Page 22

Louhi

On the floor of my cell, I can feel myself breaking. Shattering within. I told myself I’d never splinter or collapse, but the price I’m paying is too steep, the burden too heavy.

It’s December, for fuck’s sake , and while I’d like to think that Mercer wouldn’t abandon me, reality is settling in. It doesn’t even matter what day it is in December, considering that my parents passed on the last day of November. “Before the anniversary,” he’d said.

It’s impossible to imagine that Mercer would intentionally doom me to death like this, so I have to surmise that he’s either dead or locked in a similar prison himself. Is he here?

Either way, I’m on my own now. He’s not coming, and there’s a crushing finality to the knowledge that I’m going to die here. Whether that’s today or six years from now is anyone’s guess.

I’ll never drive a car again, get on a flight, boil water to make pasta, paint my nails, or apply my makeup. Damn, I’ll even miss my next round of Botox. All the seemingly mundane, inconsequential things you do in a day that you never think twice about. I’ll never again do any of them. Fuck, I’ll never have the opportunity to breathe in the scent of fresh flowers or eucalyptus again. I only have my memory of those things, and I know that will eventually fade. I’ll never relive the feeling of slipping on my favorite pair of jeans or tasting the sparkly bubbles of crisp champagne buzzing along my tongue at a cocktail party while I prance around in a slinky dress and flirt with attractive strangers. I’ll never dance my heart out in the middle of my living room while I sip a glass of wine, or head-bang in the mosh pit of a metal concert. I’ll never skip among autumn leaves or feel the frigid winter air against my cheeks as I walk down the street.

I’ll never see Finland again .

At this point, I’m standing at the mouth of Hell, banging on the doors, begging to be let inside. Fucking take me already. Anywhere, even Hell’s inferno, is better than being here.

I’m crying, full-blown weeping as I sort through the things I’ll never experience again. My silent sobs are wracking my body as I hear footsteps approaching. Why couldn’t this be one of those moments when they choose to leave me alone in this cell to rot in peace?

Dipping my face inside the collar of my shirt, I wipe at my face, and for once I’m grateful for the dim lighting in this tiny rectangular concrete box.

Unyielding music masks the sound of footsteps until they’re standing before my door. When I lift my head, Digs is the one that appears through the bars, holding a tray of more foul food, cocking his head to the side as if he’s trying to discern what might be upsetting me, but I remain silent.

Instead of sliding the food through the slot, he opens the door to my cage and steps inside. I push to a sitting position as he squats down in front of me, setting the tray to the side. His eyes narrow as he studies my face, his expression clouding with something indecipherable, but for a split second, I wonder if that might’ve been concern.

Seizing me by the jaw, his strong, deft fingers dig into the hollows of my cheeks. His voice is low and gruff, all traces of his earlier gentleness gone as he asserts, “Fight, Lou. If you have to, make me your villain, your personal demon, the enemy of your state. Go to war with me if you must, but you will not break like this. This is not how you fall apart.” As he tightens his grip, pain shoots through my mandible as I fight to clear my blurring vision. “I will be the only one to break you, and when I do, I promise to put you back together.”

He releases me and stalks from my cell, slamming the door shut behind him. I sit there for a moment, soaking up his words, and for the first time since my parents’ death, my heart begins to yawn open like a bear emerging from hibernation.

I don’t know how many days pass, but I’ve had enough time to attempt to climb out of the black hole I spiraled down. Hell obviously rejected the idea of accepting me—for now—and I’ve found myself again.

I need to fight for myself. I have to find freedom however I can. I can’t have done my skincare routine for the last time or had my final manicure. I haven’t had my last glass of Bordeaux or slice of truffle pizza. And I certainly haven’t killed my last victim. My time in this realm isn’t over, and if I need to make Digs my mortal enemy to break out of here myself, I will.

Yet again, I find myself in the torture room, my wrists hanging from the damn ceiling. They turned up the heat in this fucking room today, too. It’s hot, humid and bloody miserable. Sweat covers every inch of my body like a heavy blanket and slides down my bare skin in rivulets, pooling on the floor.

Since Honey Eyes is the one who collected me, surprise ripples through my bloodstream when Digs enters alone. He silently goes to the storage closet and comes back with a bin that he sets on the metal table I was strapped to and made to come. The heat notwithstanding, I shiver at the memory .

He wordlessly pulls the contents from the bin, arranging them on the table in full view.

