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SEVENTY-FIVE

XERO

I rise off the sofa, leaving Amethyst spluttering through a face full of cum. It’s the least she deserves after the stunt she pulled with the cereal.

She’s aggravating and too deluded to realize her life is in danger. Whoever sent those images and threatening notes is clearly behind those men. I’m almost certain the mastermind is connected to her past.

If I don’t unlock her memories, she’s screwed.

Thank fuck I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get those bastards downstairs to squeal.

I walk to the living room door and pause at its frame to glance over my shoulder. She still kneels in front of the sofa with her silk shorts around her knees, revealing her reddening ass cheeks.

She’s frozen with shock, even though I came over her face the day before. Or has her mind papered over that particular memory the way it erased last night’s violent episode?

“Get up,” I say.

Stumbling to her feet, she pulls up the shorts and turns to face me with wide eyes. My heart skips a beat at the sight of that glistening face with beads of cum clinging to her lashes.

“I’ve just remembered something,” she says, her voice flat.

“What? ”

“The night before the book fair, I woke up with my face covered in ectoplasm.”

“Oh?” I reply with a smirk.

“That was you, wasn’t it?”

My smirk widens into a full-on grin. “Why did your mind jump to ghostly substances?”

“Because you were supposed to be a—” She shakes her head. “You were playing along. That’s why you stopped at my salt circle.”

I raise my brows, waiting for her to continue. A smaller part of my conscience calls me out for being cruel to the woman I once loved, but how much of what she told me was real? Amethyst presented herself as a vulnerable little princess who needed saving from a tower of her parents’ construction. But I’m beginning to wonder if her biggest threat is herself.

A thud from below shakes the house’s foundations, making me snap out of my musings. If I look at Amethyst for too long, I’ll fall into an endless loop of wondering if she sees me as a cash cow or her knight in bloody armor.

I want to make her suffer for breaking my heart. Make her cry tears of blood for ripping me open and baring my soul.

But first, I must save her life.

“Bitch about the ectoplasm later. We have four men to dissect.”

She backs toward the sofa and crosses her arms. “I can’t.”

I stride across the room and grab her wrist. “You can and you will,” I snarl. “Someone out there wants you captured or dead, and the only way to know what’s happening is to ask those four men.”

“Xero, I’m not a murderer.”

“Perhaps not.” I walk into the hallway, dragging her along. “First and foremost, you’re a liar.”

“Wait.”

Another thud makes the floors tremble. I’m impressed the quartet are working so hard to break free, but they’re battering the wrong wall. I had the crawl space arranged so nobody but me and the operatives who built it know how to break out.

I continue down the hallway toward the cupboard under the stairs. It was originally a narrow space where she kept her mop, vacuum cleaner, and miscellaneous junk, but we created a hatch in the wooden floor that leads to a ladder to access a vestibule within the crawl space.

Amethyst has no choice but to follow, and I keep hold of her wrist while opening the cupboard door.

“What did you do to my house?” she snarls.

“I planned to stay down here during the day so I could come out at night and slowly drive you insane,” I reply. “After last night, I no longer have that luxury.”

There’s another thud from below, followed by frantic whispering. Good. They’re fully alert.

“Because you want to save my life?” she asks, her voice hopeful.

“Undecided. Nobody gets to torment you but me.” I press my foot on the lever that activates the trap door, making it spring open.

“Hey. Where are my mops?”

“No need for them when we have a cleaning crew.”

“You mean there’s more of you?” She pauses. “Of course there is. You told me as much in your letters.”

Letters she allowed to fall into another woman’s hands. I don’t rise to the bait, already having spent enough time subduing her. Instead, I pull Amethyst in front of me and gesture for her to go first.

“I can’t,” she whispers.

“Claustrophobic?” I ask, my brow rising.

She gives her head a vigorous shake, making those curls bounce. My heart thuds. She looks adorable with her face covered in my cum and her round tits straining through that flimsy camisole, but that beauty is deceptive, just like her twisted heart.

“Go.” I give her a gentle shove.

With a whimper, she descends the ladder, acting like I’m forcing her to walk the plank into shark-infested waters. I wait for her to reach the bottom before following her down into the vestibule. It’s a square chamber that lies flush against the dividing wall with number 11, with a trio of deep shelves complete with cardboard containers, designed to look like storage .

The last thing I want is for the assholes inside to look at my beautiful little Amethyst, so I extract a disposable lab coat from one of the boxes. “Put this on.”

“What for?”

“Just do it.”

While she covers up her delectable little body, I reach beneath one of the shelves and flip the switch that electrifies the door.

“Gentlemen,” I say. “Stand back. We’re coming in.”

As predicted, the quartet rush at the door, only to get stunned and fall to the floor with a satisfying thud. I turn off the current and pull on a latch that makes the door swing into the room.

Their bodies are piled up so close to the entrance that I have to turn the current on again to make them twitch out of the way. As soon as there’s enough space for me and my lady, I turn it off again and pull her inside.

This torture room I’ve created in her home is directly beneath the room she uses for filming. She turns to the manacles welded to the crawl space’s steel columns and asks, “What is this?”

“Interrogation room.” I kick at the unconscious man at the top of the pile.

“Who were you going to interrogate?” she asks, her voice breathy.

I don’t dignify that question with an answer. Shouldn’t she be more concerned about the four naked men chained together on the floor? She doesn’t show an ounce of appreciation for the effort I made to attach their heads to their asses, human centipede style.

“Xero,” she snaps. “Did you plan on dragging me down here after driving me insane?”

“Eventually,” I mutter. “But you’re missing the point.”

She whirls around, her eyes flashing. “Which is?”

“These four came for you last night. That bastard with his asshole attached to his friend’s face tried to rape you on your kitchen table. Now isn’t the time to dwell on what-ifs.”

Her pretty features twist into an expression I can only describe as murderous, except she’s directing that anger toward me. The man who saved her virtue. The man who fucked her hard enough to chase away the ghosts of her past .

If my body wasn’t so mellowed out from coming all over her face, I would bristle at the ingratitude.

The chief rapist stirs.

“Concentrate, Amethyst,” I snarl and turn her toward the man who pinned her to the table.

She flinches. “What do you want me to do?”

I reach into my pocket and press a knife into her hand. “Hold that to his throat and demand answers.”

“Xero, I’m not like you.” She steps back, her entire body trembling. “I don’t kill and torture people for fun.”

My fingers wrap around her throat. “This is about your continual survival, little ghost. The sooner you realize someone wants you dead?—”

“Someone other than you?”

I grit my teeth. “You’re trying my fucking patience. I could leave you here and wait for your fight-or-flight to kick in and turn you into a warrior, but what if it fails?”

She shudders. “I don’t have a berserker mode.”

“Then who or what the fuck was fighting me last night?”

A groan from the floor alerts us that the man at the back of the human centipede is alert. His gaze travels from me to Amethyst and down to her knife, but he’s so firmly attached to his friend’s ass that he can’t make a move until the chief rapist stumbles to his feet.

Amethyst gulps. “Did you have to tie them up like that?”

My fingers tighten around her throat. “I’m getting sick of this misplaced compassion.”

She slashes at my arm with the knife, slicing through the fabric of my hoody. The blade stings as it tears into my skin, and the pain goes straight to my cock.

Has this accursed little ghost turned me into a masochist?

Her eyes widen, and she steps back. “Xero, I’m sorry?—”

“Don’t apologize when you’re finally in the mood.” I turn her around to where the rapist lies on his side, finally stirring. “If he doesn’t tell you everything you need to know, kill him. Then I’ll cut him loose, and the next bastard in line will talk.”