Flawed

by Francette Phal

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Knox

  I brought her to the vault to carry out her punishment. Every single one of my actions I strategically planned, each swing of the whip on her back had been carefully dealt so that I wouldn’t tear open her delicate skin. But I wanted her to feel each lash, wanted her to understand the consequences of her actions. Her screams had been exhilarating, each welt I drew across her backside while I whipped her thickened my blood with explosive fuel. And yet, it hadn’t been enough. My appetite for violence had not been properly satisfied, I was more curious at how beautifully she reacted to my brutality. She was different from the other women I brought to my vault in that she was unknowingly willing to suffer at my hands. I didn’t have to pay her to pretend to like it. She genuinely hungered for the pain just as severely as I hungered to cause it and that was the part that turned me on the most. That knowledge alone almost tempted me to mount her and sink inside the glistening heat of her pussy. But I curbed the impulse. Instead, I doused her even further in agony and she lit up like a bonfire for me, her lithe body writhing while she did all she could to maintain the torment. I had never found anything more enthralling.

  The more I pushed her, the deeper inside myself I went, blinded and intoxicated by her cries, I toed the line of that sweet little thrum, knowing if I took it any further I could rip her open with my knife. So I pulled myself back from that precipice. I didn’t want her dead. Even now, the idea resonated negatively with me. Which is what further unsettles me. The other women I brought to the vault always ended up in the cage. I leave them tied and locked away in the darkness, they’re screams muffled, like being buried alive. It was rare for them to last more than an hour before they passed out. I liked taking them to that point where their mental and physical state is so close to shattering.

  Reducing them to sniveling, powerless bodies was the final act to my sadism. I got off on it. And I had every intention of putting Lacey in that cage, having her shatter so I could revel in it. But then she opened her mouth, and the words that she’d spoken had been as effective as a bullet, stopping me from carrying out my final plan. The soft, supplicating lilt of her voice, her sweetly spoken surrender roused something in me that even now I cannot put into words. It wasn’t an emotion I understood or even wanted to attempt to understand. So I responded in violence. I know nothing else but viciousness. Being inside her clenching, wet heat had strengthened the emotion. There had been nothing else but fucking her until both our minds fractured.

  Now, I watch her sleep and rather than peace, rather than savoring the after effect of her torture, my mind remains troubled. I bathed her, treated her wounds, and put her in my bed. Even this gentle treatment of her isn’t something I typically do. Nothing about what I’ve been doing since I’ve met this girl is within my typical behavior. I don’t bring women into my home, into my bedroom. Katia is the only exception, but that has more to do with her intrusive nature than my willingness to bring her into my space. I’ve never taken pity on my victims, it’s not an emotion I’m at all familiar with and yet, it appears as though I’ve very much capable of it when it comes to Lacey. Empathy.

  “Empathy.” My voice is a thick baritone in the darkness. The word resonating between my ears does not properly register in my mind. I release a long sigh and rake a hand through my hair. I’m not the deep, contemplative type and this is beginning to grate on my nerves. Coming to my feet, I walk out of my bedroom, purposely refusing to cast another look in her direction. I glance down at my watch as I make my way downstairs. It’s nearly 5 a.m. I’ll call Yuri in a few hours to see if he has any assignments for me. I need something to release this mounting tension. A kill. Nothing else will do at this point.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Katia

  My mind does not know how to process what I’m seeing, but the longer I look at the images in front of me, the darker my rage becomes until it’s all that I feel. There are more than fifty photographs splayed out on my desk and hundreds more in the black portfolio next to me. Those were about a week old but that hasn’t stopped me from continuously poring over them since my private investigator brought them to me. Trying to stop myself from looking at them seems like a fruitless task at this point, it’s become an obsession that now consumes me. And even as I rifle through the images now, I’m still confused as to what this all means because nothing seems to add up to what I know to be intrinsically true.

  Knox doesn’t have lovers. He has expensive pussy he likes to brutalize every so often when he can’t ignore his base instincts. He doesn’t have friends. He’s always been indifferent to people, always steered clear, unless, of course, he’s assigned to butcher them. I’m the only friend he’s ever had. I’m the only lover he’s even taken. It has been this way since we were children. So this girl’s sudden appearance in his life doesn’t fit into the unbreakable equation that was me and Knox. Lennox Baxter, my PI, has been following Knox at my request. The visit to his loft and the sight of the lettered leash on his coffee table had prompted this. I had the feeling then that something wasn’t quite right, but I knew asking him for an explanation would’ve produced nothing. So I decided to do a little digging. I hadn’t expected to find anything. Knox was as meticulous as I was when it came to covering his tracks. So discovering he’d left himself this exposed floored me.

