Bleeding Hearts: A Dark Captive Romance (Heartbreaker Book 1)

by Stella Hart

  Alex nodded. “They’ll take kids anywhere between the ages of seven and fourteen. They carve a circle into them as a way to mark them as theirs. The members also have circle tattoos on their arms to mark themselves. Once they’re in, they’re in for life.”

  “God… this can’t be real….”

  “It is.”

  I sniffled and took a deep breath, desperately struggling to take in all this new information as well as all the fast-returning memories. My father had that tattoo—the same one as Dan. Somehow I’d suppressed that knowledge until now, but I saw it when I was about five or six during a swim in a lake with my parents one day. I spotted it with my keen, eagle-eyed powers of observation; something all children seem to have but tend to lose as they grow up. I asked Dad about it, and he laughed it off and said it was a remnant from his silly college days.

  I looked up. “How do the police not realize the men are linked if they all have the same tattoo?” I asked softly. “They think the only link is the fact that all the victims so far have been related to the judicial system. Lawyer, judge, police chief, and so on.”

  “The tattoo is the first thing I cut off when I torture them,” Alex replied, a grim expression on his face.

  I looked down again. That made sense in a purely fucked-up way. He wanted to be the one to track these guys down, every last one. If the police or FBI found the tattoo link between them and therefore found the Circle, the living members would go to prison for the rest of their lives… but they would still be alive. Alex wanted them tortured, maimed, dead.

  “I got those nasty photos and videos from one of them I killed a few years back. He liked to keep mementos and trophies in a safe. Thought I’d let him go if he gave me access to them. Twisted old fuck,” Alex went on bitterly.

  I let out a deep, juddering sigh, still trying to process it all. “How do they get away with it?”

  “A lot of them are powerful people. Your father the Police Chief, for instance. As far as I know, most of the others are in similar positions in society—wealthy older men who always get away with everything. They have money, power, or both, and they use this to their advantage.”

  “But why?”

  “Like I said, they’re sick, twisted fucks.” He paused for a beat, eyes blazing. “Years ago, I found out your father was one of them. It wasn’t a rumor. It was a fact. So I went to check him out. It was lucky I went that particular day, because on that same trip to your house, I overheard an argument between him and your mother. It seemed he intended on giving you to the rest of the Circle when you turned seven. They offered him a lot of money for you.”

  Suddenly it felt like I couldn’t breathe. My mouth dried up, and my blood seemed to freeze in my veins. “He was going to give me to them?”

  He nodded. “I wasn’t sure how old you were, but you looked like you weren’t far off seven. So I killed him that same fucking day.” He paused for a second, then looked into my eyes. “I know you probably forgot this or blocked the memory from the trauma, but you actually saw me.”

  I shook my head. “No, I remember it. I didn’t see your face, but I still saw you.”

  “He was my first. I was young; just turned twenty-one. So I was sloppy. Didn’t get any information out of him before he bled out.”

  I wanted to vomit again. My father may have been a monster, but I’d only just discovered this. Hearing the gory details of his death was too much right now.

  I tried to fight the nausea. “So… you’ve been looking for the rest of them since then? Hunting them down and doing what the police can’t?”

  He nodded, eyes narrowed. “It isn’t easy. They’re too tight to infiltrate. None of them break enough to give me any real information when I torture them. Some give me a name or two, but that’s it.”

  “So why kidnap me? I’m not part of this,” I said, jumping to my feet. “I didn’t rape or torture anyone! It’s not my fault my father did those horrible things!”

  “I know. But you’re the key to all of this, Celeste.”

  “Why?” My voice was a ragged whisper.

  “That door you keep remembering… I think that’s a door in the place where they meet up and have their parties. Your father must’ve taken you there. He was probably getting his friends to slowly groom you, make you think it was normal to have old men feeling you up.”

  I shook my head slowly. “All I remember about that place is that Dad took me to a lot of dinner parties there. It was really big and fancy. Mom was never invited… he always said she was busy, and I would be his pretty little date to impress his friends instead.” I retched at the thought, wondering how I never realized how messed up that sounded until now.

  Alex’s eyes were steely. “The description of the hallway and doors you gave during your therapy session sounds just like another one I once heard. It’s the same house they keep all their victims in, trapped there forever. Until they run out of use for them, that is.” He drew his hand across his throat in a sickening slicing gesture. “I’ve been searching for the location for years. But it’s fucking hard. I still have no idea where it is. But you….” He tapped on my forehead. “You’ve been there. I know you don’t remember it properly yet, but you’ll remember eventually. At least I have to hope you will.”

  “So that’s why I’m here.”

  “Yes. You’re not just mine to keep, angel. You’re also going to help me track down every single one of these pricks. You don’t just have the place stored away in that brain of yours. You’ve seen some of their faces, too.”

  That explained the Supreme Court judge yesterday. That was where I remembered him from. Now the memory of him bouncing me on his lap and tickling me suddenly didn’t seem so innocent.

  “So those pictures you showed me yesterday, of all those old men and women? Are they all Circle members?”

