So stupid. So foolish. So na?ve.
How Hancock must have laughed at her innocence. How he must have delighted in knowing he’d one-up Maksimov and even Bristow by being the one to have her first. The innocent little virgin. The supposed gift he was so humbled to have received. Sorrow vied with regret. So much regret that there was no room for fear over her fate. She was resigned to it after enjoying a brief respite. A short window of time where she’d allowed hope to bloom. She’d been so very foolish to foster the forbidden. She knew better and yet she’d allowed hope to grow, unchecked within her heart, encompassing her very soul.
Her breath stuttered erratically over her lips as she glanced around her prison. She was in a tiny cage suspended from the ceiling, so even if she did somehow manage to wrest free of the manacles digging into her skin and get the cage open, she was at least a dozen feet above the floor. Not that she’d ever be able to free herself anyway. The restraints had torn her skin, and her hands and feet tingled from the decreased blood circulation forced by the tightness of her bonds.
The height was dizzying, but her fear of enclosed spaces was even more crippling. Having spent an entire night trapped under the rubble of the clinic that lay around her in ruins had given her an intense phobia of tight, enclosed and airless places, even though the cage was well ventilated.
Sudden unexpected pain screamed through her body—but no, the high-pitched shriek came from her, the sound of someone in unspeakable agony. Her skin was on fire. She could feel the horrible licks of the flames consuming her. Was she being burned alive? A vague recollection of something like a cattle prod, an instrument that when touching her skin delivered a shrieking electric shock that set her nerve endings on fire, drifted through her shattered memories. For a moment it was as if she simply short-circuited because she had no idea what had just happened. Only that it hadn’t been the first time it had been done to her.
Then she saw him. The man who must be Maksimov. He held a long rod that he’d pressed to her skin, delivering a devastating electric shock that still had her nerves jumping and quivering. She was in no way in control of her body, her muscles giving involuntary jerks and spasms.
She huddled there, weeping, not just from the shock delivered to her body, but from the ultimate betrayal Hancock had handed her. It was her fault for offering him her forgiveness. For giving him her trust when he’d proven he wasn’t deserving of it.
But it didn’t make the agony any less. He had done what nothing or no one else had been able to do.
Hancock had broken her.
Not the clinic bombing. Not ANE. Not Bristow’s two attempts to rape her. Not even this asshole standing by her cage, a predatory gleam in his eyes. He enjoyed pain—inflicting pain. He thrived on it. If she could see any lower than his face, she was sure he’d be aroused, just as Bristow had been when he’d hurt her.
But neither of those men, Bristow or Maksimov, had broken her or would break her.
Hancock had broken her, and she no longer cared whether she lived or died. She no longer cared what was done to her because nothing could equal what had already been done by Hancock’s hand.
“I think I may keep you for a while before I let A New Era know of my precious find,” he mused, studying her as he circled the cage. “You’re surprisingly strong. For a woman,” he added with a sneer that conveyed all the disdain he obviously felt for the “weaker” sex. “I think you will provide me many days of entertainment. You’ll be a challenge and I do so enjoy a good challenge. But I’ll break you. You’ll learn what is expected of you.”