by Nicole Snow
It wasn't as bad as I expected. The guilt only hit me when my balls were dry, and then I had to swallow the bitter bullshit, the betrayal of binding flesh with a woman who wasn't my wife.
She felt so damned good, but Cassie wasn't her.
Jenny was my world. I fucked up. I failed to protect her. That would never, ever change, and it would follow me to the ends of the fucking earth, coiling around my small black heart like a goddamned snake.
My hands went to my head and squeezed. Tormented blood groaned and my vision blurred, but the pressure helped, massaged away the devilish hell I called my life.
You're losing your fucking mind and giving control to your dick. If you think the girl you've got down there will ever show you a fraction of the love Jenny did, then you've really lost it, buddy.
Cut the crap. Treat her like the slave she is, and nothing more.
No more mistakes. No more fuckups and hesitations that'll kill the last part of Jenny you have left.
I stopped the nasty words rattling my skull just before I thought about Ty. Fuck, if I got my son home safe, he'd hate my ass forever when he got old enough to put all the pieces together. And he had every right, the same right I had to suffer for my fuckups.
Nothing mattered in the long term except keeping my boy safe and alive. Cassie was no kid, no matter how she taunted me with her innocence. If I could've done it all over again and picked a spoiled suburban brat instead of this girl who'd always drawn the short straw in life, I would've.
But woulda, coula, shoulda wouldn't bring my son home alive. Hauling my crazy ass out of bed and doing the dirty work to break her for the Mexican would.
I padded to the kitchen for coffee. Izzy always left some in the thermos. The brew poured hot and black, so strong it was like mud coursing across my tongue. Perfect.
I leaned on the counter, mug in hand, sipping the dark brew to focus on something other than the woman I'd fucked like she was more than just a slave.
Training her was never going to be easy, no matter how much the motherfucker holding my son hostage was a red hot motivator. Karma was an absolute bitch, and she was riding on my shoulders, raking her long bloody nails over my face.
This was my world now. Pain would always be mixed with pleasure, sadness with excitement. I let lust take over last night and screwed the hurt away with her warm mouth. This headache, this poison sickness in my blood, was the price of last night's mirage.
I remembered the way my come dripped down her perfect tits when she was beneath me. Torn confusion pulled at her sweet face, reminding me she could never, ever be mine. She hurt too, and I was filling her with my fucking cancer the same way I spent myself in her mouth.
No more. I had to do this damned job and get the hell out. Forever.
Paying Borzia meant paying for my sins, as many as I could amend in this lifetime. The brutal tests I leveled on that sweet girl before I handed her over to a monster were my punishment. So was every single second my poor son was in his grasp.
I took out my phone, breathing a sigh when I saw no missed calls. Good. The asshole had left me alone for one night. Didn't matter that he'd given me a time frame. There were no guarantees with this demon. If he wanted to change the rules at any time, he could.
It was fully in his devilish right to demand her tomorrow if he wanted. And I wouldn't be able to do a damned thing but take it like a bitch.
I flicked to the app I'd set up for the household cameras. I'd stopped checking them as often as I should, ever since Izzy showed me she'd gotten her shit under control.
The two girls were outside. For a second, my fingers tightened up on the screen. I frowned, beaming hot disapproval at the scene. She wasn't supposed to be bringing her out there.
But after last night, maybe the girl deserved a few moments in the grass, breathing fresh air. I watched Cassie following my sister-in-law with a weed whacker in her hands. They were heading for the gardens where we had our overgrown vegetables, all the things Jenny loved to plant and harvest in better times.
Izzy's food was good, but fuck, I missed my wife's cooking. I would've handed a thousand Izzy's over to Borzia for one more hour with that woman.
I leaned in. The way she was standing didn't look kosher, and neither did the tension in her face.
What the fuck is she doing?
I watched the screen with growing rage when Izzy grabbed the girl's face. Did Cassie spill her guts about what happened last night? Fuck, had I truly done some serious damage slamming my cock down her throat?
