He was silent for a long moment. Then the vibrator returned, lower this time, pressing against my entrance but not entering. I gasped, my hips straining against the restraints.
"There's something I haven't told you," he said. "Something about Monika."
The name hit me like cold water. "What about her?"
"She wasn't just a subject. She wasn't just another asset in Nathan's ledger." His voice was steady, but I could hear the effort it cost him. "She was our sister."
The world tilted. "Your—"
"Adopted sister. She was a few years older than me, raised in a different household. I didn't know she existed until after she'd already been acquired by the Institute. By then, it was too late."
The vibrator pushed inside me, and I cried out—not just from the sensation, but from the flood of understanding that came with it. Monika. The girl in the photograph. The girl who'd been "terminated" when she stopped being compliant.
"Nathan knew," Gabriel continued, his voice rough. "He knew she was our sister, and he acquired her anyway. Used her the way he used all of them—as a weapon, a test subject, a proof of concept. When she started remembering, started fighting back, he had her killed. Buried in an unmarked grave outside Miami."
"And you—"
"I couldn't save her." The vibrator began to move, slow and deliberate, and I felt the first waves of orgasm building in my core. "I didn't even know she existed until after she was already dead. Nathan made sure of that. He wanted me to know what he'd done. Wanted me to know he could take everything I loved and destroy it."
The orgasm crashed through me, and I screamed—not his name, not anyone's name, just a raw, primal sound that felt like it had been trapped in my chest for years. My body convulsed against the restraints, andGabriel's hand found my face, cupping my cheek with a gentleness that felt like the cruelest lie of all.
"Again," he said, and the vibrator didn't stop. "I need you to understand. I need you to know exactly what he is."
"I know—I know what he is—"
"Not all of it." The vibrator pressed deeper, finding the spot that made lights explode behind my eyes. "He didn't just condition you. He didn't just dose you with chemicals and rewrite your memories. He's been doing this for years. Decades. He's the reason the Institute existed in the first place. He's the reason I became what I became."
Another orgasm built, faster this time, more intense. I was sobbing now, tears streaming from beneath the blindfold, my body no longer my own. But the tears weren't just from the sensation. They were from the truth—the terrible, unbearable truth that had been hiding beneath layers of lies and conditioning and carefully constructed narratives.
"He made me," Gabriel said, his voice cracking. "He made me into a monster, and then he used that monster to create more monsters. You were supposed to be my redemption. My escape. And instead, he took you too."
"Gabriel—"
"I love you." The words came out raw, desperate. "I know you don't believe me. I know you may never believe me. But I love you, and I will spend the rest of my life tryingto undo what I did to you. What he did to you. What we both did."
The vibrator pressed harder, and the third orgasm hit like a tidal wave—bigger than the others, more devastating, tearing through me until I couldn't tell where the pleasure ended and the pain began. I screamed until my throat was raw, and when it was over, I lay limp in the chair, my body shaking, my mind floating somewhere far above.
Gabriel removed the blindfold. His face was wet with tears.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
I should have hated him. Should have pushed him away, demanded he release me, walked out of the church and never looked back. But the truth had stripped something away—some layer of denial I'd been clinging to since the moment I'd found Nathan's files. Gabriel was a monster. Nathan was a monster. And I was the weapon they'd both tried to claim.
But I was also something more. Something neither of them had anticipated. Something that belonged to no one but itself.
I reached up—the restraints had been loosened during my climax, or maybe he'd released them without my noticing—and pulled his face to mine. The kiss was raw and desperate and full of everything I couldn't say. Gratitude and disgust and grief and rage and something thatmight have been the beginning of forgiveness, or might have been just another layer of the performance.
"Tell me more," I said against his mouth. "Tell me everything you know about his operation. Every weakness. Every blind spot. Every vulnerability."
"Why?"
"Because I'm going to destroy him." I pulled back to meet his eyes. "Not just stop him. Not just escape him. Destroy him. And I need your help to do it."
Gabriel looked at me for a long moment, and I saw something shift in his expression—not love, exactly, but something adjacent. Recognition. Respect. The acknowledgment of a predator meeting its equal.
"My perfect girl," he murmured. "You've finally become what I always knew you could be."
19
