Page 2 of Sadist (The Triarchy Collection #1)

OCTAVIA

I thought I knew what low was.

Apparently, I was fucking wrong.

When I look back at the life choices that got me here, I guess we can attribute this to “fatherless behavior,” which is ironic considering I only spoke to dear old daddy on the phone last night when he informed me of the ten grand he had dropped into my account.

We call that guilt money, folks. Isn’t it strange how money meant to absolve someone of their sins can make you feel like the damned for accepting it?

My parents probably don’t even know that their daughter is currently sitting in a cold basement with a bucket of her own urine next to her, handcuffed to a metal pipe seemingly made from the strongest god-damned metal on the planet.

I woke on a foam mattress with a thin pillow and blanket folded neatly next to me, the chain that secured my cuffs to the pole just long enough to reach what I needed.

The concrete room was bare except for the two pipes that ran up the wall on this side, the furthest away from the solid-looking door.

Me on one pipe…and the prone figure of another woman chained to the other.

I tried not to look at the drain in the center of the room… or wonder why it was there.

I scrunched my eyes closed as a spike of pain rolled through my head…

the aftereffects of whatever was slipped into my drink still ravaging my body, and I breathed through another wave of nausea.

It didn’t work, and I spent the next few minutes retching into my bucket, though there was nothing left in my stomach to surrender anyway.

A low groan pulled my attention back to the other side of this infernal room, the soft rattle of chain loud in the stillness as my companion rolled over, a whimper coming from her a second later.

She was breathing too lightly to be in the same drug-induced slumber I had just woken from, but from the look of the bruise at her temple, I guessed she would be feeling just as rough.

She was facing me now, and I studied her features.

A little older than my twenty-nine years, there were the tiniest of creases at the corners of her eyes on her otherwise flawless face.

She had a few freckles across the bridge of her nose, and tattoos seemed to cover much of her skin from the neck down.

Her long brunette hair was pulled back into a messy braid that was coming loose, and she wore a simple grey sweater and black joggers that didn’t give any indication of who she was or where she had been taken from.

The sweater was rucked up, and the purple outline of a large bruise across her abdomen stretched over the fine lines of another tattoo. She had been brutalized, whoever she was.

She stirred again, her lashes fluttering as another soft moan rose from her.

“Hey,” I said. “Try not to move too much yet, you look like you took a beating.”

I noticed her swallow a few times and poured a cup of water from the jug sitting between us, moving as far as my chained wrist would allow and pushing the cup as close to her as I could.

“Who are you?” Her voice was slightly husky, edged with a hint of pain as she pushed herself to her elbows and groaned again, resting her forehead against her own thin mattress.

“Octavia,” I offered, not wanting to admit my last name. “Where are we?”

There was a humorless huff of laughter from her as she slowly sat upright, squinting at me with eyes that were the strangest color. Pale green at the center with a deep navy ring around the outside.

“Purgatory.” She leaned against the wall with a sigh and tipped her head back. “And the psychopath guarding its gates is a fucking sadist. I’d suggest you don’t piss her off.”

“Well, that’s ominous,” I muttered, clearing my throat as my voice wavered with the rapidly increasing panic twisting its way through my gut. “What does she want?”

“It’s not her you need to worry about, it’s who she works for,” the woman replied.

“And…who is that?” I asked hoarsely.

“I couldn’t tell you,” she said, closing her eyes.

I blinked at her, more questions simmering on the tip of my tongue, but unsure where to start.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“A long time,” she replied without opening her eyes and wincing as she licked a fresh split in her lip. “I don’t really know, the days blur together here.” She was quiet for a long moment, and I thought she had drifted off until she spoke again, her voice barely a whisper.

“I don’t think I even have anyone who cares I’m gone.” She looked at me with a strange expression. “Do you? Have people who will come looking for you, I mean. Your accent is American…Are you not from here?”

I hated…truly hated to banish the iota of hope I saw creep across her battered face, but I shook my head, staring at my hands.

“I have only just recently come back to the UK from overseas. I was born here, but I’ve been away since I was sixteen.

” I gave her a weak smile. “Hence the accent. The friends I do have don’t know I’m back here, and even if they realize I’m gone, they will just think I have taken off to go experience the lantern festival in Taiwan or walk the PCT on a whim or something.

They are used to me disappearing and popping back up months later. ”

She sat up, wrapping her arms around her bent knees with a soft groan. “What about a lover?”

I laughed in response.

