He brushed her away but smiled and started to stroke her head. He loved her as much as I did.
The first few letters were junk, and throwing them aside, I frowned when I saw a padded but thin brown envelope in between the usual white ones.
Tearing it open, I stared in confusion as I pulled out a memory stick and a thick knot of long, copper hair.
Every part of me froze in fear. My hand shook when I took the hair and lifted it to my nose. Air rushed from my lungs and my jaw started to vibrate when the soft but unique smell of honey and coconut – Kloe’s exclusive shampoo – struck every one of my senses.
“Anderson?” Robbie knew too, the wary way he said my name had me trembling harder.
Rage poured through me, my heart struggling to cope with the influx of adrenaline soaring my system.
Silently, I grabbed the laptop and inserted the USB. My hands shook harder, my fingers hovering over the play icon. I didn’t want to watch, yet every part of me begged to.
The screen was dark as the video came into focus. A dungeon.
My breath caught and my heart stopped beating when Kloe’s limp and naked body came into shot. She hung from a chain, her arms stretched high as her fingers clung to the links of metal. Blood trickled down her chest and her stomach, dripping onto her thighs and down her legs. Her hair had been hacked off, and short and matted curls clung to her damp face.
Ice flowed through me instead of blood. Shocks of electricity beat for my heart. And pure undiluted fury filled my lungs instead of air.
Robbie looked from the screen to me, but, wisely, he didn’t say anything.
My beautiful woman looked dead. And as if linked to her I could slowly feel my soul crumble and die within me too.
“She tastes delicious.” Terry’s cold voice filled the speakers but he didn’t appear in the video. “Her blood has such an exquisite aroma, don’t you think, Judd?”
Blood filled my mouth and trickled down my chin when I bit into my lip.
“We’re waiting for you, son. You know where to find us. And if you don’t… well, I don’t hold out much hope for our lady.”
“She’s mine,” I growled as the video ended and it asked me if I wanted to play it again. “She was always mine, you fucking cunt.”
“Anderson, do you have any idea where they are?” Rob asked cautiously, his own fear loud in his quiet voice.
I laughed. “I’ve always known.”
He looked puzzled. “What? But why have you waited?”
Why had I waited? That was a question I’d asked myself time and time again.
“It doesn’t matter. The wait is over.”
MY BABY WAS DEAD. AND inside, so was I.
Blood seemed to pour from every inch of me. My skin, my womb, my heart. Pain was no longer part of me. The nothing had taken over days ago.
Anderson had told me that his father had loved me. How very wrong he had been. Just as I’d always told him. Yet now it was too late for him to see exactly what his father had thought of me.
Hours had merged into days, and days into a week. I knew I wouldn’t get out of there alive, not now. Terry’s evil had morphed into something way beyond depraved. I had thought what he did to me as a child couldn’t ever be outdone. How fucking wrong I had been.
Urine trickled down the inside of my leg and the sensation of the warm liquid between my legs was, for a short period, relaxing, washing away the grime and blood that caked my sore skin.
I had been so hungry, but exhaustion now overruled anything else. I didn’t think my stomach could have sustained anything other than acid and bile now anyway.
As usual, soft music played in the background. It had been a constant since I had woken in this dark and cold room many days ago. I prayed for silence, begged silently for my mind to hear something other than the stupid orchestral pieces that plagued my waking hours, and now my fraught sleeping ones.
Terry occasionally removed my cuffs and allowed me a few hours’ rest on the hard concrete floor, my strung muscles screaming in both gratitude and agony. But today, once again, I hung limply from the chain, my body depleted of anything other than exhaustion.
There was a pool of dried and fresh blood beneath me, a wide circle of red liquid that I craved to curl up in for warmth and the very slightest hint of softness. It looked so appealing against the harsh expanse of grey, the deep hue of my own life tempting beyond anything.
The room was roughly twenty-foot square of nothing but bricks and cement. An old single iron bed sat in one corner and various sized chains hung against the flat of one wall. Thick loops of metal were secured into the wall and into the floor beneath, with a length of chain connected to each one, and a cuff connected to the end of each. Rickety wooden steps led to a door where, sporadically, Terry would enter. There was no routine to his visits, no regular sequence that I could build myself up for. He came when he wanted, and he only left when I was broken beyond the previous time he came to me.