  If I didn’t have the photographs, I would’ve simply said she was his next victim. It would make sense for a professional serial killer like Knox to take interest in a teenage prostitute in between jobs for my father. He could kill her for practice or to ease tension, or do it for whatever the fuck reason Knox liked to kill people and no one would miss her. But that doesn’t appear to be the case in this situation. He isn’t treating her like a target. I’ve been waiting for him to get rid of her, but he has yet to do so. He’s brought her to his home and has more than likely taken her to his vault, but still, he keeps her. With my curiosity burning just as fiercely as my rage, I grab the black portfolio at my side and pull open the zipper. Arranged on the left side are the numerous photographs Lennox has taken of Knox. And on the right, there’s a small stack of papers that contain her information. Lennox has been very thorough in that regard. There is nothing about Lacey Barnes that I don’t know. The fact that she is a high school prostitute, however, makes this even more interesting. There is also the glaring fact that she’s the sister of one of the marks we’ve been targeting in Forest Corner and suddenly the conversation I had with Vigo in my car two weeks ago returns to bite me in the ass.

  “I’m not saying he did it or didn’t do it. All I know is the mark and his sister didn’t have the money to cover the loan…”

  “So what, you think Knox paid it for them? That doesn’t make any fucking sense, Vigo. Why would he possibly do that?”

  “Fuck if I know, but we got the twenty-five grand and I know the mark didn’t pay it.”

  Coming to my feet, I pour the last remaining bit of red wine into my glass and bring it to my lips. He paid twenty-five thousand dollars for her. That’s a lot of money to throw away on some random eighteen-year-old slut. Unless, of course, she had a pussy worth twenty-five thousand dollar, then that would be something I would sincerely like to see. As much as I don’t want this whore around him, my curiosity, burning just as strongly as my rage, needs to know what Knox sees in her. If she matters to him, then she matters to me. He and I are one and the same. He is mine and I am his. It’s been this way since we were children. There will never be anyone else for us but each other. Knox knows this. Long ago, he’d promised me that, the night we we’re in his bedroom when we failed in killing that waste of human flesh, Dmitry. Knox has always kept his promises to me.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Lynn’s voice pulls me from my quiet musing and I turn to look at her standing at the entrance of my bedroom. “My apologies for the interruption, ma’am, but you have a visitor.”

  A frown draws my brows together as my eyes shift to the digital clock on my nigh
tstand. It’s nearing nine p.m. I’m not expecting any visitors. “Tell whoever it is I’ll see them tomorrow.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but he said it’s urgent that he sees you tonight.”

  I sigh. “Who the hell is it?”

  “Mr. Baxter, ma’am.”

  My frown grows deeper. Lennox typically called to arrange a meeting and most of the time those meetings were in nondescript restaurants in the seedier side of the city where he preferred to spend his time. The fact that he did not call and has now unexpectedly shown up at my home can only mean he’s found something extremely important. “Where is he?”

  “In the living room, ma’am.”

  Marching over to Lynn, I push my empty wine glass against her chest and she’s quick enough to grab it before it shatters to the ground. Double knotting the sash on my satin robe, I keep a moderate pace despite the urgency racing through my veins as I make my way downstairs. Down the marble staircase, through the foyer, and passing the immaculately clean kitchen I arrive in the living room to find Lennox standing by the grand stone fireplace that is the focal point of the living room. He’s facing away from me and instantly my eyes go to the back of his head, focusing on the bald spot he tried to conceal with what little remained of his fine, mousy-brown hair.

  “What was so urgent that you couldn’t wait until tomorrow to tell me?” I ask, stepping further into my living room. When he turns, it’s to reveal the face of a retired cop who’s spent his best years chasing down leads and bad guys. He is thin but not reedy, although, the black long trench coat he’s wearing gives him the illusion of broadness in the shoulders. He looks disheveled and from where I’m standing I can smell the alcohol on him like cologne, but despite the bloodshot veins in his eyes and the dark bags resting beneath them, he appears disturbingly lucid.

  “Do you have somewhere a little more private where we can go?” he asks, and I can’t help the lift of an eyebrow at his cryptic tone.

  “Is it that serious?”

  “I think so, yes. Definitely something you want to know.”

  “My office, down the hall. If you’ll follow me,” I say, and take the lead, putting extra speed in my stride and enter my home office. I don’t need to instruct him to close the door once he’s inside.

  “Spill it.”

  “Can I bother you for a drink?”

  “I think you’ve had enough,” I reply, my eyes narrowing as I stare at him. “Tell me why the hell you’re here, Lennox.”

  “I’ve discovered what your father’s been hiding.”

  My heart unexpectedly slams against my chest. “You have such a flair for the dramatic, get to it already.”

  “Twenty-eight years ago, your father had your mother brutally raped and shot. She’d apparently been very unhappy in their marriage years before she fell in love with his best friend. They secretly hid their love affair from your father until they couldn’t handle it anymore. On the night they were going to tell your father, he arranged to meet them both on his private estate and made your mother’s lover watch as he had more than ten men rape her before he butchered them both and had their remains cremated.” The revelation should’ve affected me in some way, but the only thing running through my mind is that I finally have a concrete answer as to what happened to my mother. A woman who I barely remember. I can’t even conjure up a sliver of sorrow for what happened to her.