  He shook his head. “No. But I had it on good authority that one of the members who I didn’t already get was a prominent judge years ago. Figured he probably still is.”

  “And you knew I was starting to remember stuff, so you thought I might recognize him from when I was a kid.” I nodded. At least that made sense. “So you just showed me photos of every judge in the city until I did that?”

  “Thought it was worth a try. Seemed to work. I haven’t confirmed he’s one of them yet, but if he has the tattoo, then it means you remembered correctly.”

  I choked back more tears as my new reality set in further. “Why didn’t you just tell me all of this straight away? Instead of making me wait so long in the dark.”

  He shook his head. “You were already so stressed. In so much pain. I’m willing to bet a large chunk of that nerve pain comes from the stress of your suppressed memories. Just like your therapist suspected. So I had to let you start remembering on your own. I had to guide you by introducing certain things to you very slowly. If I told you everything outright, I could’ve overloaded your mind. Made you crash.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I’m not a computer.”

  He sighed. “It’s a real risk, believe me. Giving a person too much at once, especially a person who’s been traumatized in the past… it can break their mind irreparably.”

  I rubbed my temples, still trying to process it all. “If you had possible Circle member’s names from your previous victims, why didn’t you just follow their every movement? Find the place yourself?”

  “You think I didn’t fucking try that?” Alex threw his hands up. “Jesus, Celeste, I’m not a moron. I tried, believe me. These guys are careful. They’re practically impossible to tail. Sometimes I thought I was getting close, but they still lost me.”

  “Right. So why now?” I threw my hands up too, mirroring his exasperated gesture. “I mean, obviously you stalked me for years like some sick creep, watching my every move. But why take me now? Why not then, all those years ago?”

  His gaze hardened. “I wasn’t stalking you back then. I kept an eye on you and your mother from time to time, to make sure nothing bad
was happening to you. It was only when you were older—much older—that I started to realize you were….” In a rare moment of indecision, Alex trailed off, frowning.

  “What? Made for you?” I scoffed. “Your perfect little fuck-toy?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. I began to watch you more then,” he said softly. “As for your question… I had to take you when I did. I found out from your therapy sessions that you were starting to remember that place. If the memory came back fully, I knew you might tell someone about it, or even put two and two together about what went on there. You might report it. And if you did that… well, you’d be in danger. The Circle are powerful and influential, like I said. They’d find out, and they’d find a way to get rid of you before you ever threatened their livelihoods.”

  My forehead crinkled. No, this didn’t make any sense. “If they thought I might remember the place and tell someone what goes on there, why not just kill me all those years ago? Or my mother? Obviously she knew as well—from my father, when he said he was going to give me to the rest of them.” I shuddered, bile rising in my throat again. I still couldn’t believe it.

  “After your father was killed, so brutally and mysteriously, they left you and your mother alone, because I presume they thought it would look too suspicious if John Riley was murdered and then suddenly his wife and young daughter were also killed around the same time. Or if the daughter simply disappeared, never to be seen again. It might attract too much attention; attention even they couldn’t worm their way out of with all their influence. Your father’s death was very high-profile as it was. So I can only assume they hoped you would never recall any real details of the parties he took you to… or any of it at all. You were only six, after all, so it was possible.” He paused, arching one hesitant brow. “As for your mother, she was never going to talk. She knew if she did, they’d find some way to hurt you as revenge.”

  I felt sick again, with thoughts of my mother and what she must’ve known. What she hid all those years. No wonder she drank herself to death. “You still didn’t really answer my question,” I said quietly. “Why take me exactly when you did? Yes, I was starting to remember, I guess, but how would the Circle find out? What if I never mentioned it to anyone?”

  He stared at me flatly. “But you did. You told your therapist. I found out almost immediately, and I bet they did too. Like I said, eyes and ears everywhere. I’m willing to bet they sent people to check up on you every so often to make sure you seemed normal. Make sure you didn’t seem to know jack-shit.”

  “Surely not. They couldn’t have kept checking up on me for so long. And even if they did, how would they get rid of me, anyway? You already said they didn’t kill me in the past because it might attract too much attention if I died mysteriously. So….” I trailed off, letting the question hang in the air.

  “You’re old enough now that they could make it look like a suicide,” he said, with one brow raised again. “You don’t have to believe me, but I didn’t want to risk it. Didn’t want to risk you being killed. So I followed you. I kept my finger on your pulse. Everything you did, I knew about. But I wasn’t the only one, because let me tell you this… the day after I took you, I drove by your place to remove some things I’d left there—”

  “Oh, you were in my house. What a surprise,” I said softly, shaking my head.

  Alex went on. “I saw two men in there, looking around. They were searching for you, trying to figure out where you might’ve gone. I’m ninety-nine percent sure they were Circle henchmen, sent to track you down. They must’ve found out you were starting to remember, and that you’d mentioned it to your therapist or your friends. I found out. That means they could too. And I’m sure they did.”

  My stomach lurched. “So I’m not just here to help you track these men down. I’m here to hide from them?” I tilted my head to the side. Most of my brain still refused to accept the idea that Alex was actually protecting me by keeping me here, but he seemed to be quite adamant about it earlier.