I can do this. It wouldn’t be my first time being whipped, and I’ll survive this the same way.

Tossing the bin aside, he reaches for the chain whip and spins it around in his hand. The sinister clanking of the metal rods and rings that make up the foreboding weapon reverberate through my mind like a gong being struck. He saunters over to me, my naked body already on display from where he tore through my clothes…again. This guy has a serious thing for getting me naked. Under any other circumstance, I’d be all about that.

He glides the cold metal over my hot stomach, and I have to admit that the contrast in temperature feels good.

“Do you know what this is?”

“A chain whip.”

“Then you know that it moves so fast that the human eye rarely sees it coming until it’s too late.” He handles the metal weapon with care as he turns it over in his hand.

“Doesn’t everyone know that?” I parry, keeping my voice even. Of all my training, the whips were the worst to endure, and I have the scar to prove that.

He sighs. “No, Lou, not everyone knows that. How do you know that?”

I attempt to shrug, but my shoulders are screaming at me, and the attempted movement only further irritates them. “I know things.”

He gives me his back, returning to the table, and replaces the chain whip. The relief I feel is palpable. I loathe to consider the damage that would’ve inflicted on my body. Although, any repose I might’ve experienced is short-lived when he picks up the tightly wound snake whip, that’s aptly named with its tail coming to a point, mirroring that of a viper.

I keep my face a blank mask as he approaches me, but my mind is whirring at top speed as I focus on breathing through my nose steadily so I don’t make a noise. No, not that one. Put that one back. Turn around and return it to the bin. Don’t touch me with that.

Please.

He can’t read my mind because he unfurls the long whip and drags the single tail up my thigh and to my center. As he dances the twisted nylon over my skin, I start to sweat for reasons wholly unrelated to the heat.

Suddenly, the temperature in the room makes far too much sense, and I’m tempted to smile at this bastard’s creative depravity. When the whips inevitably break the skin, the sweat is going to sting like squeezing lemon juice into a wound. That’s a fresh layer of hell that I’ve already survived and never wanted to experience again.

“Do you know what this one is called?”

I swallow past the dryness in my throat and reply with as much conviviality as I can muster, which isn’t much, “A snake whip.”

When he slithers the whip over its tattooed namesake, I resist the urge to flinch.

To my palpable relief, he retreats to the table once more, and I realize that this is a game with rules I’m not clear on.

Seizing the cow whip, the split tails stick out of the end of its spiral like the forked tongue of a coiled reptile poised to strike, he faces me again. I swallow my apprehension as he circles me, trailing the tails over the small of my naked back.

“And this one?”

“A cow whip.”

A crack resounds half a second before it snaps across my arse. I grunt, absorbing the blow, as I buck in my restraints, my eyes shuttering and my skin stinging. He hits me twice more, and I’m seething by the time he retreats toward the table.

As he reaches for the next whip, I recognize the Russian cousin to the cat o’ nine tails and my eyes latch onto the rawhide embodiment of Medusa as I force my nerves to settle. I don’t miss the rock-hard package he’s carrying between his legs .

The twisted rawhide thongs glide over my inner thighs lightly, making me suck in a breath. It’s the calm before the storm because, in the next second, he cracks the whip and the tails fly, swatting violently against the tender flesh of my spread thighs.

“Recognize this one?”

“Knout,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

The thing about whips is that the small sonic boom that’s created is almost as torturous as the actual whipping itself. You hear the sound just long enough prior to the sting that you can stiffen in anticipation.

I’m a ball of tension when he batters my thighs and moves onto my lower abdomen. His strikes aren’t enough to break the skin, just enough to leave red welts. He circles around behind me, and I close my eyes as he begins to whip the backs of my thighs.

“Talk to me and this stops.”

I can’t do it, though. I can’t shatter under the weight of the pain and memories assaulting me. Besides, I don’t have anything to tell him. The violence wouldn’t end because he wouldn’t believe me, even if every word is true.

I cry out at one particularly painful blow, and he warns, “We’re just getting started, so you may as well get chatty.”

At his warning, I brace myself, and it’s a good thing because when the tails rage against my back, I don’t bother to stop the tears streaming down my cheeks, mixing with the salty perspiration dotting my skin.

He hits me several more times, each time harder, with fewer slots of recovery time between lashings. He’s broken the skin. I know that because I can feel the salty sting as beads of sweat drip into the wound. My body is on fire, and I shriek at his next hit.

