When he was released, I dumped my entire contents of my piggybank on the counter that I could barely reach. I’d been a good boy. I’d done my chores and earned my ten dollars a week since I was five.
My mother told me to put the money in a bank, but I’d kept it. Secretly saving every penny…to run away if my brother ever did what he threatened and tried to kill me.
I didn’t know why he hated me so much. I’d done nothing wrong. I’d only ever tried to be nice. I’d worshipped him. I’d wanted to be him. And that made him hate me.
Now, I wanted nothing to do with him.
Which was perfect because I found my escape in the bony poodle. I willingly gave up my runaway fund to save him, and I didn’t regret a penny. Even when I went home that night and Drake was waiting for me. Even when I noticed our parents were out at some scientific seminar and the babysitter had her boyfriend round, sucking face on the couch.
He’d marched me out back to the large backyard and tied a rope around my ankles. He’d told me to run while shooting me with his BB gun. I’d done my best to hobble with my legs lashed together, but in the end, I’d laid there and taken it, wincing with every shot but not crying out.
My tears were what he wanted.
But knowing I had a life depending on me—a grateful dog that’d wagged his tail and whimpered when I’d left him under his bush—kept me going.
Every morning, I snuck out to feed and brush him. Every night, I went to make sure he was okay. I missed him so much when we weren’t together. His whines hurt my tiny heart when I had to go, and his joy at my arrival made me wish I never had to leave.
But I knew better than to bring the dog home.
Pongo the poodle I’d called him—from 101 Dalmatians. I took him scraps from our kitchen and smuggled him into the treehouse when it grew too risky to let him live alone in the park.
I shared my blankets with him. I told him my secrets. And he’d lick my hands and face and snuggle close.
He became my best friend. My world.
So when Drake found out, it shattered everything.
He didn’t just kill Pongo slowly…he tortured him—just like he tortured me.
He placed him in a cage so he couldn’t run. He poked him with sharp sticks until he bled. He threw rocks. He yelled abuse. He placed a hose into the top of the cage and left the water running for hours.
I tried to stop him.
I wriggled until the rope he’d bound me with gnashed through my wrists and ankles. According to the doctors, I’d rubbed myself down to bone.
I was almost glad when he finally killed Pongo. When he used his BB gun and shot him in the eye at point-blank, over and over until his whimpers went silent.
At least my poor friend was free.
When Pongo went silent, I screamed.
I didn’t stop screaming until my parents found us at the bottom of the huge garden, hidden far from the house, tucked away in the woods.
That time, Drake couldn’t pretend he hadn’t hurt me. He was sent for counselling. Men in white coats talked to him in sympathetic voices. And my parents actually cared about me.
My mother nursed me back, she tended to my wounds, but I never fully smiled again. She was gentle and kind, and I began to trust that maybe I would be okay.
Drake returned after some time away and things were okay between us. Our dad monitored our playdates, and our mum never let us go far from the house. Life went on, even if Pongo’s ghost stayed with me.
I didn’t smile until a year later when I found another stray. At first, I wanted to keep walking. I’d promised mum I’d be home in time for dinner after going to the park on my bike. My memories of what’d happened to Pongo made me almost vomit in the grass as a cat hobbled from the trees with a broken leg.
It meowed at me.
Its eyes so big and wet I was sure it cried.
My bike was used as an ambulance as I shot across town with the poor kitty. A different vet this time, but they didn’t turn me away. I used up another year’s worth of allowances and waited for days for the cat to be discharged.
By the time the skinny tabby was placed into my arms with a bright pink cast on its leg, I vowed I would protect it against anyone and anything. I kept it far from Drake. Far from my parents or home.
I made a shelter for it in the park. I brought it beds and bowls and food. I nursed it while the cast set its leg correctly, then took it back to the vet to have it removed. For four months, I cared for her, but I never gave her a name.
Each time I went to give her one, Pongo’s final whimper would clamp my lips together. If I didn’t name her, she’d be safe from my brother.
In the end, I learned another valuable lesson.
My brother wasn’t to be trusted, but neither were other humans. Other kids in the park, teenagers who went to get high, found my cat’s shelter and smashed it. They chased her up a tree, waving sticks and taunting.
I had to wait until they’d all gone before I could climb up and grab her shaking, terrified body. And I made the choice that ensured my life would never be the same.
I carried her home.
I walked straight to my parents’ bedroom and I went in without knocking.
My mum sat at her dressing table applying make-up for yet another seminar dinner. She rose in shock as I huddled the tabby close and asked for the only thing I’d ever requested.
“Please…help me find this cat a safe home.”
She said I could keep it.
I shook my head and said I couldn’t.
We both knew why.
I trusted her.
I shouldn’t have.
I trusted her to find a loving family, and the next morning, when the tabby was loaded into a box and placed in the back of her car to travel to its forever family, I was so relieved. So happy. So grateful.
It gave me purpose.
It gave me something to cling to when Drake resumed his extra activities on me.
