Page 19 of Lethal (Wellard Asylum #1)

M y heart is pounding so loudly in my ears, drowning out all the other sounds around me.

I don’t remember anything past dashing from their small room, with the audio of their voices still trailing me, like specters that just won’t release me from their malignant grip.

I must’ve passed nurses, the guards, and the front desk, but everything between the twins’ cell and my office is gone.

Just static. Just noise. Just the sound of my soul screaming.

I stumble into my office, my legs barely able to carry my weight in my disheveled state.

My bra is still wrapped around my neck, buttons fastened incorrectly on my blouse, and I’m pretty sure my skirt is on backward, in my haste to cover myself.

My fingers shake as I yank my office drawer open violently.

The lock catches, and I nearly rip the damn thing off, as I stifle a scream that’s trapped in my throat, threatening to strangle me.

I grab Cecelia’s file, the one I’m not supposed to have, the one I had promised myself I wouldn’t bring out unless I was ready.

Ready for what? To face the truth? To break apart?

To betray the medical oaths I took when I became a doctor?

What am I even doing here? All of this is crazy.

I shove it into my bag, as if it might burn me with its poisonous contents, but the truth is, it already has.

I turn and race out of the building, fleeing into the freezing night, and refusing to stop to speak to anyone.

My heels are loud on the cracked parking lot pavement, each step ringing like rapid gunfire.

The dark night calls to me, whispering sweet nothings to entice me to return to them, but I refuse to listen to its seductive call.

I don’t take a deep breath until I’m inside my car with all the locks engaged, as if they could keep out the monsters that hunt me.

The drive home occurs without conscious thought; one moment, I’m in Wellard’s parking lot, and the next, I’m standing in front of my apartment door, dazed.

I finally release my trapped scream, once my door shuts loudly behind me and I’m all locked up tightly in my apartment, and I’m finally alone, finally safe.

At least as safe as I’m ever going to be, considering the madness that I just allowed to happen.

He could have killed me, and I would have allowed it.

I let him use me, hurt me, like I was nothing.

What the fuck is the matter with me? I should have tried to kill him, to end all of this madness, instead, I became a puddle for him, coming all over his cock.

I drop the file on the floor as if it is soaked in blood, and stare at it.

My coat, which I don’t even recollect putting on, clings to my limbs, its weight somehow reassuring, even though I know it could never stop the monsters that hunt me.

My body won’t stop shaking, my legs finally giving out, as I crumble to the floor with a choked gasp.

My throat is sore and achy, from Bash’s thick cock pounding into it.

I raise my hands to its surface, and rub along its length, finally releasing myself from the bra.

You’re a mess! You’re weak. Look at how you’re breaking down over them.

The incriminating, ugly words weigh heavily on my mind in a vicious loop.

Bash’s voice is still in my head too, smooth, deep, too calm for someone who’s carved people open like a butcher.

“Come closer, my pretty slut, let me have a taste of you.” Those vibrant blue-gray eyes dared me to retreat.

They wanted me to show him my weak, quivering underbelly, like a dog who understands they’ve met a wolf.

A vile predator hellbent on my ultimate destruction.

God, what have I done? I should’ve walked away.

I should’ve stopped, the second I heard Cecelia’s name leave his tempting, misleading lips.

I should have shut it down, gone to Halstead, and reported the inappropriate conduct. .. and what?

Let him win whatever sadistic game he is playing with me?

Let them all keep lying?

Let her die all over again, alone in that rancid hell?

I crawl across my small apartment, reaching my living room, and force myself to sit down on the edge of my couch.

My stiff hands brace on my knees, and even then they continue to tremble.

I feel like if I move even another inch, I’ll splinter into a million fragments.

As if my bones are made of glass, and someone has already taken a hammer to me.

You begged him like a depraved slut. “Please! Ohmygod, fuck, ohmygod, please, Bash!” The sound of my voice echoes obscenely in my mind.

I press my shaking hands to my face, and the heat, the shame, it burns .

My body remembers the moment too vividly, the way I had leaned in, wanting his touch.

The masculine scent of his body pressed against mine.

How my breath caught in my throat, unable to refute him.

How his voice lowered just for me. Fuck, I let him in.

I let him do whatever he wanted with me, and he used me like a whore, his whore.

A part of me, God help me, wanted him, wanted him to take from me, until there was nothing left but ashes.

