorite food?”

There was a moment where the only sound was labored breathing and the low, miserable whine that I realized was coming from the other man in the room, who was chained to the bed and watching the scene in front of us with haunted eyes.

How many times had he witnessed this before?

How many times had he seen Otto torturing the man chained to the wall?

“I—” Otto twisted the knife handle, and another scream ripped out of Marco’s chest, pulling my gaze back to the little show he was putting on. “Grapes. Fuck , grapes. The little asshole used to get caught stealing them all the time.”

Grapes.

I didn’t even like grapes.

It apparently didn’t matter. Otto’s pale eyes flashed back to me and he didn’t break his gaze as he twisted the knife again, tearing another scream from Marco.

And then again… and again… again, until the screams turned to retching, gurgling… begging.

He didn’t take his eyes off me as blood slowly sluiced down the body of the chained man and fell wetly to the floor… and it took me too long to realize what he wanted.

“Stop,” I gasped, my stomach churning, my body shivering from the sounds of misery coming out of the man. “Stop, stop… stop. Otto, please. I’m hungry, okay? I—” When I reached for the tray, he twisted the blade again, and I froze.

Of course.

Of course.

I dropped my hands to my lap and forced myself to swallow down the sob trying to claw its way up my throat as I opened my mouth and looked at him expectantly.

Otto smiled.

The knife still had blood on it when he made his way across the room and sat back down, but the hand he used to pick up the same damn grape I’d refused was clean.

The smile never left his face as he put it carefully between my lips, and the saccharine taste of it when I bit down was enough to make me sick.

I ended up eating half of the food on the plate before I had to beg Otto to stop, and when he stood, I grabbed his wrist. I’d fallen into an almost trancelike state under the weight of his stare, the delicate movement of his fingers, and the little hmms of approval that spilled from his throat when I opened my mouth.

My speaking sent splintered cracks along the serenity, and his moving broke it completely and reminded me that the room smelled like blood.

The contact of my skin against his made us both freeze; it felt like it was burning.

Each point where my fingers touched him scorched all the way down, twisting and writhing and trying to tear me apart from the inside out.

I could feel how much he hated me along every place we touched… but I still held on.

“Don’t hurt him any more because of me. I… I’m full. I can’t. I—”

His eyes narrowed as he twisted his hand, grabbing my wrist and yanking me onto my knees so my vision was suddenly swimming in a green sea of malice.

“Oh, Nikki. Everyone who gets hurt from here on out will be because of you. Do you understand? All of this is because of you. Everything I do is because of you.”

I was numb when he dropped me back to the bed, and silent as he picked up the tray and left the room.

All of this was because of me.

The man bleeding in the corner was bleeding because of me.

I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve this, but some part of me knew there was no way to get out of here.

No escape.

No hope.

Only the thought that tomorrow might be my day to bleed.