Gabe nodded. “Yup.”
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked, trying not to let her betrayal wreck me even though I was so far from surprised. Of course, she did this. She all but told us she would. “She got what she wanted; I don’t care about her anymore. If it wasn’t for her…”
Gabe wrapped his arm around my shoulder again, pulling me into his body and kissing the top of my head like a punch. I think he also took a big whiff of my hair too, which must have been almost all coated in blood and sweat and mud at this point. But he grumbled something I didn’t hear, and I tried to hold in the shudder rocketing through my limbs.
“He’s moving onto her if you don’t behave. It’s sweeter even, to have someone who so deeply believes in the church’s shit. Do you think she will be easier or harder to break?” Gabe said into my hair as he forced me to start walking. Even now, after all she’d done, my instinct was to go save her. Try to anyway. She was a bitch, a traitor, but she was still just a kid. “Just think, when we cut her, when Rafael makes her bleed, she’llloveit, beg for more.”
“She’s achild.”
Gabe said nothing, and I didn’t spare him a glance. It didn’t make a difference what he thought of that, if his face betrayed any feelings. He was complicit either way.
I found myself looking for other cameras as Gabe started leading me down the hall, the urge to stare down whoever was watching them strong. Let them know just how implicated they were in this terror. But I saw none, like they were well hidden or we were moving through a dead zone. “I can’t stop her from wanting this,” I said, frowning, trying to seem braver than I felt. I knew how brainwashed she was, but she’d brought this on her damned self - I had to remind myself of that. We’d saved her, pulled her from a car, Theo and Connor had killed people to get her free, and she ran right back. Her actions might have destroyed us all.
What more could we do? I was too damn exhausted to keep fighting for other people. Me and Theo, that’s all I was willing to fight for anymore. Him or us. Nothing else.
God, I hoped he was alive. I’d fought to stop my mind from going there, but in that second, his face came to the forefront of my brain, and it was impossible to stop the rush of anguish and pain. It made me stumble a step, whimper.
I’d know if he were no longer living, I would; it’d be a clawing in my gut, an emptiness hollowing me out. I wasn’t convinced my body wouldn’t just waste away, flaking to dust, if his heart had stopped. He was still here. Somewhere.
He was.
“Ah, she does have a soul. Maybe Rafe will let you watch when he bleeds her,” Gabe goaded, assuming the pain gnawing at me was for my sister, and not my older brother, the one I missed with unmatched fierceness. I only hoped he was out there somewhere, racing to save me again, alive and breathing and raging mad. Or maybe this time I would find a way to save him. Either worked for me. As long as we were together in the end.
It was a battle to not give up hope, but a glimmer remained. Small, tucked away, but there.
“No,” I muttered, not really knowing why. Then we stopped outside a door, which Gabe opened with a sudden tug. He threw me into the room like I was a sack of rubbish, letting the door slam with a bang. It was so sudden, giving me whiplash as I took in the shift. Gabe didn’t come in behind me. No footsteps. Only horror as that bone deep sense of dread reached its peak. I stayed on the floor where I’d fallen, struggling to look up. Because I knew where I was.
Who was in here with me.
“Now, what have you been up to?” a voice so cold, so monstrous it made my skin curl up on itself, sounded like a boom through my skull.
For some reason, I’d tricked myself into thinking I wouldn’t see this man. This monster. I think my mind blocked it, hid him from my vicinity, let him me an unseen entity looming in shadows rather than anything real. I sensed his presence in the house and shoved it away, unable to cope. Unable to breathe with him close. If I accepted he was nearby, my body would cease to function, my brain would bleed through my ears.
Because as I looked at him now, turning my head up and seeing his body come into view, my heart galloped. His shiny, polished shoes, pressed trousers, tucked in, stark white shirt. The golden skin of his throat, strong chin and nose. Evil eyes.
My husband glared down at me like I was the guts of a mouse staining his pristine carpet.
“No,” I muttered, unable to help myself, trying to scramble back, far from him, as far away as I could get. But of course, there was nothing, nowhere to go. My gaze caught on the rows of books, and I realized we were in a library. I’d never been in here before. It was so unsettling, all this newness in a place that had ruined me.
Somewhere in the pit of my brain was a joke about Beauty and the Beast, but only horror grappled with me now. Rafe smirked and took a measured step closer. God, he looked polished, clean and powerful, like he had all the time in the world, so damn put together it felt dangerous.
“Margaret sure is beautiful, isn’t she? And so compliant. I think I see another wedding in my future,” he teased, rolling up his shirt sleeves to show off his thick forearms.
The urge to vomit grappled me, but I fought it back. It was not possible for me to be strong here. He had me. I was weak, pathetic, terrified of this man who’d caused me so much trauma. I felt myself sink inward, building up walls to protect myself from him instead of responding. Here he was, the monster who’d brought me so much pain, threatening more, sinking lower into the taboo and the depraved. True, pure evil stood while I cowered.
But that wasn’t good enough for him. Once again, I was manhandled up by my hair and thrown onto my stomach, while he settled to his knees behind me. Rafe shoved my legs apart and growled like a demon. I was too afraid to move, so when he lifted my dress over my ass, I could only whimper.
“I told Gabe to get you ready,” he said, his fingers drifting up my thigh, making my bones quiver in fear. He pushed what I think was two fingers straight inside my dry vagina and I yelped, trying to squirm away from him, my toes scuffing up the carpet, my nails almost like they were going to rip right off as I fought to get any traction. “You’ve certainly been fucking somebody. But I don’t think Gabe has been anywhere near you. Has he?” He slapped my thigh over the bandage Theo had placed there before ripping it clean off, exposing the wound to the air.
“Don’t!” I cried, and the second slap was my punishment. This time, with his palm directly on the carved away skin, making me shriek and bellow into the floor. Hopelessness battled against my urge to fight; my vision darkened at the edges from the sharp pain.
“Bad wife, cutting out my mark and fucking someone else,” Rafe said, his fingers pushing into the wounds as he leaned forward. “Tell me who it is and maybe I won’t kill him,” he whispered in my ear, licking my lobe before biting down on it. “Maybe I’ll use the blood here as lube when I fuck you… as a little treat.”
I would never tell a soul what me and Theo were to each other. It was too precious. It wasn’t for the ears of such a monster. So I shook my head, squeezed my mouth shut, tried to put Theo’s smiling face in the foreground and ignore the terror around me.
Rafe tutted, and with his fingers still digging into my wounds, he thrust his hard cock into me. From nowhere, burning, stretching agony as he forced his way in dry, scuffing and searing my insides. When he’d pulled his cock free from clothing, I had no idea, but of course he had; this man got off on brutality.
I screamed from the pain, but really, it was one of the simpler times he had raped me. There was nothing grand about it, nothing macabre. Only the sting of his fingers on my thigh, and the ache inside my body as he pummeled in and out. It was almost… underwhelming.