I could handle the broken bones, waterboarding, and burning, along with everything else he’s chucked my way. None of it was pleasant , but I managed it. I don’t know if it’s because he’s whipping me so soon after my near breakdown, or if it’s because I truly loathe whippings, but I’m teetering on the edge of losing control.

As he hits me once more, the scream that leaves me sounds unfamiliar, like I’m attempting to purge myself of the agony.

“Scream for me, Lou. I love that sound. Make it again,” he purrs from behind me.

I do as I’m told—though the screams I make aren’t for him right now, they’re for me—as he hits me several more times. I’m about to go somewhere else, desperate for more savory memories of dinners at Conall’s place in Boston, having a Michelin star meal while his friends make me laugh, when the torment abruptly ends.

The whip clatters on the table as he tosses it onto the metal surface. Now that I’ve caught my breath, my dark soul claws its way to the surface, and I find solace in myself again.

“Quitting already? I thought playtime was just getting started?”

My teary gaze meets his shadowy thundercloud-colored irises. As he prowls over to me, I imagine he’s snarling underneath that mask.

With heavy breaths, his entire aura is coated in dark ferocity. He snatches me by the throat roughly, and growls, “Is that what you want? To play? You want to be a sadist’s little whore?”

I say nothing, keeping my eyes bright and locked on his, but his naughty words send a surge of wetness directly between my legs.

“Are you wet right now, Lou? Or do I need to use your blood as lube?”

Fuck, why is that turning me on?

He studies my face like it’s a treasure map with all the answers, and when I don’t answer, there’s amusement in his tone as he informs me, “Oh fuck, you want that. You want me to smear blood all over your cunt, don’t you? You want me to use my cock to coat your insides in your blood.”

My voice is small, but strong when I answer him honestly. “Yes.”

I have no idea if I’m going to die here before I have the chance to escape, so I have nothing to lose by telling him the truth. I may as well have some fun before I enter the next fiery realm.

Digs disappeared.

Apparently, all it took for him to leave me alone was to utter a single honest affirmation. He vanished into the storeroom, slamming the door shut behind him. It’s a long time before that door reopens and Honey Eyes slips into the room with me.

His golden irises flicker over my nude body as he approaches, carrying a new uniform set. The color of his eyes caramelizes, the hue deepening with lustful heat, but he says nothing as he releases me from my restraints. He scans the length of my body as I don the fresh uniform, carefully ignoring the way my new welts and cuts sting as they cleave open further. As I tug on the black cotton top, Honey Eyes’s attention lingers on the years-old scar left by a snake whip.

The upside to constantly having my uniform cut from my body is that the new uniforms keep me from becoming too dirty and disgusting. In addition to my disdain for concrete, I’m going to have a very real aversion to grime after I escape. And I am escaping—or at least attempting it.

Once dressed, I start for the door to presumably return to my cell, when Honey Eyes’s deep, liquid voice stops me. “How’d you get that scar?”

Something about the question gives me pause, and I turn around to find both curiosity and something that looks a lot like vulnerability sparkling in his vivid gaze. The way his amber eyes glow reminds me so much of the glittery look I once had. But that was a long time ago, before I became this version of myself.

Maybe it’s the way he’s exposing himself a fraction of a degree, or perhaps it’s just the fact that I was stripped and beaten after nearly unraveling, mentally, a few days prior, but either way, I find myself answering honestly. Nodding toward the metal table that boasts the variety of whips Sean brought, I say, “Snake whip.”

His gaze goes steely, the molten caramel hue from a few moments ago crystalizing at my admission. “You were whipped?”

I dip my chin.

Honey Eyes’s chest rises and falls evenly as we study one another in the middle of this concrete torture room. A hundred questions swirl in his gaze, but he only chooses one. “You don’t have many other scars. Why not?”

I’m not sure if he’s attempting to inquire cryptically about my lack of a scar where I had my uterus removed, or if he’s wondering how a criminal such as myself could survive this long without having marred, storied skin depicting years of hard-fought wars.

Sure, parts of my body—inside and out—tell snippets of my life’s story, but it’s far from the entire tale. That’s how scars work; they’re fractions of a whole. They’re simply the rough grooves and bark on a tree, and digging into the dirt is required to glimpse the roots.

“Not every scar can be seen,” I answer instead, somewhat enigmatically. It’s the truth: most of the coarse, jagged ridges of my bark are invisible.