by Stella Hart
But she wasn’t.
There was no anger, no fear in her expression. She was standing there without saying a word, her cheeks flushed, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and her eyes filled with unmistakable excitement. It only lasted a few seconds before she bowed her head, squeezed her thighs together hard, and turned a deeper shade of red. It was obvious she was ashamed of her reaction, ashamed of the way her body was responding. But that reaction said it all.
Instead of responding in the way most young women would to harassment from sleazy, twisted assholes—the way they should—she’d been drawn to it. She liked the humiliation. She liked the degradation. She liked the sting of the stranger’s palm on her ass.
It seemed like such a small thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Days went by, and the thought of her submissive, compliant nature drove me wild, a cocktail of desire and adrenaline flooding my veins every time I remembered her expression and the way she gently bit her bottom lip when the second guy leaned down and said something dirty to her. Finally, I had to know if I was right about her. I already knew her address from keeping an eye on her over the years, so I hacked her internet connection and took a look at the traffic coming from it.
I was right. She spent an inordinate amount of time reading filthy stories about humiliation and submission, and she watched videos to match. She loved it, and I loved watching her love it. The more I dug, the more I realized she wasn’t even fully aware of her own desires. At least not yet. She was embarrassed at herself for searching for these things, ashamed of who she was at her core, and I even caught her doing Google searches for online therapy articles with recommendations on how to start liking ‘normal things’ instead. How to stop being such a ‘freak’.
She wasn’t a freak. She was perfect.
From that moment on, she was no longer that little girl to me anymore. She was a woman, and a desire I didn’t even know I possessed reared its head inside me like an ancient monster waking from a thousand-year slumber. I was a man obsessed. I had to claim her as mine, had to be her first, had to be the one to show her what it was like to give in to her true nature, relinquish all control.
I knew she was still too young at seventeen, though. She needed time to mature. There was also the issue of her traumatic past and the ugly memories which would creep back eventually, poisoning her mind. And so it was decided. I would wait.
I would leave her to live her life, always keeping a watchful eye on her but never letting her know I existed, save for the little trinkets I sent her every birthday, because I couldn’t resist. When the time came that she started to recall anything negative about her father, or anything about his cronies in the Circle, I would snatch her up and teach her everything she needed to know. I would show her who she truly was. Where she truly came from. What she needed to do. Who she belonged to.
When she developed her neural pain condition last year, I knew it was only a matter of time before she began to remember the truth. All those hideous memories were finally bubbling their way to the surface, stressing her brain and manifesting as physical pain, just as I knew they eventually would. There was no question about that.
She asked me earlier if I would’ve taken her eventually, even if she never remembered anything. To be perfectly honest, the question was pointless. She was always going to remember, and even if by some miracle she didn’t, she was still mine, and I wasn’t going to let her go. I couldn’t get my mind off her. She was a drug pouring through my veins, and one day it would become too much.
I was fucked up, but she would learn to love me anyway. Learn to love the things she secretly craved, no matter how much she pretended otherwise. From the way her body responded to me from the first day she was here, I knew I was right all along. Our connection was magnetic, and she belonged to me. She belonged here, my little submissive, and one day she would fully understand that.
She was already so close now, close to wholly realizing her place in my world, but there was still one more thing I had to do.
One more test.
25
Celeste
“Celeste. Wake up. Psst. C’mon!”
I rubbed my eyes and sat up. Dan was gripping his cell bars and calling over to me, insisting I get up and talk to him.
“What do you want?” I asked, padding over to the edge of my own cell. There was no sign of Alex, and I had no idea how long I’d been asleep.
“You have to help me,” Dan said, his eyes wide and pleading. “I don’t deserve to be here. I know why this guy targets people from the organization, but I’m not one of them.”
My eyes fell to his left arm in an accusatory glare. “Your little tattoo says otherwise. I saw it with my own eyes.”
He held up a hand. “Wait, please. Just listen. I’m not one of them, I swear!”
“Oh, so you have the tattoo for no reason? You just really like circles?”
He sighed. “No. They made me get it to prove my loyalty, but I’m not a fucking kiddy-fiddler. I’m not sick like them. I just work for them. Pick the kids up, drive them to where they want them. That sort of stuff. I’ve never hurt anyone!”
I tilted my head to the side. “Pick the kids up? You mean help the Circle kidnap them out of their yards or off the fucking street, right?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, but like I said, I never touched them. I never would. The things those people do to the kids are fucked up.”
“And yet you work for them.” I sniffed derisively, my mouth pinched at the corners.
“You don’t understand. The pay is too good to turn down. They changed my life. I needed that money. My family, you know....”
He looked, I swear, as if he actually expected sympathy and understanding. I turned away, sick of listening to his weak excuses.
“Celeste, for fuck’s sake, wait! You might hate me, but we can help each other!”
I looked back at him, my brows raised skeptically. “How?”
“I think I know how we can escape. I just need your help.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re the only one who needs to escape. He’s not going to kill me. Only you.”
