Page 153 of Restitution

“Oh… Uh…” I frown. “You’re taking me down?”

I fully expected him to drag me back to my room and tell Kade, not escort me.

Tobias twirls the syringe between his fingers. “I’ll give her enough of this so she hears you, but I’m not leaving you alone with her. You were going to sneak down, so if I say no and take you back, you’ll be a pain in my ass and try to go there anyway.”

I blink. He’s not wrong.

He shrugs and turns towards the door. “Move.”

44

STACEY

As soon as Tobias inputs the code, the metal door to the dark room opens. The smell hits me worse than it did earlier, and I try not to gag. The outline of the cage sits in the middle – when the light turns on, I see the IV lines hooked up to some sort of machine I’ve only seen in hospitals.

I can hear heavy breathing, and part of me wishes she wasn’t breathing at all.

“Can you give me a few minutes?” I ask Tobias. “She can’t hurt me. I want to talk to her, just me and her.”

He narrows his eyes. “Two minutes, and I’ll be standing outside the door.” He heads to the machine, messing around with wires and the syringe. “She’ll wake, but she’ll notbe able to get near you. The cage is locked, and she’s weak.”

Tobias tugs at the cage door to double-check it’s locked, then pats my shoulder as he leaves. He’ll be right there, and with him being the way he is, I definitely only have two minutes.

For the longest moment, all I can do is study her and enjoy the sight despite my nose burning and my eyes watering. Everything she did comes to the forefront of my brain, and I wish I could just kill her. But I have no right. It should be Kade and Base who end her life.

Her entire team is dead – no one is looking for her. Dead husband, dead daughter, and pretty soon, she’ll join them in hell.

Her skin is pale, red from the areas that have bathed in her mess, and she has saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth. In another life, I would probably feel sorry for her and want to help her escape. Maybe the happiness I feel seeing her this way means I’m spending too much time with people who ooze insanity.

She blinks, her head moving a little as whatever Tobias gave her works through her system. I wish she would wake up fully so I could slap her and she’d know it was me.

Her body flinches, then a muffled sound is ripped from her throat as she tries to lift her head to look at me.

“You look so pathetic,” I sneer. “I wish I’d had front-row seats to see the look on your face when you realised you’d finally lost.” I laugh. “You certainly did fuck with the wrong family, didn’t you?”

Her eyes are dead when she opens them, and I don’t think she even knows who I am, because she has no reaction to the sight of my face. Maybe she thinks she’s hallucinating.

I smile at her anyway. “Hello, Bernadette.”

Groggily, she shifts in the cage until she presses her back tothe bars, facing me completely. She looks drunk or off her head on drugs. She blinks a few times, head lolling from side to side.

The humanity deep within me wants me to get her a glass of water, but I won’t. Her mouth is probably dry, she’s most likely starving to death and she could use a hosing down, but still, all I do is watch her trying to realign with reality.

The woman who watched Kade since he was a child. Ruined him.

Her slim hand raises slightly, shaking, but then drops to her lap.

This bitch raped my boyfriend when he was a teenager then sold him to so many people. Turned him into a killer. A drug addict. Mentally and physically abused him. She did the same to Base, then sold me and Luciella at an auction. She took Tobias and who knows what she did to him, because he’ll never talk about it.

She killed Jason.

I think even Chris’s sickness pales in comparison to this horror of a woman.

“You must have thought you were some sort of queen. Having so many people bow down to you and kiss your shitty pedicure.”

She would look good with the syringe sunken into her eyeball, like Kade did with Chris and the nails. But the thought of doing it makes me shiver, so I just keep taunting her.

“It was nothing but fake respect though. You had to blackmail everyone. You probably even blackmailed your mutilated husband to fuck you. The fact you let him have sex with your own daughter makes me sick.Youmake me sick.”