I didn't really want to hurt her. I had to for him, the man she'd end up calling master as he inflicted heart wrenching pain, shredding her like a helpless kitten with his depraved fantasies...
Last night was nothing compared to what she had waiting in that huge dark estate. The rougher I was, the better, and maybe by some holy miracle she'd have a tiny chance to survive him.
After all this shit, I was still trying to help her. Couldn't she see it?
Losing myself in mad thoughts prevented me from seeing what was happening on camera. I wasn't sure how long I spaced out, probably a full minute or two. When I focused on the screen again, Cassie was gone, just a distant silhouette flinging open the gate to the woods.
“God dammit!” I pounded out the door in my jeans and bare feet before I wasted another second.
How had I been so fucking stupid? The bullshit cooperation Izzy gave me was a lie, and I'd swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, too doped up on my cock's needs to see anything different.
I tore through the yard, through the hedges, toward the gardens. She was lazily knocking down weeds around the garden boxes like nothing had happened when I found her.
Lunging, I wrapped my arms around Izzy and pulled her to the ground so fast and swift the weed whacker went flying over our heads. We hit the soil hard and she screamed, clawing at me.
“Bitch! What did you do!” My words exploded in her ear so hard her whole face wrinkled with pain.
I wasn't fucking asking. A hundred horrible ways my boy would be tortured and killed flashed in my head. They'd send me his fingers when they were done with him, if there was that much left.
Cunt! You killed him! You lied to me and killed my fucking son!
“Evan! Stop!” Izzy pushed back, raking one hand across my face.
Karma was done. It was her turn to give me some real goddamned pain.
The hot blood that had been tormenting me since morning spilled out. Her nails cut deep jagged lines up my jaw, straight to my temples, ripping at me like a cornered wildcat. I howled and raised my fist, ready to plant it straight through her stupid traitor face.
My free hand grabbed hers, the one that scratched me, and smashed it to the ground. I bent it back the way I always do when I need to disable some asshole, one tiny flick away from snapping the wrist.
She whimpered and went limp, but her eyes were open, bigger and brighter than ever. “Evan...”
Shit! You keep looking at me like that and I'll never wipe your ass out and get my slave home.
Her eyes cut straight to my soul. She looked so much like Jenny. The same scared, loving eyes I saw as she breathed her last were staring at me now...
No! You can't think about that. You can't think about the death and blood and –
“Fuck!” The word exploded out my mouth like a grenade. “You don't think, do you, woman? You killed him...you killed my son.”
My hand went limp. I couldn't kill her. Not when she was Jenny's flesh and blood, the only shadow left of her except my boy.
No, I couldn't end her life, but there was no stopping the full blown meltdown tearing through my bones.
Here in the peaceful gardens my family enjoyed, my whole fucking world was ending, the early autumn colors turning to ash before my eyes. Gray, brown, and charred.
Soon as I softened, she scooted away from me, staring at me with those giant eyes. She slumped a few feet away. The woman looked at me like I'd just murdered someone in fr
ont of her. For all intents and purposes, I had, except it happened months ago, when they took my wife and killed her.
“What did you do, Izzy? What did you do?” Murder rushed straight to my brain and drained, leaving desolation behind.
I lost my will to live and fight in one damned blow, and I had to know why.
Her lips twisted when we locked eyes. It was a full minute before she spoke, and when she did it was scary calm.
“I let an innocent woman go, Evan. This whole thing was a mistake, and you know it. You never should've agreed to his terms.” She scrambled up, gritting her teeth in pain when she leaned on the hand I'd nearly broken. “You killed them, Evan. Not me. You let your whole screwed up world take over and steal them away.”
“You don't know a damned thing! Bitch.”
Izzy cautiously approached and stood over me. The urge to throw my arms around her waist and hurl to the ground again was brutal, but somehow I kept it in check. “I never should've trusted you one second with her. Should've known you were too fucking weak and crazy for this shit the instant you put down the bottle.”