He stared at me incredulously. “You can’t be serious. You genuinely think you’re getting out of here alive one day?”
“Yes. I’m not like you, Dan. You’re part of the Circle. I’m not.”
He threw his hands up. “Wow. Talk about fuckin’ Stockholm syndrome, huh? You’re so far gone you actually believe all the shit he feeds you.”
I gritted my teeth. “As I said, I’m not like you.”
“Oh, but you are.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I finally realized who you are. John Riley’s daughter, right?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yes.”
“They still talk about John, you know. He was fucked up, Celeste. They still talk about some of the shit he did to those girls. Way more messed up than most.”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t want to hear this.”
Dan held a hand up again. “Wait. Let me finish. If the Heartbreaker wanted your dad dead, then I bet he wanted his whole family dead too. Way he’d see it, the sickness in John would need to be eradicated. Totally wiped from existence. That means you. And anyone else close to him, too. Your mother wasn’t genetically related to John, obviously, but she was still with him. Long enough to know what he was and not do anything about it. A guy like the Heartbreaker wouldn’t like that.”
“You’re wrong.”
He sighed with exasperation. “I don’t think so. Believe me, he would see your mere existence as akin to being a Circle member by blood.”
I crossed my arms. “If Alex wanted me dead, he would’ve killed me a long time ago. Same with my mother.”
“How do you know he didn’t kill her? I remember just a few months ago, someone told me that John’s wife had finally died. Some sort of disease. But you said yesterday that Alex is a doctor, right?”
I stiffened, immediately sensing where he was going with this. “Yes.”
Dan cocked an eyebrow. “Let me guess… he was your mother’s doctor?”
“One of them, yes.”
Dan smiled humorlessly. “Well, there you go. I bet her death wasn’t exactly from natural causes.”
I took a short, faltering step backward. “It… it was. She was an alcoholic.”
“And you don’t think he could’ve sped it up? The process, I mean.”
I swallowed thickly. “Even if he did, he didn’t hurt me. He had years to kill me if he wanted to, so you’re wrong.”
“Or maybe he just didn’t want to kill a fucking kid. Maybe he wanted to wait until you were older. How old are you, anyway?”
“I just turned twenty-one.”
“Just turned, as in…. five weeks ago? When he took you?”
I nodded. “It was my birthday,” I whispered.
Dan laughed. “So he took you on the exact day you became an adult in the eyes of many people… and you think that’s a coincidence?”
“Yes.”
He scoffed. “Look, the guy clearly sees himself as some sort of crusader against these old bastards who hurt kids. He’s not gonna be a hypocrite and kill a young girl himself. He waited till you were an adult for that very reason, I bet.” He shook his head and sighed. “Mark my words, Celeste, you aren’t getting out of this place alive.”
My hands were beginning to tremble. I hated how much sense he was making. “I’ve been here for weeks, and I’m fine.”
“You know that’s what he does, right? He keeps people for weeks, just to torture them. Mentally and physically. He makes them feel what those kids felt when they were imprisoned for so long. And I bet he also does this to all of them at some point, same as what he’s done to you—makes them think they’re somehow different. Special. He makes it seem like he won’t kill them for whatever reason, just so their screams sound that much sweeter when he finally does it.”
I shook my head. “No,” I murmured. “I really am different. He needs me. He needs my help.”
Dan tapped his left index finger to the side of his head. “He’s gotten inside your mind. Look what he’s done to you, for fuck’s sake. The dude kidnapped you, and he’s been keeping you in a fuckin’ cell for weeks on end. And after all that, you still fall for his lies. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s Stockholm. Just like I said before. You need to snap the hell out of it!”
I looked down at the floor, wondering if he was right. It wasn’t as if Alex brought me here in a kind, friendly way. He said he had his reasons for that, and when he explained it all to me, it seemed to make so much sense. It seemed… necessary. But now, after looking at it from someone else’s cold, hard point of view, I had my doubts.
When I was first here, I thought I knew why. I thought Alex wanted to rape and disfigure me. Now I knew I was wrong about that, but that still begged the question—why was I really here? Was he actually protecting me like he said earlier, or was this all part of some twisted game? Did he just want revenge against my entire family because of what my father did, and he thought we all needed to pay the price? He was a serial killer, after all. He didn’t think like most other people.
So maybe Dan was right. Maybe Alex thought I was just as sick as my father, deep down, because I was related to him. I knew I wasn’t, but that didn’t mean he agreed. He could believe that the mental deficiency which led to my father being so messed up was hereditary, and that I needed to be wiped out to prevent any future Riley descendants from being just as fucked up as my father. Extinction of the bloodline.
Maybe he was even lying about needing my help. After all, he’d tracked down several Circle members on his own over the years without any help from me.
Or perhaps he did need my help, but was planning to kill me once I led him to the Circle’s headquarters and was therefore no longer any use to him. I might even be his last victim in some sort of gruesomely-poetic circular way. The first one was a Riley, and the last would also be a Riley, as he quite literally closed the Circle.
