He hears my disturbed sounds and turns to face me, a smile twisting his features. Tugging the gag down, he says, “Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon, sweetheart.”
My tongue feels two sizes too big for my mouth. “It will be over even faster if you let me go. Just let me go before the police get here. I’m sure they’re already looking for me.”
“So they can take me away again? Lock me up in a cage? After what I did for our country? I don’t think so.” He starts pacing again. “I don’t fucking think so. Soon as this is over, I’m going to take you far away from here so we won’t have to deal with this anymore. It’ll be just me and you. Like I should have done in the first place. Like I would have done if they hadn’t pinned that assault on me.”
“I can’t go with you,” I start, but he strides across the ring and jerks my head back by the hair. He pulls so hard I feel chunks of it coming out by the root. I swallow down the scream that threatens to break free and force myself to focus.
“You say that like you have a choice.” He presses a bruising, brutal kiss against my lips. Mashing them together until I taste the metallic tang of blood. “Remember, what I’m capable of. Little Emma will only be the beginning. If you won’t cooperate, there’s always Livvie. Donnie. Rafe.” Then I notice the reflection of light off of the silver knife clutched in his shaking hands. He brings it up to press into my throat.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He pulls away again and resumes pacing. “We don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
In the few days since I last saw him, he’s visibly deteriorated, and I wonder if the madness I remember seeing in his eyes has eaten him up, made him erratic. Based on the way he’s waving the knife around, that doesn’t bode well for me. Or for Jack.
I change tactics. “What the hell did I ever do to you? Why me?”
Damian scrubs a hand over his face, stops pacing, and then changes directions. “Fucking Jack. On his high fucking horse. He thought he was hot shit. Him and his daddy. They didn’t give two shits about me.”
“Jack did, he was your friend.”
“He wasn’t shit,” he shouts, spit flying. “Perfect family, perfect life. Took away some of that perfect, didn’t I? Stole it right from under his nose.” He refocuses on me, his smile a chilling evil I’d only seen once before in my life. “Right from under his nose.”
“You are a sick son of a bitch,” I say.
His smile falls. “You better rethink the way you’re talking to me, bitch. I’m the one with the knife here, so I’m making the rules. If you don’t remember how this goes, I can give you a reminder.”
“Oh, trust me, I remember plenty. I remember what a pathetic limp-dick loser you were. Couldn’t get a woman unless you forced one. And even then you weren’t worth the time I wasted trying to forget you.”
Blood mottles his already bloated face and he strides across the ring to backhand me with the hand wielding the knife. My eyes cross and my ears ring, but the satisfaction of seeing him fumble knows no parallel.
“That all you got, asshole? Need to feel big and bad so you prey on women? Taking something doesn’t mean you earned it. Doesn’t make it yours. You didn’t get anything from me. The only person who mattered, who matters is Jack and no amount of your pinkie dick or cheap shots will ever change that.”
I spit out the blood pooling in my mouth on the floor by his dusty boots, letting the disgust show plainly on my face.
“You liked it,” he said, the horror turning his face white.
“I threw up for days trying to get the taste of you out of my mouth. I couldn’t take enough showers could make me feel clean. If I could bleach my brain to forget that night and everything about you, I would do it in a second.”
When he doesn’t have a word to say, I smirk in triumph.
He roars. “You’re a fucking liar, I know you came.”
“A vibrator and a couple batteries can do the same thing, that doesn’t make them a good lay.”
“You fucking bitch,” he says and raises the knife up.
I take a deep breath. At least, I took away the power he had over me. At least, I didn’t give him that.
And thank God Jack isn’t here.
Closing my eyes, I wait for the strike to come.
Then the doors open and the object of my thoughts strides through.
Present
NOTHING WILL EVER come close to the bone-deep fear that courses through me when I open the door and find Damian with a knife pointed at Sofie’s bared body.
No bomb or threat of war can compare, and I’ve seen my fair share of them both.
“You made it,” Damian says, his attention and the arc of the knife switching to me as I step into the gym.
That’s right. Keep it pointed at me, you mother fucker.