“Thank you.”
It gave me a sense of normalcy. I hadn’t kept track of time and I had no idea how many days I’d been in the house for, doing nothing. I couldn’t continue to do nothing.
“What would you like to do?”
“What would you like me to do?”
“We need bread making for the market in the morning. Would you like to help?”
“Yes, please.”
Beatrice led me to the end of the row of houses and knocked on the door of the last house. A young woman answered, wearing an apron, her dark hair frosted with flower, and her cheek smeared with butter.
“Agnes, this is Lady Blackwood. She’s come to help with the bread.”
“Please call me Trixie,” I said as I reached out and took her hand, wiping it on my trousers when she left an oily residue on my palm. “I know what Mr Blackwood would want, but I’m not Lady Blackwood today.”
I winked, hoping it would be enough to ease her worries about being punished if she didn’t use my official title—although I had no idea why I was a lady; I guessed it was just more formal than ‘Mrs’.
Agnes invited me in and handed both Beatrice and me an apron. Beatrice pulled hers on and left it undone as she sat on a chair in the corner. She wasn’t going to bake bread, but she had taken the precaution to protect herself from a flour bomb. Agnes led me to the bench that spanned the width of her hut. It was covered with flour and littered with canvas bags of ingredients.
When I emerged from the hut, sunset was moving over the forest and darkness was beginning to descend on the estate. I still hadn’t seen Elias; I’d been in the village all afternoon, baking bread with Agnes, tending to crops, batting dust from rugs, and squeezing lemons for lemonade. Beatrice had stayed with me all day, but she hadn’t said much. I’d felt her watching me, wondering why I was here and insisting on helping, why I didn’t feel the need to order the villagers around like I knew they’d expect.
“Would you like to stay for dinner?” she asked as I washed my hands in the lake.
I glanced up at her from where I knelt by the water and dried my hands on my apron.
“I’d like that. Thank you.”
I didn’t want to return to the house and eat something cooked by staff, whilst sitting on a table that could fit twenty but was only occupied by me. I didn’t want to eat alone. I didn’t want to be alone, but something told me Elias wasn’t home.
Beatrice didn’t respond to my acceptance of her invitation. She stamped her stick into the grass to tell me to hurry up, and I got to my feet to join her. I’d never done manual labour before today. My biceps ached from kneading the bread; my wrists hurt from hitting the rug with a hand-woven broom; my knees throbbed from kneeling in the mud while I checked the carrots and potatoes. I ached all over, but it was a good ache. It was one I wanted to feel again. I was dirty, I was tired, and I was missing Elias, but I felt comfortable here. I felt like I fit in. I felt like I belonged. Finally.
Beatrice and I walked back to the village, through the small break in the bushes and into the centre of the huts. The villagers had collected firewood and a huge fire, blazing vivid orange and spitting sparks of yellow, crackled away as everyone prepared for the evening. Tree trunks were dragged into place around the fire, in a jagged circle that would give everyone a perfect view of the fire, and everyone else around it.
“We serve chicken for dinner most nights,” Beatrice said, leading me to one of the trunks. It was higher than all the others, reserved for her so she didn’t have to bend down too far.
“Why are there no men?” I asked, sitting next to her and watching women dressed in white linen frocks gather around the fire with supplies. “Why are there no other elders?”
“There are no men because they are not needed.” She waved her hand in a circle in front of her, gesturing at the female villagers. “Does it look like we struggle without them?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. I think the village is amazing. I just wondered…I mean…conception…”
“Ah, you wonder how we continue to reproduce.”
“Yes.” I nodded again. “There are children here.”
“Imagine a war, Trixie. Imagine the many, many battles that have been fought of behalf of king, country and freedom. Where were the women while the men were at war?”
“At home,” I whispered. “Waiting for them to return.”
“Then that should answer your question.”
It did. She hadn’t said much, nothing I didn’t already know. But she’d said enough. She’d told me enough to put things into perspective. The war was outside these walls, where my husband felt most comfortable. The war being waged on the city didn’t end with the men who lived in Blackwood house, and the men who worked for GRIT. The villagers were at war. The villagers worked for Elias. They were his soldiers, his knights, his noblemen. They’d left their wives and children to go and fight for something Elias Blackwood believed in. I looked around me again; the children were all the same age. They were reunion children. They were bred to continue to serve the vigilante family I had been adopted into, but they’d been created on nights when men and women reunited and rejoiced, forgetting, just for a while, that war still waited. For all of us.
“I understand,” I said. “But the elders…”
“People die, Trixie. Legacies die out, bloodlines dilute until they’re inexistent, and the souls of old people float away on the breeze, leaving nothing but memories behind.” I was about to reply when she continued. “My time will come, just like my husband’s did. Just like my sisters, their husbands, my friends and their husbands, people I worked and lived beside for years. It hasn’t come yet, but it will.”
“Not yet,” I replied, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Not yet.”
