Page 11 of Deadly Knight

After a final, pleased grin, he moves away. His steps disappear across the room, but I don’t stop staring at the glistening lines on my stomach to watch him leave. I’ve been branded inside and out. Abused. Violated. Whether he remains to watch me fall further apart doesn’t matter.

The warehouse’s door shuts, and a barrier crashes on top of me at the sound. With it, everything from today is unleashed. Every sense of pain, every tear shed, every happy moment from the afterparty. It feels like that party was days ago, but it was likely only a mere few hours. How many hours? How many hours did it take those sickos to shatter me? To make me go from a happily graduated eighteen-year-old to a rape victim?

In the background, Dimitri’s voice sounds distant. My shaking and rapid heartbeat makes it too hard to focus on anything else—him included. It’s as though I have water in my ears, muting noises.

Then the lights flick off, and my tears are concealed.

“Hey!” Dimitri yells.

My brain is running on one circuit, and it’s not even fear. Just a flurry of wondering. Questions roll through my head as I try to remain present and ask the most logical things I can think of.

Why are the lights off?

Why are we still here?

Have they finished with me?

Was that only round one of a very long night?

I can’t handle another round.

Steps come from my right, and I turn my head towards the sound. Dimitri shouts again, demanding to be released. I don’t think he realizes these steps are in the opposite direction from where the four men disappeared.

Someone else is here.

The steps pace closer to my side until scraping by my ear. I try to peer through the darkness and make out a shadow, a shape, an idea of who it is.

Another noise, and the black shape creeps closer. Whoever it is crouches beside me. Hot breath blows over my face as the person whispers in a volume so low, I’d think I imagined it if not for the way my body tenses.

He’s a mere breath. Like a ghost who’s there one second and gone the next, staying just long enough to haunt me into old regrets.

It’s a voice that teaches me an important life lesson: No action is too evil for true evil.

“Next time, take my money.”

And then he’s gone, his steps evaporating farther across the warehouse like he was never here to begin with.

But he was. I didn’t imagine it.

I also don’t imagine Dimitri’s tight grip on me as he’s somehow now free—presumably untied. He drops onto the mattress beside me and works the rope at my wrists and then my ankles, freeing me. He yanks off the cloth tied around my head before pulling me into his arms.

I’m splintered. Utterly and completely. Like a shooting star that’s lost its shine. A chess piece checkmated.

A woman ruined.

A fifth person was here,and though I have no idea where the hell they disappeared to, I assume he’s the one who suddenly frees me. When the rope around my wrists is sliced away, I can lean down and undo the rope attaching my ankles to the chair’s legs.

Despite the darkness still lingering, I lunge in the direction of the mattress to immediately remove her binds. A part of me cautions to go slowly and gently, to ease her quivers and ensure she knows it’s me touching her and notthem, but I want her out of the fucking ropes that helped make this entire thing possible.

Once she’s untied, she practically collapses in my lap. Or maybe I yank her to me. Either way, she’s slumped over me, her tears and sobs ravaging my insides.Moya dushaneeds everything and more, and for the first time ever, I’m helpless to provide.

Tell me what you need.It’s what I want to demand, but the words are lodged in my throat amongst the horror. I can’t do anything but hold her tightly. To keep her safe where she’ll never be taken again.

She was in my arms earlier and was taken. I didn’t protect her, so what makes now different?

Fuck.My head drops into her neck, and I breathe in her scent. Normally sweet, but now tainted bythemand this disgusting mattress. Before I realize what I’m doing, I wipe at her neck.

She can’t smell like them. Only her citrusy scent. Only me. Never them.