From seven years to seventeen, I rescued over forty animals. Rabbits found on the side of the roads, cats who’d been feral for years, dogs who’d been kicked out of home, even wildlife who’d been hurt by humans. Birds who’d been hit by cars, squirrels that’d been stuck in traps, and raccoons who’d been mistreated.
Each one, I spent my allowance on and then my pay cheque from working in my parents’ company doing odd jobs while I finished my studies.
Each one, I made healthy and happy, trusting of human care and ready to be adored by a family far away from mine.
And each one, I gave trustingly to my mother to rehome. Sometimes I asked if I could go with her to check up on the people who’d been so kind as to welcome a stray into their lives. But each time, she said it would be too hard on me. That I had an empathic heart and it would break with goodbyes.
She wasn’t wrong.
But she also wasn’t right.
I wanted to see for myself they were cared for, but I didn’t want to ruin the system. I’d saved lives. I wouldn’t put my own wants before their needs.
But of course, I should never have trusted.
And it was Drake who told me the truth.
On the night of my eighteenth birthday, my older brother passed me a beer with a gloating smile. As I’d grown older and matched him in height and size, his torments had stopped to just verbal. He knew if he picked a physical fight with me, I wouldn’t cower anymore.
I’d strike back.
I’d probably win thanks to my regime of outdoor exercise and rock climbing.
So…he bided his time until he could cut out my motherfucking heart and destroy me forever.
He told me what my mother did with all the strays I’d lovingly rescued, repaired, and rehomed. He took me for a drive to Sinclair and Sinclair Group, unlocked the laboratories with his key card and strode past rows upon rows of lab equipment before unlocking a back room.
He’d grinned as I’d stepped into the room and promptly crashed to my knees.
Bile roiled and acid sh
ot into my mouth.
Because there, in a thousand cages were all the animals I’d ‘saved’.
The raccoons from the streets, the dogs from the slums, the rabbits from the roads.
Each one in misery.
Each one a test subject.
Each one poisoned and injected until their skin fell off, their internal organs failed, their will to live non-existent.
My mother, the one person I trusted above everyone, took the souls I loved and locked them in hell.
The animals, who’d trusted me, had been locked into a fate worse than death.
I wasn’t a saviour of animal kind. I was the procurer of torture.
A scientist’s child who provided an unlimited amount of lab rats.
A steady stream of souls.
So many free bodies for their experiments.
“Sully…Sully!”
I shook my head, shoving back memories that had no fucking jurisdiction over me. I’d atoned for my sins. I’d redeemed myself by saving thousands of lab sufferers since.
But no matter how much I did, no matter how many I saved, I couldn’t get rid of the guilt.
Metal rattled, wrenching my attention to the cage trapping Eleanor.
Too much of my past still swirled in my mind. Seeing her behind bars did something to me. It made me want to rip her free. Get on my knees and apologise.
To let her go.
Not just from the prison I’d put her in but the island I’d brought her to.
She still had a soul—just like the animals I’d rescued.
She was still a living, breathing creature who didn’t deserve to be treated like an object. Who was I to own her body instead of her? Who made me god, controlling her lifespan instead of fate?
But…she wasn’t an animal.
She wasn’t some helpless creature who needed me to be her champion.
She was human.
She had the capacity that all humans did—to choose herself over the lives of others. To be superior against feathered or furred. To willingly ignore that their pain was just as excruciating as hers.
But Skittles trusts her…
“Sully!”
I raked a hand through my hair, noticing the quake in my body. “Stop yelling. I’m right here.”
Her hands wrapped tight around the bars, her face strained and worried. “But you weren’t…you still stood there, but you…your mind wasn’t here.”
I snorted, doing my best to dispel the rest of my past.
I didn’t know why it’d chosen that moment to swarm me. To come so thick and fast. Normally, the memories found me when I was asleep, forming into nightmares I couldn’t escape from, clinging to my thoughts long after I’d woken up, fighting ghosts and mourning those I’d failed.
I never usually let them take hold. Never usually allowed that stupid kid inside me to make me suffer moral behaviour. I dabbled in human flesh because each time I’d trusted someone, they’d turned out to be a devil in disguise.
I happily bought and sold women because frankly, they deserved it.
I had no qualms about men being killed or bad things happening to the human race because we’d caused so, so much worse to other species. It was karma. Justified. Warranted.
Wiping my mouth, I struggled to remember what we spoke about before my trip down unwanted memory lane.
Ah, yes.
She’d guessed what I’d known since I was a boy. She’d been the trigger for my relapse.
Humans aren’t to be trusted.
You’re right, Eleanor Grace. And that is why I will never trust you.
It’d always turned out to be the ones closest to me that failed me the most. Therefore, I wouldn’t give her the opportunity.
Throwing her into that chimpanzee cage, allowing her to be oppressed and confined just like Ace the aging, disease-riddled ape had been before I’d rescued and euthanized him, had been one of the hardest things I’d ever fucking done.
It’d gone against my basic make-up as a man, but it’d also been necessary.
She was a threat.
To me.
To Skittles.
To my motherfucking heart.
It was time to leave.
Necessary to get the hell out of there, before I said or did something that went against every rule I’d followed since I found out that my mother had been using the animals I rescued as her own personal lab tests.