Dinner was served up on iron racks and grills. Chicken was sliced, diced and marinated in spices gifted from Blackwood House. Beef was cut into strips and still dripping blood when it was placed on plates after a quick flash fry. Bread was broken, butter was scooped, carrots were served with sea salt and coriander. We ate by firelight, sharing stories of the world outside—fictional but hopeful. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt so… comfortable. I felt like I was in the right place at the right time for the right reasons. It wasn’t 2016 in this village. It was timeless. The way of life had been cemented over the years until it no longer felt like an old world within a modern battleground. It just felt…real. I didn’t say much, as I ate with my fingers and wiped them on the napkin I held under my plate. I didn’t involve myself in conversations about markets, new recipes, new chores for the children. And when Beatrice began to sing, I sat and listened, and watched on as the women pulled their children onto their laps and swayed from side to side as they sang along with her.
Another night, another mission. We’d been given a tip, somewhere to scope out and observe for signs of criminal activity. I didn’t often move on tips; I followed leads myself and figured cases out piece by piece until blind observation was unnecessary in lieu of a straight conviction based on solid evidence.
Like the night at the house where we’d found the dead bodies, I ordered my team to cover the exits and prepare to storm into the house.
The anonymous informant had described the house as what would have been considered a brothel twenty years ago. Parliament no longer bothered to call prostitution a crime. When the city was drowning in death, why not encourage people to seek out moments of pleasure while they still had the chance? Brothels were no longer places of condemnation, judgement and stereotyping. But with leniency came boundary-pushing. With lawfulness came defiance. Some brothels were safe; whore houses with rooms of women who spent their days satisfying the men of the city who were too afraid to do something to save themselves. Other brothels…others bred the corrupt. Those houses, those estates ran by madams with a foot in the door of the underground, had become playgrounds for sadists, a home for trafficked girls, and a place where the dark side of femininity co
uld smother the purity with aggressive acts and merciless punishments for seeking out a woman in the dead of night.
The house was in action. Lights weren’t often left on once darkness had fallen, but the residents of this house felt no need to protect themselves. They felt no need to hide from the underground because this was the demon’s lair…one we would infiltrate and shut down.
My instructions were silent. We moved around the parameters of the house in silence and edged closer until we lined the walls with guns poised, hearts racing, minds and bodies alert. Shoving my handgun into the back of my trousers, I roughed my hair up, tore my tie open at the knot, and stroked my cock through my trousers to encourage a semi-erection that would grab the attention of whoever opened the door. I had my microphone on. I had my earpiece in. I had the camera fixed to the collar of my shirt. We may have killed people who killed others, and we may have tortured people for information, but we would keep our immunity cemented with evidence that we were the good guys. Always with the deception.
I knocked on the door and stood tall and proud, holding onto my cock as an explanation for why I was here. If I was going to have to walk into a whore house, knowing everything I knew about all of the men I was supposed to honour, I was going to take a thrill or two as compensation. I couldn’t touch—I never had. I couldn’t take or grab or act…but I could watch. I could watch for as long as I wanted, as long as I needed to commit it to memory and re-enact it later for my Ashford.
The door opened slowly and the dim light inside the house shone behind the woman in the entrance. Auburn hair, waist-length and curled, matted into a just-fucked style that told me just that…she’d fucked recently. Her lips were a vivid red, smudged above her cupid’s bow and down onto her chin. Her eyes were red, pupils dilated, and I wondered if we could bust them on drug charges, too. She was high as a fucking kite, swaying in the doorway until she leaned against the door and pulled the cup of her corset up to cover her exposed nipple.
“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice sultry and smoky, potent with the distinct aroma of the cheap vodka people distilled in oil drums in the back alleys.
“How much?”
“Depends what it is you want.”
What did I want? Did I want to start off slow and see how she reacted? Maybe this was just a brothel and the brutal fucking I imagined going on inside would terrify the poor crackhead. Or did I want to shock her? Did I want to see her instant reaction and know, for sure, if this was the place my fucked up dreams would call home?
“Blood,” I said, my voice hoarse with lust I hadn’t realised I felt. “I want blood. I want pain, I want violence…I want death.”
The woman stood motionless, blinking just once as she stared into my eyes and searched for the ring of black that separated pupil and iris. She wouldn’t find it. I was as black as the underground, as dark as the night that protected it; I was as evil as every disgusting act imaginable in the house that reeked of blood, stank of sex and sweat, and leaked with the ghosts of people who had fallen victim to men with desires like mine.
Finally, the whore spoke, licking her lips and wiping her nose with the back of her hand as she sniffed back whatever clung to the inside of her nostril. So she was a coke head. I’d play ball.
“It’s going to cost you,” she said.
“I know.” I reached into my pocket and held out a folded wad of notes.
She shook her head. “Money is no good here.”
“I know that, too.”
“So, tell me, how do you think you’ll be expected to pay?”
“In blood. You want me to shed it. The more I do, the more you do for me.”
“Whose blood will you be shedding?”
“Who have you got in there?”
She smirked. She knew I was no novice. She knew I was fucking Satan himself, and she liked it.
