***
Bonus chapter! The story has always been from Tig's eyes as he interacts with Anne. This is the same story from Anne's perspective. It's dark, and I anticipate that some of you will hate it. You are welcome to skip it without actually missing any developments at all. It's just another pair of eyes on snippets of Chapters 1-6.
I may do another chapter or two of catching Anne up to the events of Chapter 13. I haven't decided yet. If you feel strongly one way or another, let me know.
-B.
***
I am seven years old, and my hair is twisted around Juney's hand. She dragged me the top of the stairs and now holds me off balance so that her sharp, bruising fingers are the only thing keeping me from tumbling down the hardwood steps. If I struggle, she might drop me. If I cry, she might push me. This is a game we've played before. Every day, she becomes a little more like my father. I remain unresisting in her grip. It's the best option I have left.
I open my eyes and I am thirty-three. I'm holding a sharp vicious little knife. I imagine how easy it would be to lash out and cut the man across from me, instead of the boy beneath me. With a little luck, I'd hit an artery and he'd bleed out. That's how it would work on television. But incapacitating Connor would set the dogs free, and he's the only thing between me and a gang rape, followed by murder. I'm not ready to die yet. Almost. But not quite. I'm still scared.
Connor will hit me for it, but I need this boy to know that I'm not one of them. I lean down, my hair dragging in the blood on his face and say, "I'm so, so sorry."
And Connor's calloused palm smacks me hard enough to send me to my knees. Colour and light flash as I struggle to stand on uncertain limbs. If I stay down too long, he'll drag me to my feet, and I don't want him touching me. The boy's eyes are on me. He's furious.
For a moment, I let myself hate him. I don't know who he is or where he came from, but because he's here, Connor's games got worse. Connor wants me alive, and sometimes he even seems to want me to like him. This boy is disposable, and I'm so goddamn scared that it's going to be me who kills the poor bastard. Right now, he's still furious for me. Connor will make him furious at me before the end. Four weeks in a twisted up little world of fluorescent light and leering Nazis, and I feel like I know every inch of this psychological and physical cage. Once you start to think like the monsters, it's all so fucking predictable.
***
The first time Connor threw me in with the black-haired biker, it was with a first aid kit and instructions to "keep the fucker alive." Half the visible tattoos on his bloodied body are grim reapers and death imagery. The irony is not lost.
First aid certification covers all kinds of things, but pulling metal shards out of unconscious thugs with shaking hands wasn't a chapter I paid much attention to. I don't believe in God, but as I work I pray; don't wake up don't wake up don't wake up. He sleeps like he's fighting for consciousness, fingers twitching as if he's dreaming of hurting someone. But he sleeps.
Connor is pleased when he returns. He inspects my work and smiles. I hate it when he's like that. It never lasts. He strokes my hair like I'm a well-behaved dog. He'll be sweet until he gets bored, and then he'll kick my feet out from under me and make me beg again. It gets a better reaction than unmitigated torment; the first stinging blow or vicious word always rocks me to the core. I know the pattern, but I don't know when the switch will flip, and waiting for it makes me crazy.
I cast a last glance at the biker sprawled out on the stained mattress. He's older and bigger than the boy. There's something stubborn about the lines of his face even in sleep. He looks like something out of Connor's world—all tattoos, violence, and savagery. Different wolf pack, but still a wolf. The only thing that makes him less dangerous is that he's not yet awake.
***
He says his name is Tig, and he's talking at me like he's trying to coax a scared cat out of a tree. I hate that it's working. I don't want to trust him. I don't want to give Connor any crack in my defenses to exploit. I'm running out of anger to protect myself and the black hopelessness is eating me alive. Still, I close my eyes and listen. Tig's gentle words wash over me like cool water on burned skin. I respond in spite of a resolution to stay silent.
He wants to know where I am when I'm not with him. What can I say? I'm wearing Kip's blood and I can smell Connor's sweat on my skin. I'd judged the moment Connor's arousal outweighed his lust for pain and pulled his attention away from the boy's body and onto mine. A price to pay there, but less than the one for watching a kid get cut to bits. My soul feels flayed.
When he invites me over to him, I feel as if I have no choice but to go. The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Or at least, he's something warm and human to lean against for a moment before Connor returns.
Tig radiates heat and comfort. I know he pities me, and I could hate him for that, but he seems to sense how desperately I need to rest. I don't mean to fall asleep, but when I begin to, I have no will to stop the slide into oblivion. Tig's hand touches my hair; I can't be bothered to stop him. There's no threat to it, though. His fingers trail over the chain and the bruises Connor left behind.
Merciful blackness swallows my soul, leaving my body to the mercy of bikers and gangsters. Oh Juney. You needed to play with monsters to feel alive, so shouldn't it be you wearing the chains and welts? When Connor fucks me, it's you he's dreaming of.
***
I lost control when I realized what they were going to do. Connor was delighted, of course, and personally helped pin me down so that his meat-headed thug of a tattoo artist could get at my back. They ripped my shirt tearing it off me. It was stupid to fight—just gets them all excited and thirsty for more pain and blood—but I panicked.