“I know plenty!” she snapped. “You're the one keeping yourself in the dark. You seriously can't see what you've become? You were always a monster away from home...but never with family. Never with innocent people. That's changed, though. Now, you're fucking hurting the last people on earth who deserve it!”
Everything she said struck deep, sharp bullets exploding in my heart, one after another. The worst of it? The bitch was absolutely on the goddamned money.
Shame it didn't matter.
I stood, keeping my fists balled at my sides, and closed the distance between us. Izzy wasn't afraid of me anymore and wasn't surrendering her ground. Or maybe she just didn't care. I could see the righteous fury blazing in her eyes, the white fire that blasted the darkness inside me, the shit I couldn't afford to look at for another second.
“Go inside, pack up, and get the fuck out,” I said, thunder building in my throat. “You fucked up and just made this job ten times harder, but I'm still gonna finish it. If I get the girl back here in one piece she's going straight to the Mexican border and my son is coming home. After that – I don't give a shit if you bow down on your hands and knees – you're never gonna see us again.”
She shook her head violently. “For fuck's sake...you're going nuts, Evan. You still can't see it, can you? This isn't you. This isn't the man who gave Ty life in the first place, and it sure as hell isn't the man my sister fell in love with!”
Fuck! I had to get out, had to start moving, had to kick my ass into high gear and drag Cassie home before she got too far.
“You're right, bitch. That man died with Jenny on Borzia's cold tile floor. I don't give a fuck about anything except protecting the only family I've got left. Move!”
I swear to God, I would've shoved her if she didn't step aside. Izzy waited several seconds and then scuttled sideways. Her gaze drilled into mine and taunted the demon inside me, the thing I'd become and had to let flourish 'til I got Ty home.
No more time for bullshit. There'd be years to think about the way I'd ripped out her heart and nearly killed her just now.
I ran. Cassie was getting one more step away from me with every second that passed. Nearly tore the door off its hinges in my flight to grab my shirt, jacket, shoes, and keys. The gun too.
Izzy hadn't even come inside when I hopped into my car and rocketed out of the driveway. Not my damned problem. Every time I remembered what she said, my blood got a little hotter and thicker and eviler.
I couldn't stand to be inside my own fucking body. And I sure as fuck couldn't stand my damned sister-in-law growing a moral spine in a world where you had to a ruthless jellyfish to survive.
Fuck her for doing this.
Fuck her for being right.
Fuck her for telling me what I already know.
The steering wheel was practically molded to my grip. I pointed the car deep into the woods, straight down the road toward Beacon Grove, heading for the same shitty section where I'd taken Cassie out of one hell and into mine.
My jaw trembled when I thought about her. Felt like my fucking teeth were about to pop from their sockets, rage shooting through my gums, anger and hate and disgust at the living mirror Izzy had become.
Cassie was crazed in her quest for freedom. And when people ran off into the woods to flee from monsters – especially these forests – they were all too likely to find more.
I had a horrible flash of the cult getting a hold of her again. The girl was bound to get lost and end up right back where she started in her desperate run.
Never fucking failed.
How many men who tried to flee my execution over the years got killed because they looped around straight to their homes? Didn't fucking matter that it was the most obvious and illogical place imaginable. During panic, the human brain runs on autopilot, and I had to find Cassie before she crashed and wrecked herself.
Sunset came and went and I hadn't seen a damned thing on the side of the road. I reached the very end of the woods and swore, making a U-Turn to backtrack. If she'd come out to the road to try to hitch a ride, there was no sign.
She was either deep in the wild, hiding herself, or else somebody had gotten to her first. Hell, for all I knew, she'd come too close to the cult's borders and gotten caught in barbed wire. Cassie could've been dying in a hole that very second while I drove around like an asshole, the blood draining from her pale body.
“Bull. Shit.” I slapped the wheel with both hands as the darkness fell.
Why did imagining her hurt and dead bother me so much? It wasn't because I feared what would happen with Borzia and my son.