  He nodded. “I wish I could’ve told you all of this right away. But like I said, that wasn’t possible.”

  I slumped back down on the bed. I had about a million more questions, but one was currently standing more prominently in my mind than the rest. “If I never remembered anything at all… would you still have taken me eventually? Just to make me be with you?” I asked softly.

  “Don’t make me answer that. Not now, Celeste.” He stood up. “You’re exhausted. I’m going to give you a sedative to make you feel calmer, and we’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  I already knew the answer anyway. I just wanted to hear it out loud.

  As it stood, Alex and I were apparently bound by fate, twisted together by our shared past, destined to crash right into each other at some point. But even if that wasn’t how it turned out, even if I never remembered, even if he didn’t choose to start killing these fucked-up people… we would’ve collided eventually anyway.

  We were both dark and messed up in similar ways, one of us looking for pain, one of us looking to dole out pain. Somehow, I would’ve found my way to him, and he would’ve taken me to be his submissive little toy.

  That, I knew for certain.

  24

  Alex

  I stared down at Celeste as she slept peacefully on the cot. Her hair was splayed behind her on the thin pillow, and her face was relaxed and serene. I had to enjoy this peace while I could, because when she woke up, things would go right back to how they were only moments ago.

  I knew she had hundreds of questions for me, along with a hundred arguments, but after the shock, the hysterical crying, and the hyperventilating, it was necessary to let her get some rest. The sedative had taken effect quickly, and now she was breathing properly for the first time in hours.

  I hated watching what was happening to her, and it certainly wasn’t easy for her either, now that she was beginning to see the light. The truth.

  On many days before now, I had to force myself to walk away from her, stop myself from revealing every secret too soon. Like I told her earlier, it had to be this way. I couldn’t tell her everything right off the bat. I didn’t want to destroy her, so I knew the truth had to be introduced over a period of weeks, memories slowly teased out of her so she knew it was all real. Telling her everything right away could’ve been too much of a shock for her already-traumatized mind; could’ve broken her irreparably.

  I only broke her in the ways she craved, the ways she needed.

  I still remembered the first time I saw her, and the first time I realized what she was. They were two distinctly separate occasions, and it pissed me off that she thought I’d decided I wanted her when she was a fucking kid. I was fucked up, sure, but I wasn’t that fucked up. When I first saw her at her parents’ place in Fox Chapel that day, all I noticed about her was that she was a confused little girl who needed protecting.

  Her parents were arguing while she sat at the foot of the stairs, hands clamped over her ears. I saw and heard it all through a bay window at the back. Celeste didn’t listen for long before running upstairs, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. Her parents obviously didn’t know she was there, didn’t know she’d heard her father’s sick plan to hand her over to his buddies in the Circle, and her little mind didn’t want to deal with it.

  Even today, I wasn’t sure if she remembered that she actually heard that discussion between her parents, or whether that memory was all a faint glimmer on the horizon of her mind, always too far away to properly make out, just like all her other bad memories. It made sense that her brain had done that to cope; glazed over all the bad parts until only the good memories remained. A lot of people’s minds did that to help them deal with shit. It always worked for a while, but when it led to unresolved stress and physical manifestations of pain, it needed to come out. And it always did, one way or another.

  I only helped the process along. Just like I was helping her discover her true nature now.

  I
remembered the day I realized what she was at her core like the back of my hand. I’d been keeping an eye on her and her mother in a purely protective, platonic way for over ten years by then, secretly and carefully checking up on them every couple of weeks to make sure the Circle hadn’t touched them after John’s death. Celeste was just a kid to me at that stage, a little girl who’d been dealt a rough hand in the form of a sick bastard of a father. I’d simply helped her how I could.

  Then her mother got sick, and they started coming in to the hospital I worked at by pure coincidence. I saw it as a sign that I was doing the right thing in keeping an eye on them over the years, and I kept doing it, inserting myself into the case and helping Celeste’s mother with the pain she’d developed from her terminal liver illness.

  Celeste must’ve been sixteen or seventeen at this point. She was beautiful—impossible not to notice, really—with shiny dark hair down her back, a petite figure, and brilliant green eyes. But despite that, she was still that same little girl to me, someone who needed protection and care from all the demons in her past and present.

  Then I saw her waiting with her friend outside the hospital, standing at the bus stop after dropping her mother off for a short stay. I was standing nearby talking to another doctor about a consult, and Celeste didn’t see me at all. Two young men walked past them—rough, hard types. One of them made some sort of filthy sexual overtures toward the two girls, and the other slapped Celeste on the ass, hard, before making a comment designed to humiliate her.

  I almost went over and shouted at the two men to get the fuck away from the girls, but Celeste’s friend did a good enough job, slapping one of them and screaming like a banshee for them to get the fuck away. My eyes went right to Celeste then, searching her face for any sign that she was upset. Most girls would be, like her friend, and that was perfectly fair—those guys were sleazy little pricks who had no fucking respect. She should be upset.