For years, I’d funded her experiments.
Stupidly handing over healthy, tamed animals that no one would miss.
Fuck!
My hands balled as I backed away from the cage. “Goodnight, Jinx. I assume you won’t sleep well.”
She shook her head, her gorgeous long hair licking over her arms and shoulders. She was once again regal and refined. “No. Don’t go. Not yet. I want to know. I need to understand. Please—”
I tutted under my breath. “There is nothing to understand. Don’t reduce yourself to begging. If you last one night with your dignity intact, then you will return to your villa. You will once again be given anything you desire. You will feel the sun on your face and the rain in your hair. You will sleep on softness and spend your days doing whatever you wish.” My tone turned black. “However, if you disobey me again. If you talk to me out of line. If you attempt to connect with me. If you continue to chase something that isn’t there to be chased, then this will be your new accommodations.”
Panic painted her cheeks, but she held her tongue from begging. Pushing off from the bars, she stood in the centre of the cage as regal and as noble as any priestess. Greek goddess, Egyptian sylph, or powerful enchantress, nothing compared to her.
Even in a simple robe, she was dressed in a gown of riches, dripping with magic that made me fight the constant urge to bow to her.
“Goodnight, El-Jinx.” I turned and stalked toward the door.
Her gentle voice tiptoed after me. “I understand your desire to protect animals from cruelty, Sully. I’m the same. I get that drive. I have the same bleeding heart to help. So I won’t curse you for locking me in a cage that some poor animal has probably died in. But…” Steel gilded with silver filled her tone. “I will never forgive you for doing exactly what others have done to the same souls you stand up for. Regardless of what you say, I am worthy of the same protection. I feel the same level of helplessness. I’m just as dependent on you as they are. And this is what you’re doing to me. This is how you’re treating me. That’s not justice. It’s hypocritical.”
I didn’t turn around.
I stepped from the villa that housed a hundred contraptions of persecution and locked the door on a goddess who spoke the truth.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I STOOD UPRIGHT, STRETCHING out the kinks in my entire body.
All night, I’d alternated between sitting and trying to sleep leaning against the bars, lying on my side curled into a tiny ball, or standing to alleviate the biting pain of the bars into my thighs.
The wire bottom was the worst part. It wasn’t the lack of space or claustrophobia; it was the constant fiery lashes of metal biting into the soles of my feet, my legs, my ribcage.
It made me pity animals whose homes included such torture. Mice that lived on wire. Rabbits that lived in hutches. The agony of just a single night drove my mind to jagged points, let alone being my permanent state of existence.
I’d slept intermittently—another bad night’s sleep compounding onto the previous few. I would’ve willingly traded sleeping under a bush to this monstrosity.
After Sully had gone, I’d resigned myself to the darkness, the silence, the strange fear that’d sprung through me when his eyes had gone blank with the past. His mask of indifference and callousness had dropped, revealing a man who carried tangled agony in his heart.
If I could’ve bent the bars to get to him, I would have. I would’ve crawled into his arms and dragged him back from whatever hell he relived. Maybe if I’d touched him, things might’ve worked out differently.
But because I hadn’t, his walls reconstructed, his mask repositioned, and whatever connection that’d stealthily bloomed between us was shot with an arrow and left to die on the cage floor with me.
Standing on one leg, I did my best to give my left foot a rest from the wire. When the red welts faded a little from my skin, I gave my right foot a rest, balancing easily and training my mind to stay calm instead of chaotic. Occasionally, I stood on the tray Sully had placed inside with me, but the slippery surface was as equally tortuous as the wire.
I wanted out.
I’d never wanted anything more in my life.
But losing my mind wouldn’t make my release come any faster.
Instead, I watched the sunrise through the windows crowded with cages. I nibbled at the food and rationed the water so I wouldn’t have to use the bucket in the corner. As hours ticked past, I steadily lost my tenacity and became teary with exhaustion.
By afternoon, I’d reduced myself to pissing in the bucket and slouching against the bars in some broken marionette pose. At least such tiredness meant I was able to sleep, able to ignore the pain from the metal wire.
My eyes shot open at the scrape of the villa door opening.
I tried to scramble to my feet, but instead I slipped on the tray and crashed deeper into my discarded puppet pose.
Masculine footsteps paced methodically toward me as I turned to look over my shoulder and braced myself to see Sully.
After a night in this jail, my heart had hardened toward him. I had no tender hope where he was concerned, just smouldering anger. If he could lock me up and leave me here, then he didn’t deserve any understanding. I refused to beg for attention. I would never lower myself to his affection if this was what he was capable of.
I moaned as I clawed my way to my bruised feet.
A pair of green eyes met mine.
Not Sully.
Calvin.
He’s returned from wherever he flew off to.
His stare dropped from mine, skating over my body.
I gulped and rapidly retied the robe. The top had gaped, revealing a breast and the now no longer sunburned skin, thanks to Sully’s serum. No hint of redness existed, and the blisters on my hands had healed practically before my eyes.
Twice a Wish (GODDESS ISLES Book 2) Page 18