The monster gnawing at my guts told me why with each and every bite, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it.
Izzy was right. If anything happened to her, it was all my fault. I was an enforcer, a man who'd accepted a human sacrifice, and now I was shaking like a fucking leaf when I imagined her dead or dying because of me. Worse, raped and tortured at the hands of Miguel Borzia. I saw the sadistic sonofabitch strapping her down in his personal dungeon, ripping and burning at her perfect flesh...
I jerked the car onto a small gravel road. The wheel slid down the narrow ditch and nearly dragged the vehicle into a tree.
There was no other choice. I shut the engine and punched my glove compartment open. The door fell.
Magnum and flashlight in hand, I was ready. The dark and the wild didn't fucking scare me. Neither did the deep spiked pits and rusty barbed wire the cult used to deter outsiders. Their shit was sloppy. I'd set plenty of real traps in my time, and the snarled toys they kept in the woods were a fucking joke to a pro.
If the cult had her, I'd kill them all myself. I'd snap their freak necks with my bare hands. Anything and everything to get her back, to make amends, and to make damned sure these motherfuckers paid for giving her a horseshit life long before I came into the picture and blackened it even more.
Hold on, babe. I'm coming to rescue you for real this time.
When the cult was gone and I had Cassie back, I wasn't gonna stop. There was no fucking way I could hand her over after this. Izzy's betrayal struck a nerve, the same as the agonizing drive here.
There had to be another way to get my son back, and I was gonna find it. Whatever happened, it sure as fuck wasn't gonna involve Cassie anymore. The instant she was in my arms, she was never leaving again, no matter who fucking wanted her.
From the first footsteps I took between the tall trees, I knew she was mine, and there was no retreat.
Mine, mine, mine.
Mine come hell. Mine come death. Mine come soul killing sadness.
IX: Full Broken Circle (Cassie)
“Praise the Prophet! It's...it's really you.”
It took my eyes a long time to adjust to the light when I opened them. The first thing I saw were thick wiry bars, only inches from my face. A small feminine face hovered past them, kneeling so s
he was at my level.
I jerked up, almost smashing my head on the iron. Confusion poured through me, and then stark reality lashed me across the face.
Oh, no. Oh, Jesus, no.
I was in a cage. Beyond the bars, my sister looked at me, only taking her eyes away to glance behind her every few seconds.
My gaze went right through her. Over her bony shoulder, the distant wall had the Prophet's personal flag, an all-seeing eye within an eye inscribed in gold on black.
God, I was really here, inside the Refuge, his personal home.
My thoughts scrambled when Heather reached through the iron bars. She gripped my fingers, squeezing tight, tears shining in her eyes.
“The Prophet promised a miracle, and he's delivered! He said he would bring you back safe from the madmen who killed our father...I'm so happy it was Gilbert who did it.” She clasped her hands, a ragged smile on her face.
Behind her, I looked at the lanky young man who'd pulled me into the truck. A nasty smile was smeared on his face. While I was watching, searching his evil little eyes, he turned them on my sister.
My stomach snarled, empty and upset and now sick too. Gilbert stepped forward, devouring her butt with his cruel eyes, fading his ugly smile. When he wrapped his long arm around Heather's neck and she purred with delight, I really thought I'd throw up.
Good thing I hadn't eaten in forever.
“Why am I in here?” Defiance rose in my voice. “I'm a free woman, aren't I? You said yourself Daddy was dead...killed by madmen.”
I didn't understand the disconnect. Why did Heather think I was another victim, but Gilbert and his father called me a murderer when they picked me up?
I shook my head, exasperated. Sadness tried to enter my voice, but I was too tired to let it reign.
It wouldn't have been honest anyway. There wasn't a shred of remorse for Daddy. No matter what was waiting for me, I was glad the asshole was dead, killed by another tormenter.
“Why don't you make your way home, hon? Prophet's going to be real pissed if he catches you in here. I had to sneak you in...just to see her.”