Bash saw it. He saw all of it. Like I was already naked, but not only on the outside, worse, I was equally as exposed on the inside.

Bare. Broken. Desperate. Willing. He knew, the minute I knelt for him, that he had won.

You’re so weak that you let him wrap you in one of his games, and the psychopathic killer played you like he did all his other victims. You’re not special, Caterina.

You’re not smarter than they are. They have you right where they want you, and you fell headfirst into their trap. You will never leave this place.

I stand up too quickly, attempting to run from the accusations in my mind, but there’s nowhere to go.

The world tilts, and my apartment swims before my eyes.

I begin to pace back and forth, needing an outlet for my restless rage.

My hands clench with the necessity for violence, for bloodshed, for what I should have done in retaliation, but instead, I ran away like a scared little girl.

My heart pounds heavily in my chest, and more screams beg to be unleashed.

Monsters! They are monsters, and I allowed one of them to touch me, to corrupt me, to fill me up with his poison and filth.

The sensation of Bash’s cum still soaking the crotch of my thong repulses me, and I reach down and rip it off, throwing the soaked material far away from me as if it’s venomous.

No, not venomous, lethal . Everything about Bash Norwood is lethal, deadly, and meant to rid you of your life.

“I hope you’re not on birth control, little toy. I would love it if I filled your womb with one of my monsters.” Heat races up the back of my neck, followed by sour bile in my throat, and I barely make it to my kitchen sink, before I’m unleashing all of the meager contents of my stomach.

Why did I let him speak to me like that?

Why did I let him fuck me?

Why didn’t I stop it?

Why did it feel like he knew me better than I know myself?

You didn’t want to stop him. That’s the truth you don’t want to acknowledge out loud. You enjoyed all of his depravity. You craved it like a drug addict about to be promised her next hit.

No. No, that’s not true. I went there to get answers. To find the truth about what is happening inside Wellard Asylum. To expose Halstead for the monster and liar that he is. I went for Cecelia. I needed to know what happened to her after I ignored her pleas, after I failed her so tragically.

Cecelia.

Her name cracks something in me, all the pieces of my soul shattering all at once.

All of my regrets, my rage, and my obsession with the Norwood twins, are nothing in comparison to what Cecelia suffered alone.

I cross the room in three long steps, and stare down at the file on the floor like it might lunge at me.

Inside are pieces of her life, her last months alive, and her medical notes.

Nothing but sterile records for something so violent, so very wrong, and inhumane.

Mere words that could never reflect the vibrant person she was, before this world destroyed her.

I can almost hear her calling to me from the folder, demanding that I not ignore her suffering, that I avenge her after I’ve failed her so miserably.

Not just once, but twice. My sins are so deep that I will never find my way out of the cavern they lie in.

Bash said she was a mistake in their testing.

He said Halstead used torturous methods until she couldn’t handle it anymore, and then he punished her for failing his tests.

She must have screamed in agony, in desperation, and yet no one came to save her.

I never came to save her, despite her pleas.

I believed Wellard could help her. I’m as complicit in her torture as they are.

I reach down for the file and freeze, my fingers grasping its cover.

I know if I open it now, I’ll never walk away from this, from any of it.

Not from the serial killer cannibal Norwood twins.

Not from the asylum, which is filled with rot, death, and malevolence.

Not from the thing Bash sees deep inside of me. All the darkness that taints me, just waiting for an opportunity to escape its tightly leashed captivity. That might scare me more than Halstead ever could. Am I ready to be a monster just like they are?

I sink down next to the file, knees to my chest, and try to breathe and calm my racing heart.

Shudders wrack my body until every bone shakes painfully, in a reminder that I’m still alive and free, when Cecelia isn’t.

The tears come next, soaking my shirt, and leaving tracks down my skin.

There is no point even attempting to stop them.

They won’t be able to wash away my sins anyway, nothing will, except perhaps all their deaths, and even then I don’t think it would be enough.

I don’t want to know anymore what she endured.

I don’t want to go back there, but I know I will.

I have to, if only to face my own demons, and dark desires, head-on.

I’m no longer in control anymore. Something inside me is changing, is being corrupted, and like cancer, is spreading and infecting everything else.

Somewhere in the dark, they’re waiting. The killer clown twins, who make my heart race, not only with fear, but also with unrestrained lust. They know I’m not going to run, they know I can’t. Not really, not yet.

“You already belong to us,” Bash had whispered, and I think he’s right.