I pulled air in through my nose, out through my mouth. Like I was taught. I couldn’t lose it again. Not like I did after leaving Ava in that vault.
“Grayson? Are you there? Grayson, please answer me.Please.” Her voice echoed off the warehouse walls as if she was right here.
I clamped my eyes shut against the onslaught of emotions that accompanied the memory of her trembling voice.
I’ve always had an exceptional memory. But for the first time in my life, it was a curse.
Never had I any regrets of having the memories of my mother’s and sister’s death. It was the driving force behind my anger and retribution. Remembering the small, insignificant details that others would forget immediately, helped Hunt’s father to find the bastards responsible. So, I gladly burned in those memories.
But the brutality of the memories of Ava was something else entirely. The lines of my girl’s smile, her smell, her fucking taste, was so vivid in my mind it blurred my reality. My senses were so agonisingly filled with the phantom of her, I wanted to scream. My mind refused to let go of her. It insisted on replaying everything over and over andfucking overagain, to the point where she appeared as a ghost in the room with me. It was the worst those first few days after leaving her. I barely had my shit together enough to kill Anderson.
While I was down in that basement with him, she was watching me from across the cold room. Only, she was sitting on my bed in the cabin, ragged and scared to even breathe.
It was a memory of our first night in the forest. I was so pissed at myself for letting her get away and rip through that beautiful skin of hers as she ran. If anyone was going to leave marks on her, it should have been me. But seeing her bleed like that had made my cock stir in my pants. It was my sick brain’s way of making sense of all the lust and adoration and hate I felt towards her. I had loathed her to the core of my being for the man she represented. And for the fact that she was the only oneprivilegedenough to get out unscathed once Anderson had his sights on her; a privilege my mother and sister never had. What made her so fucking special? But there I was, giving her the exact same privileges, because I was fucking spellbound. She could’ve brought me to my knees, from the very first time I laid my hands on her, if only she knew. When I’d pulled her soft, trembling body against mine in that bank, her life as she knew it was over because I was never letting go again. Not until she breathed her last breath, taken bymyhands, no one else’s.
My stupid feelings had fucked up the plan entirely. I was supposed to seduce her, but my mind was warring between hurting her for my own depraved pleasure and ripping my heart from my chest to gift it to her. I had lost utter control of myself, for the first time since I was a raging child. Before I had learned how to rein myself in and suppress it. Such was her power. Making mefeel. And I, true to my being, raged against it, and her.
My girl won anyway.
I watched, fascinated by the veristic nature of her hologram as she pulled that pretty, torn-up dress down her legs, her lashes fluttering with unease at the lust oozing from me.
These harrowing, vivid memories would be my curse for daring to hold on to her for so long. Save from giving myself a lobotomy, I would have to endure it, drown in it… savour it.
After all these years,thishad pushed me over that edge. I was finally losing my mind.
About goddamn time.
I was tired of the fucking suspense. Insanity had always hovered at the edge of my psyche, like a demonic presence waiting to overrun me at the first sign of weakness.
I balled my trembling fingers into a fist. They haven’t stopped shaking since I left her.
“Are you hearing me, you fucking cunt? Wesley’s going to find me. Then you’ll wish your whore mother never had you!” Charles spat at me.
The insult didn’t even faze me. It didn’t reach me, like it would have. I already wished my mother never had me. I was a disgrace to her memory.
I turned towards Anderson. I had to focus. He called Dianna a whore and I didn’t even flinch.
Anderson shivered as my eyes fell on him. And I knew it had nothing to do with the freezing temperature of this basement room. He was strapped, completely naked on the torture table I had specially made for him. Five stainless-steel beams—one for each of his limbs and his head—were thin enough to not get in my way. It was tilted, so Anderson would be in somewhat of a standing position. The best position, really, when torturing. The blood flows down to one spot, instead of all around the table. Less mess to clean up afterwards.
The whole room, in fact, was decked out with unpleasant devices, just for him. I had meticulously crafted this room over the years, fantasising about how I would use everything in here on him.
That day had finally come.
And I couldn’t focus.
The scene on the bed across the room warped, changing into another memory. Ava’s freckled face, her perfect mouth open in a moan, her devastating green eyes glazing over as I made her come. Fuck! She was excruciatingly, monumentally fucking beautiful, like her gods themselves had plucked my wildest fantasy from my mind and crafted her, just to fuck with me. To laugh at me as I tasted her, knowing how it would fuck me up when I inevitably had to let her go.
The sweet, perfect memory, like all the others that tortured me, twisted a knife right into my gut. No. I’ve been stabbed in the gut before. This hurt was much worse.
Hunter. I should go see him. He was the one that had been coaxing me back to sanity for the last three days. He might not agree with my choices, nevertheless, he was the seraph on my shoulder, keeping me firmly locked in reality. Ensuring that I stuck to my plan, because turning back now would only hurt Ava more.
I had died a thousand little aching deaths since I closed that vault door. I’ve only made the mistake of sleeping once since then. Her scared, trembling voice in my earpiece had ripped me apart, over and over as the nightmare kept me locked in the memory. My mind, very creatively, added the images of her losing it in there. I couldn’t wake up from it. It wouldn’t let me go as it looped the memory again and again. Eventually, I had screamed myself awake. Like I did when I was a kid.
“Did you fuck her?”
The question snapped me from my thoughts. I’d been staring at Anderson with my head slightly tilted. I hadn’t meant to do it, but the fucker was practically vibrating now, scared shitless.
Good.