  “Well, at least he was thorough,” I muse wryly. Lennox looks at me, his brown eyes widening a little at my cavalier response, no doubt. He doesn’t, however, remark on it. That’s smart of him.

  “That isn’t all of it.”

  I raise an eyebrow, watching carefully as he reaches in his back pocket and withdraws a folded piece of paper, which he then hands to me. I take it with a sigh and hastily unfold it. “And what am I looking at?”

  “Your father’s best friend…your mother’s lover, his name was Alexander Bishop. He helped your father start the Khitrova group,” he announces quietly, and even as he speaks my eyes shift rapidly across the piece of paper I’m holding. Comprehension tumbles down on me like a ton of bricks, shattering my aloofness and everything else in my world I thought to be true.

  “How…how do I know this is real?”

  “Because it’s taken me this fucking long to hunt it down. That birth certificate is something your old man didn’t want to ever have seen the light of day. I had to pull some heavy favors in order for me to get my hands on it.”

  “But that means…” There aren’t many things that shock me. But this... “Who else knows about this?”

  “Aside from you father? Just a few that were present. My source happened to be there the night this all occurred and no, I won’t tell you who it is. Trust me, the birth certificate is real. Meaning, that aside from Dmitry, Knox is…”

  “Don’t!” I snap through clenched teeth. “Don’t you fucking say it.” He doesn’t have the right to say those words to me. “You can make your way out now,” I inform him in a clipped tone. “I’ll have the bonus transferred into your account by tomorrow.”

  “Word of advice? I wouldn’t tell anyone about this if I were you. Your family is fucked up enough already. I say let the past stay in the past.”

  “How fucking philosophical of you,” I reply scathingly. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

  The minute the door closes behind him, I reach for the first object my eyes land on and hurl the expensive dove-gray laptop against the nearest wall. It connects, cracks before it thuds to the floor in two pieces. But I’m not remotely satisfied. Grabbing the desk lamp, I throw it at the door. On a rampage, I swipe my hand across the desk and bring everything crashing to the ground. I tear down at the thick, heavy curtains covering the windows and move on to the liquor cabinet. Being too heavy for me to push, I resort to grabbing every single bottle and decanter inside and smash them on the ground. Amber, brown, and gold liquor soaks the cream-colored area rug, the potent fumes rising up to burn my nostrils when I finally drop to my knees.

  I don’t cry. I haven’t cried since I was a little girl and now isn’t the time to start back up again. Besides, tears resolve nothing. My breathing is erratic and my heart is racing maddeningly fast in my chest. When I look down at my hands, I not only notice they’re trembling but I realize I’m still tightly holding onto the birth certificate. Knox’s birth certificate. My brother. My biological brother. There’s no more wishful thinking for what I craved as a little girl. And suddenly, this reaffirms what I’ve known all along, our connection is forged in blood. This changes nothing and yet everything all at once. We’ve done things no brother and sister should ever do but rather than be sickened by that, I can only see how much it has solidified our bond. I suddenly feel very justified in my pursuit of slowly killing my father. Not because of what he did to our mother, but because he deprived Knox of this knowledge. I have to tell him about this. He’ll want to know. I won’t keep this from him. But first, I need to take care of this Lacey Barnes situation. He doesn’t need the added distraction.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lacey

  I’m not avoiding Tyler but I don’t go out of way looking for him either. I don’t want to deal with the numerous questions I know he’ll have. Questions I can’t begin to answer even if I wanted to because at this point I’m not sure what I’m doing anymore. The one thing I know for sure is that I can’t endure another punishing session in Knox’s vault, not so soon after the last one. Even now, days later, seated on a stool in the biology lab, I can still feel the burn of his wrath in the healing welts on my ass cheeks. It’s no longer a searing, unbearable pain but the dull throb I sustain every time I move a certain way brings memories flooding back. In fact, I can’t look at myself while naked in the mirror without being reminded of Knox. The four letters of his name he left on my lower abdomen is an inescapable reminder of his utter control over me, over my life.

  I’m on edge the majority of the time now, my muscles permanently stiff with tension because of t
he very real and persistent fear that covers my skin like a fine sheen of sweat. Each time I look over my shoulder or out the windows of my classrooms, I know without an ounce of doubt that he’s watching me. Watching who I interact with, who I touch, who I don’t touch—namely Tyler. This is about me staying away from Tyler as much as possible and because of the promise I made on the floor of that room, I maintain a distance from my best friend. It’s not something I want to do but at this moment it seems like the best option for everyone. I skip lunch and media and spend the end of each period hiding out in the back of the library, catching up on the homework I’ve missed.