What’s worse is that they know. I can’t hide her from them. They know what she’s done. They know what she did to me.
Every muscle in my body screams as my fists slam against the bricks. Getting it all out of me until my bones crunch leaves me how I should be, empty once again.
BRAELYNN
Waking up to an ice bath surrounding my lower half, I’m convinced I’m still sleeping even though I’m shaking. I’m convinced the restraints keeping my limbs in place and the thin bars of my iron cage are nothing but a nightmare.
My teeth chatter and it’s the only thing I can hear as I slowly come to.
As my heavy eyes open and shivers run up my body, I do everything I can to move away from the cold, to rip myself free. My heart should be racing but it’s struggling to get going. As if it’s in denial or perhaps unable to run. It’s trapped like me. The sound of noisy grinding behind me widens my eyes even further. As my body is lowered deeper into the ice bath, to my waist this time, it’s far too apparent this is my reality.
Shock is brutal, but then again, so are the memories as they filter back to me in a blur.
“Help!” I shriek out, thinking I’m very much alone. My voice echoes as my dress soaks up the water, lifting the iced water to my spine. The chill is unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It seeps into the very depths of my bones.
I’ve never experienced such debilitating cold before. In a panic, I search the room.
Concrete walls without a single window in sight give the space an oppressive feeling. I’m trapped in an iron cage centered within a large steel tub that’s maybe ten by four feet, one that looks aged. Apart from the machine behind me that lifts and drops the contraption I’m in, there isn’t a sound in the room to suggest anyone else is here.
The machine groans and rumbles again, the telltale eerie whine indicating movement is imminent and my heart spasms, fearing I’ll be dropped farther. “Please help me!” I scream and my words are nearly cut off by the shock of my chilled skin hitting the air.
Thankfully, my body is lifted out of the tub almost entirely, although my ass and the bottom of my feet are still submerged.
Confusion wraps itself around me. I can barely think, waking up from a fog of bewilderment to the shock of the ice bath. All I know is that I’m truly terrified.
“Help me!” My teeth chatter and my shoulders beg me to hunch over, to collapse my body upon itself and try to get warm, but I can’t move. I’m trapped. “Please, somebody!” I cry out, and tears prick as the fear of dying consumes me. The words echo in the empty room and the realization sets in: I’m going to die here.
My lungs still from the freezing cold as the grinding gears signal movement once again. “Declan!” I cry out his name, tears streaming down my face as the glacial sensation travels past where I’ve been submerged and up to my shoulders, making them convulse.
“He’s not coming, Braelynn,” a deep, masculine voice from behind me says far too calmly. Shock, and yet somehow hope, beg me to find the source of the voice. I do my best to look behind me, but I can’t turn with the restraints at my neck, keeping me bound to the cage. Immobilizing me. The memory returns as clear as if it was happening right now in front of me. Nate killed Scarlet. I turned and he knew I saw.
My heart drops and races at once, and a sickness comes over me. “Declan,” I cry out again in a sob. He has to come. He has to know I won’t tell anyone.
“I didn’t see anything,” I murmur although I wish it was louder, “I swear if anyone asks—” I’m trying. I’m trying to be heard, but there’s a ringing in my ears and I don’t know if they can hear me.
It’s silent as I’m lowered farther and I scream until the mechanism stops abruptly. Tears stream freely. I’m fucking terrified.
“You need to tell me who you ratted to and what information you gave them,” he says, cutting me off as the cage is lowered deeper into the water. Only a few inches, but still I scream from the spikes of pain that shoot through my chilled body. My toes are already numb.
“Please stop! Declan!” I can’t help but cry out for him. He has to know I would never tell. I wouldn’t ever rat.
“It will all stop when you give us a name.”
A name? What name? I wish I had a name to give. One that would stop this.
“Whatever you think I did, I swear I didn’t do it.” I can barely get the words out. My body struggles against the bindings, ripping at my skin that’s already numb with a tingling pain.
“Help me!” I cry out again as tears stream down my face. With the scream leaving me, I can barely breathe in.
“Just one name, Braelynn, and I’ll stop all of this.” I don’t know the man behind me. I don’t recognize his voice, but I swear I hear someone else. Or maybe something else; I’m light-headed from both the fear and the cold. The tears haven’t stopped either, nor the trembling of my entire body.
“I sw-swear,” I say and swallow thickly, “I didn’t tell anyone anything.”
With that the grinding behind me begins again as I’m lowered quickly down, and I scream.
DECLAN
The chill of dread overwhelms me with each hard step of my oxfords slapping against the floor carrying a sense of finality as I make my way down the corridor to where they’re keeping her. It’s as if I’m suffocating even though my lungs are filled with oxygen.
Swallowing thickly, I read the text again. She hasn’t admitted a thing and he’s unsure of how much more they should push her. He requested they go easy but according to him, it’s proving more difficult to retrieve information without pressure. There’s a dull thud in my chest at the thought and a sickening churn in my gut.
I won’t fucking allow it.
My pace quickens and my numb body moves of its own accord. There isn’t a possibility that the information came from anyone else. I created the false figures in the dummy file myself and my family knows it. It was a test I didn’t think was needed, but Carter insisted, and she failed.
She played me for a fool.
As I look around, I hate every inch of this fucking place.
Over the last year, I’ve spent more time in this wing of our home than my own. Each of us has our own part of the estate, designed for comfort and with anything our hearts desire … and then we have this hall. I spend my time at The Club or here … rarely ever in my own corridor anymore.
With my blunt nails digging into my palm, I resist the disappointment that comes over me. I couldn’t last five minutes alone in that office, not knowing what Braelynn was saying and how she was reacting.
Carter said I shouldn’t watch. He said to stay away until it’s done. In this life, you don’t disobey. I can’t fucking stand it, though. She’s mine, even if she was only using me.
My throat goes dry and my stomach twists into an iron knot. I can’t not watch. I can’t stay away. Even if she did betray me, I’m the one who let her in.
My little pet, and her sins, are my responsibility.
Just outside the soundproofed room, I pause, unsure of myself and unsure of everything. Gripping the handle, a single thought pushes me forward: I don’t want this dragged out. It needs to be over with. One way or the other.