The tattoo hurt. It was a relentless, itching pain, every millimeter as much a violation as Connor's body on mine. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that Connor was watching me intently, drinking in every flinch and tear. To keep from screaming, I silently repeated the mantra I will kill you, I will kill you over and over.
I stopped fighting when I couldn't draw enough air into my aching lungs. As I lay there, broken and defeated, the deeper voice, the one I try to never listen to, whispers the truth; I will make you kill me. Held down, the whine of the tattoo gun biting the air and my skin, I felt my fear take flight, leaving me both liberated and hollow.
When they were finished, Connor gently freed me. I remained limp and unresisting. While one of his thugs put gauze on my back, Connor petted my hair and whispered meaningless soft words of comfort, which I barely registered as sound. He recovered my ripped t-shirt and carefully pulled it over my head, solicitously trying not to touch my abused back.
He took my hand and dragged me to my feet. Dizziness almost pushed me back down, but Connor's arm held me up. He kissed me, and then handed me to the smiling son of a bitch who did the tattoo. I felt no fear at all, but without it, the anger chokes me.
"Toss her back in with the Sergeant. Let him see what we've got planned for him."
The thug didn't delay in marching me back to Tig's room, though he did roughly cop a feel on the way there. It wasn't necessary to shove me—I wasn't resisting at all—but he planted one meaty hand right on the fresh tattoo and pushed me through the door.
Tig's look of pity and helpless concern nearly undoes me, so I snap at him. I don't think he's used to girls being sharp with him. They probably all go starry eyed at the bad-boy tattoos and hawkish blue gaze. However, the poor bastard is bleeding again. Nothing calms me down like dealing with someone else's problems, and I focus on the blood welling up through the bandage on his side.
The blood on my hands makes me think about Kip, and how I can't do anything to help him if Connor decides to follow up my torment with more knife-play on Kip's body. So I still can feel fear—just not for myself. When Tig pointedly asks me about the screaming, I tell him the truth. Once I start, I can't stop. It bleeds from me.
He says I look scared, and it's too funny. I need to shut down and get my calm back before they come for me. Tig's kindness and pity will destroy my chance at controlling myself. I need to be ice, not fire.
***
It's the perfect moment to act. Sometimes calculated acts coincide with luck in such a way that it almost looks like fate.
Connor is out, which is the first strike of fortune. His soldiers, reluctant to screw around with me, are mocking Kip. They cut him down from the restraints and hand him a knife. Goading him, teasing him, they encircle Kip. The first kick lands in his side with a meaty thud, which excites them. Then a fist hits the back of his neck, and the knife falls from Kip's hand.
They're going to kill him. They won't even mean to do it—but they're wound up and high on the primal adrenaline of power. Kip's so beat down already, and it doesn't take more than a booted kick or two to damage something vital.
"Very macho." I say dryly. They aren't used to me talking much, but the condescension cuts through their high like a knife. I'm supposed to be scared. It breaks the mood if I impugn the very masculinity they're indulging.
I keep my eyes on the one with a swastika tattooed on his shaven scalp. He's the one with the cell phone holstered on his belt, but of course, I don't look at that. His attention on me is like having a train screaming down on you while you're standing on the tracks, but now that I'm in, there's no getting out. This could get me killed. But I'm going to get killed anyway, so I might as well gamble.
He's trying to intimidate me, not hurt me, but I'm goading him by pointing out how I'm fucking untouchable because of Connor. He'll castrate them for damaging me. I don't know if that's true, but some of them seem to think it is, because they try to pull the first thug off me as soon as his hand closes on my collar. I make a scene of shrieking and panicking, which isn't entirely feigned. The cell phone practically falls into my hand, and I get it into my pocket while kicking frantically at the gangster who still has a hand around my upper arm. They are almost comically focused on each other, a male pissing match over who gets to call the shots when Connor's out of sight.
"Just get her out of here!" One of the thugs says. Tig's room is closest, and they're used to pitching me in there after Connor's had his games, so that's where I get dragged.
More luck than I deserve.
***
I'm anxious that things have gone wrong. Connor's back, and although I'm not surprised to be pulled back to his side—even expecting some punishment for riling up his thugs—it's weird that he's brought out Tig. Either my plan is about to go very poorly, or the part of the game where Tig gets to play is just starting.
God help me, I hate for Tig to see me like this. Somehow, having him witness Connor treating me like an unloved pet dog makes it worse. I hope Connor can't smell it on me. He's uncanny about delving into weaknesses, and my heightened shame would give him double the joy of tearing me down.
Tig's eyes are so very blue and dangerous when he looks at me under Connor's hand. I stare back. Don't try to protect me; don't you even show you care.
It's a message which, improbably, Tig actually seems to read. He's flippant and dismissive of Connor's power over him. It's enviable. Watching him cut straight to the heart of Connor's games without cowering makes something long-dead and silent in me awaken. Surrounded by sharks, it's me and him, trying to navigate this sea. I am not alone.