Terror gripped me, even as my hold on reality started to slide. "Chase, please, don't do this."
"Aw, begging so soon? Nah, that doesn't sound desperate enough. Don't worry, though. We'll get there. Sweet dreams, Darling." With a snicker, he shut the lights off, plunging the room into darkness. The door opened briefly, just long enough for him to slip out then slam it behind him.
The loud scrape and clang of the heavy bolt on the other side echoed through my pitch-black cell in a way that rattled me right to the core. Shame filled me as a few hot tears rolled down my cheeks, but I quickly swallowed it back.
It was too soon. Chase had barely even started, and if I knew him like I did... there would be a long road to go yet. I needed to get control. He'd done so much worse to me in the past. I'd endured such horrific abuse over the years at his hands, yet I'd survived it all. I'd survived it then, just like I would now.
Besides, one dose of PCP wasn't going to kill me. I'd endured way more and lived to tell the tale. Still... the blackness of the room was suffocating me, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Better to keep them closed than see things that weren't really there.
Yeah. Like that would stop it.
The clang of the door jerked my head up. I opened my eyes automatically, refusing to be helpless when Chase walked back in. All I found, however, was unrelenting darkness. It clawed at my naked skin. Icy hands pinched and groped. Was it even real? Was it Chase fucking with me? The drugs messing with my head?
The drag of blunted nails over my breasts barely registered.
He'd done worse.
I kept my mouth closed and my jaw tight.
"What do you think, old friend?" Chase's voice was right in my ear, and I swore even the darkness recoiled as though it didn't want to be close to him. My shoulders could barely move and there was no slack on my wrists and arms; still, I leaned away. I'd rather rip my fucking arms off than let him breathe on me.
"I think you suck at this." Zed.
Fuck me.
Tears flooded my eyes. That voice was right there. Right next to me. As familiar to me as my own heartbeat.
"You've never understood how to break her."
"Oh, I know her better than you think. I know you both better than you think." Chase let go with another nasally laugh. This time he was right in front of me, and he gripped my face again. The darkness peeled back, and his vicious skull was right in my face. The flesh melted away leaving only the mangled skull and the black eyepatch.
"You're an ugly fucking pirate."
He chuckled. "Am I? Well, look at what Zed brought you."
I wouldn't look. I didn't want to see Zed. I couldn't. Not after all of this. Not when my fucking heart leapt just to hear him. His betrayal was still an open, festering wound.
Not that Chase gave a damn; he dug his fingers into my face, wrenching my head to the side. It didn't hurt, but I couldn't stop myself from seeing.
Zed stood there, a stone-faced sentinel with Lucas at his feet.
"How do you think you'll like your dancer with one eye?" Chase asked. "What do you think Zed, my old friend; should we take the eye or the cock?"
"Does it matter?" Zed sounded almost bored. "Just put a bullet in him. You want to hurt her, don’t you? She loves this pathetic bastard so much; it’ll decay her soul knowing he died because of her."
No.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out, and the darkness rushed in, stealing my voice. They were laughing. In the dark.
The flash of a muzzle.
Smothering in the blackness, I choked on my screams.
Water dripped somewhere. The plopping fell like a metronome. The continuous sound raked over my every nerve. I swore they were on fire. Maybe that was where he'd burned me. Had he burned me? Wait...
"Dare," Seph whispered into the darkness, and I jerked my head up. I fought to look past the water running over my eyes, but they stung when I blinked. No, she wasn't here. Seph wasn't here.
Exhaustion pulled my head back down.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Dare, you think you're such a badass you can ignore me now? I'm not a child you know."
I squinted through the darkness. Only it wasn't dark. It was bright. Too bright. The light hit me from every angle, and I held up a hand to block it out before it burned my retinas. The moisture gathering in the corners of my eyes spilled down my cheeks.
"What the hell are you wearing?"
Instead of her uniform or even jeans and a T-shirt, Seph was dressed in the skimpiest piece of lingerie. It was pitch black and set off her pale skin perfectly. Even her red hair looked lustrous, a bright flame amidst the porcelain and onyx. "Do you like it?"
She did a little shimmy walk like she was on a runway—in my Louboutin stilettos. Confusion and irritation vied for control.
"Daddy got it for me."
A fist in my hair dragged me upward, and I stared into the empty sockets of my father. His face had rotted like something out of a zombie movie. This wasn't real. It couldn't be real.
"Daddy and Chase are going to have a party that's just for me." Seph all but skipped over to me and then pressed a kiss on our father's rotting cheek. "Daddy still loves me." The happiness she radiated flooded my mouth with bile. The innocence. "Don't worry; we found the others. They're coming too."
She held out her hand, and Diana took it. Diana wore the same skimpy, awful outfit and it looked even worse on her child body.
"Virginity gets quite the high price," my father whispered in my ear, the rough sound like a thousand insects clicking and crawling. They were falling off of him and onto me. I wanted to shrug them off. But this wasn't real.
"This isn't real," I said. "Not real."
"You're such a selfish bitch," Seph complained. "Even now, you have to have everything your way. Well, it's not. Hades is dead; long live Persephone, the new queen of the underworld."
Our father's corpse laughed, and black ichor sprayed like flecks over my skin. "You never asked her what she wanted, did you?"
My heart was in so many pieces, shattered on the rocks. The lighthouse was gone. Cass...Cass...
I swallowed.
"She didn't," Seph protested and suddenly her hair was up in a pair of pigtails, and she twirled around. "She never asks me anything. She didn't even bother to see if I wanted to be sold. The man who would pay for me would want me. And I know just who my high bidder is gonna be."
A shudder of revulsion went through me. This wasn't Seph. A hand closed over my throat, and I slammed against a wall. Once. Twice. On the third slam, I cut open my eyes to see Chase leering down at me.
"If you beg me to fuck you, I'll keep her safe for you. That's all you wanted, isn't it Dare? For your baby sister to be an ungrateful little bitch, sheltered from the world?" I really didn't care what he did with me. "I can make that happen for you, Dare. What other man in your life could do that for you?"
I licked my lips. They were so dry. The dripping was still there. My mouth tasted like copper.
Belatedly the dripping made sense. I was melting. Chipped. Split. Cracked. Broken. Bleeding away. Good. Then I wouldn't feel this for much longer. The emptiness in my soul, the gouged-out place where my heart used to be.