Dan saw the expression dawning on my face, and he sighed with relief. “You’re getting it, right?”
“Maybe,” I murmured. “I don’t know….”
I was too mixed up to know what I felt anymore. I was starting to think the sedative hadn’t entirely worn off, because my eyelids were heavy and my mind had never felt so jumbled and confused.
“Celeste, you have to believe me. This guy is messed up.” He saw me yawn, then narrowed his eyes. “Have you been drinking the water?”
My eyes snapped up. “What?”
He gestured to a full water cup on his cell floor. “The water he brings us.”
“Well, yeah, I’ve been here for weeks. Of course I drink it.”
“I bet he drugs it to make you tired and weak. I haven’t touched mine because I was worried about that.”
“I’m just tired from the sedative he gave me earlier.”
He shrugged. “Just sayin’, maybe it isn’t only that,” he said. “And you know, maybe he put something weird in your drinks these last few weeks to fuck your mind up even more. Like, to brainwash you. Something psychedelic. Or maybe even something that makes you feel more attached to him, like that love drug. I dunno.”
His words chilled me to the bone. Alex never said the water here was anything but plain old water, but now that I was thinking about it, it was possible he drugged it sometimes. I knew there were certain drugs that could make someone feel more attached to another person. Illegal, experimental… but out there.
Alex had access to all kinds of stuff as a doctor. He could’ve been feeding me anything for all these weeks, influencing my mind with drugs, making me crave him like I was a junkie who needed another hit. All the things I thought I knew—it could all be total bullshit. My feelings might not even be real. This could all be part of some sick game Alex was playing with my mind and body, and the last move was my eventual death.
My mind immediately flashed back to a thought I had weeks ago, not long after I first arrived. Alex either had to keep me forever or kill me. There was no in-between, no letting me go free, not unless he wanted to go to prison forever, because people would ask me where the hell I’d been, and then they’d find him out.
So that was it. I was either here forever, or I was dead. Which was worse?
“You have to drink some water eventually,” I said softly, pushing the awful thought aside.
“Not if we get the fuck out of here.” Dan leaned forward. “Seriously, I think I know a way we can get out. But we have to be quick and work together.”
I took a deep breath, still trying to process my erratic thoughts. “How?”
“I dunno if you can see it from here, but look.” Dan moved to the far right of his cell; my left. I followed suit.
“What am I looking for?”
“The psycho came in here earlier while you were still asleep. Asked me a bunch of questions. He wanted names and an address. When I refused, he hit—”
I held up a palm. “Wait, why refuse? If you think your employers are so fucked up, why not tell Alex what he wants to hear? All he wants is to kill them all.”
Dan narrowed his eyes. “No matter what I tell him, he wants to kill me too, or he wouldn’t have taken me. So fuck him. I won’t tell him shit.”
I shook my head slowly. “Okay. So what’s your idea?”
“He hit me with some sort of heavy pipe.” He lifted his shirt to show me the dark purple bruise already blooming across his stomach.
“A pipe?”
“I only know exactly what it is because I can see it. He accidentally left it here, out in the hall, when he was busy locking the door to my cell. It’s right there.” Dan pointed out into the hall, in the direction of the steps.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Just try. It’s near the steps, on the ground. You might have to twist your neck a bit, but you should be able to see it from the edge of your cell.”
I put my head as close as I could to the bars and cr
aned my neck. Dan was right. Alex had left something lying there, near the wall. It was about a foot and a half long, thick, and appeared to be an old water pipe.
“I see it. But I can’t reach it.” I wrinkled my forehead, confused as to what his plan was.
“Me neither. But if we work together, you can get it.”
I folded my arms. “How?”
“I assume he’ll come in eventually to bring us food, right? And I assume he’ll only unlock our cells and take it in to us one at a time. Y’know, to stop one of us from rushing out and getting him while he’s with the other.”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
“He’s a lot stronger than you, but not me. I’d say we’re on the same level. So when he unlocks my cell, I’m gonna try to rush him. Then I’ll get—”
I held up a hand. “Wait, stop. That won’t work. He always has a needle with a sedative in it, just in case. He’ll stick you with that.”
Dan shook his head. “Not if I act normal, then get him with the element of surprise. Knock it the fuck out of his hand. Then I’ll shove him back, grab the key from the door, and throw it over to you. I should be able to keep fighting him after that for at least a minute or so. It’ll end up in a deadlock because we’re about the same strength, but that doesn’t matter. It’ll be long enough for you to grab the key, unlock your door, run to the pipe, and come back here. Then you can hit him with the pipe. Two against one, he can’t win then.”
I frowned. “That plan depends on a lot of ‘what ifs’. Like, what if you can’t get to the key in time to throw it to me? Before he starts attacking you.”
Dan gritted his teeth. “It’s all I can think of, okay? Either we try that, or we die here. Sure, it might fail, but at least we fucking tried.”
“I guess.”