“Tell you what,” I said, taking a step towards her, until she had no hope of shutting me out if she changed her mind. Not that she would. She’d been charmed by a Blackwood. I pulled a small pouch from my pocket and knew it would be more welcome than money. “There’s plenty more where this came from, baby. I want advance payment. I want to call the shots. I want to watch without involvement. Let me do that, let me get myself off while you follow my command and I’ll give all the glorious white powder your heart desires.”
“Just the powder?” She cocked a brow.
I shrugged. “Please me tonight and you’ll find out.”
She wouldn’t. I’d take great pleasure in killing this one, if she was a criminal. If she wasn’t? Well, I didn’t give rewards.
“Lilin,” she said, introducing herself as she opened the door to let me in.
“Nice to know,” I replied. “Now, show me what I came here for.”
I fucking loved being right. I couldn’t take all the credit for this one, but I would take credit for acting on my instincts and discovering a fucking goldmine of sin. What was the point in a quick kill when you could delay the release, refuse instant gratification and torture instead? We would all choose guaranteed long-lasting pleasure over a quick fix that would fade as quickly as it had arrived.
“How many rooms do you have here?” I asked as Lilin led me through the house.
“Four on the first floor, four on the second, and one large studio in the loft.”
“All occupied?”
She nodded, tossing her hair over one shoulder as she looked at me over the other and winked. I didn’t react. I felt my eyebrows twitch up and I continued to walk behind her, ignoring the sway of her hips and the bubble of her ass.
“Yes, all occupied.”
“Taken?”
“Yes.”
“From?”
“School.”
I hid my shock and swallowed hard in the hopes she’d interpret it as arousal for the most disgusting act of victim recruitment.
“School?”
“Yes.” She was proud of this. Was she the madam? Was she the one who ensured this continued? I wasn’t sure. She was a strong woman, that was certain, but a leader? I wasn’t convinced. “We take them from school in the winter. Do you know what time the sun goes down in December?”
“Of course.”
It was more than just an act of survival to know when the sun rose and set. She didn’t need to know that. She could assume it was so I knew when I could strike and kill.
“Well, we take them on their way home. It’s adorable the way they rush when the streetlights begin to flicker on.” She laughed. I laughed with her, because I imagined her trying to run when I decided it was time to kill her. “We keep them here until they reach adulthood. Then we let loose on them. It’s a nice induction, actually, being taken so early. They get to hear everything that goes on for two years, before they experience it for themselves.”
“Mmm,” I groaned. I didn’t find the abduction of children arousing. I didn’t find the captivity of teenagers thrilling. What I did find arousing, suffocating and irresistible, was imagining Trixie listening to the things I planned to do to her, before she was allowed to participate. “You’re pleasing me, Lilin.”
“I hope so. Do you want to choose a room?”
“How about you show me to the loft?”
I’d caught the ground floor on camera and had her audio confession to what she did here. Now I would film the rest of the house, and find out what happened on the top floor where there was only one room.
“The loft is a good choice,” she said. “The girl is new. You’ll be able to watch me break her in.”
Now my cock stirred with genuine interest. I would witness a blank canvas being dirtied. A soul being broken. A body being commandeered. A crime being committed, but one so fucking arousing I had lightning bolts spearing in my veins.
"Her name is Iris," Lilin said as she led me to the third floor and stopped at the top of the stairs. There was no door, but a balcony that looked over the entire house, like a gallery where the sounds of torture could be heard with
out obstruction. I turned and looked down, filming everything I could see below.
"She'd been here for two years. Tonight's your lucky night, sir. She was only brought up here last night."
"So why is the loft open? Why is this different to the other two floors?"
Did I care? Not really. My mind was hypersensitive to my body's silent but hard demands. But I needed all the evidence I could gather. I needed to ask these questions to excuse my actions later.
"It's like a viewing gallery. Like an open classroom. The girls learn everything in this room and, once their education is complete, they're moved to more...private accommodation. They earn their privacy by being good girls up here where everyone can see them."
When her explanation was complete, Lilin reached out and touched my arm, flinching when my muscles tensed in warning for her not to touch me again. I belonged to someone else.
"Very well. Sir, meet Iris."
When Lilin turned, I saw another girl chained to a pillar in the centre of the room. How had I not seen her before? Her innocence shone like a beacon, her fear radiating like a fucking earthquake. She was conscious and alert, her makeup pristine, ensemble of white complete with corset, suspender belt and stockings—no underwear—untouched. She shook against her restraints when her eyes met mine, and she tried to close her legs. It was no use; I could see her pussy from metres away and no amount of anxious shuffling would protect her.
"Show me," I said, closing the distance between Iris and me, stroking her hair when I stopped close enough to capture her clearly on camera. This may have been our only way of identifying her. "Show me her first lesson."
"Iris," Lilin said, slapping the girl's cheek. "Iris, you here with us, sweetie?"
The girl nodded, worrying her lip between her teeth and glancing at me again.
"Oh, he doesn't want to touch you. He wants to watch me do it." Pacing in front of her, Lilin adjusted her corset again, her voluptuous bosom battling to escape the lace. "Some men like that. Some men prefer to watch. You may watch him as I touch you, but you may not think about his hands, his mouth, his cock, anywhere near your body. Do you understand?"
The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2) Page 14