Her shoulders dropped slightly, and she looked at the floor for a long moment.

“You have family here?”

My mind was still scrabbling through the scraps of information I had gleaned over the past few minutes, as the last conversation I had with my father lingered uncomfortably in my mind.

“It’s amusing how quickly you do as you are told when you want something.” As my phone chimed with a deposit notification.

“It’s been very distant for a number of years,” I said quietly. “I do my own thing.”

She let out a soft sigh, resting her forehead on her crossed arms.

“Well, that’s fucking unfortunate.” Her voice was muffled, and she looked up suddenly when I snorted, choking back the unhinged urge to laugh.

There was absolutely no need to scare this poor woman more than she already was by thinking she was chained up with a raving lunatic who was laughing at her own dire situation rather than panicking like any mentally sound person should.

“What the hell is funny?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, as a squeak of laughter bubbled up and I masked it with what could only be described as a strangled hum.

“Black humor is my default, and I told someone last week that I’d hit my lowest point.

” I gestured around me. “Guess the universe said, ‘Hold my beer, fucker, we found a cellar in the pit.’”

She eyed me for a long moment, probably wondering if I had been smacked in the head.

“Why do you think you were taken?”

I shook my head. “I have no great fortune of my own, so it will be tied to my family.”

She cocked her head. “Money?”

“I’d say so,” I replied darkly. “Unless they want a liver for the black market. In which case they are screwed, I spent three months in Russia recently and I still can’t look at vodka.”

That actually got a chuckle from her, before she seemed to catch herself with a look of surprise.

“You don’t scare easily, do you?” she asked.

I was about to throw my usual sarcastic retort back, but something in the way she was looking at me made me hesitate.

“The thing is,” I said after a moment. “Fear is the only time I feel anything anymore. I doubt they can do worse to me than I’ve survived already.”

Her gaze changed, becoming more intent.

“They could kill you.”

I leaned back on my mattress and stared at the concrete ceiling.

“They could.”

“You think there are things worse than dying, Octavia?”

I let out a small, amused huff. “There are many things worse than dying. Though I’d rather not, you know? I had plans for summer.”

I glanced at her in the resulting silence. Not that it was anything I was unused to. My affinity for the worst kind of humor led to a love-or-hate kind of reaction from everyone I encountered. From the way her lips had tilted ever so slightly up on one side, she was struggling to figure out which.

Maybe it was the lingering drugs in my system, but… Jesus Christ, she was hot.

No, it was definitely the drugs.

Because what the fuck , Octavia, you are chained in a murder basement.

I let her lead the conversation for a while, answering a plethora of questions and skipping around the ones that would expose me as the disgraced daughter of the largest tech mogul in the northern hemisphere. I didn’t want to see the hope return if she thought that would—in any way—help us.

Then I peppered her with my own questions, trying to glean any more information as to how screwed I was.

And the result?

Thoroughly. With no lube. I was just sitting here waiting for my jailer to come and enlighten me as to whether I was to be spare parts or used against the Vanguards.

Maybe I would get lucky and be sold off in the skin trade to some filthy rich but mentally weak geriatric who I could convince to let me live out my days next to their pool in exchange for a weekly lap dance.

I’m sure I could learn to dance like my life and eventual liberty depended on it…

“Where did you go?”

Her question halted my racing thoughts, and I turned back to my cellmate with a questioning hum.

“You’re face,” she said, watching me in bemusement. “It’s very…expressive.”

“Uh…” I scratched the back of my neck. “Don’t ask. Geriatrics and lap dances.”

She snorted, tipping her head back to rest against the concrete wall.

“Well, this has been fun, but I fear I’m not getting anything I didn’t already know, and I’m dying for a strong drink.”

“What?”

Ignoring me, she reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a key while I watched in confusion as she notched it into the cuffs and unlocked them.

“ What the fuck? ” I blurted as she stood, stretching out her back with a low groan.

“Well,” she said, the corner of her lips tilting up in a lopsided smile. “Thanks for filling in some gaps, Sweets. I did wonder why there was nothing on you until just recently.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Theo,” she said simply.

“That tells me nothing,” I seethed.

Covering the distance between us, Theo crouched down in front of me, rested her elbows on her knees, and leaned in.

“All you need to know right now, Sweets, is I’m the one who holds your chain. You don’t eat, drink, sleep, or even breathe unless I allow it. I may as well be your fucking god. Now, be a good girl and get some sleep while I figure out what I’m meant to do with you.”