by A. E. D
And there it was, along the edge of the blade was her sweet message, beautifully engraved.
Stop looking for me.
Oh baby, I’ve only just begun.
Chapter Twenty-One
LAKE
There’s never a better feeling than accomplishment. My little adventure tonight proved to be more than successful. Monty’s screams still fill my ears, satisfying my demons. Like a cat with its prey, I taunted him. Usually I would go straight for the kill but Mason’s brought these new feelings out in me. A playful side. I didn’t want to hurt him by hurting Monty. No, I wanted to play with him, tease him. I was in his home, his safe place with his friend. That’s part of the fun, he doesn’t know who I am, he can’t find me.
But I can find him.
He will become the hunted. Every step I take, I’ll be there, taunting him. I want him to break, make him become unhinged from the overwhelming need of wanting to find me but never succeeding.
Placing my empty takeout container on the coffee table, I cuddle up to Congo as I watch a live stream of Mason’s apartment on my iPad. He hasn’t arrived yet but he will soon. He discarded the barely dressed woman on his lap in frustration. Being who he is, he was very easy to hack. His club was the quickest one, the apartment second, phones third.
Congo slithers up my torso to come face to face with me. Placing the iPad down, I grab either side of his head, leaning forward I plant loving kisses all over his scaly face. He returns the affection with a few flicks of his tongue across my cheek. I chuckle and let his body slide through my hands, admiring his body along the way. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to Congo. He’s been my longest and oldest friend. My knight in scaly armor. When I tremble in bed reliving my nightmares, he’s there. Curling around my body giving me warmth and safety I desperately need. The nights I’m locked inside my own head, unable to escape the darkness that traps me, he’s there. Squeezing me, pulling me from the demons that don’t want to let go.
I didn’t realise Mason was home until Monty’s outburst. Quickly picking the iPad back up, I watch on with amusement.
“You stupid fucking idiot!” I couldn’t help but laugh. The look on Masons face says everything. He wasn’t expecting that reaction, then again, maybe he should have. He was warned not to go down this road and yet he took it anyways.
Mason proceeded to pull the gift out. I waited for the moment his dark stormy eyes gazed upon my message. I didn’t have to wait long before he found it. But what surprised me more was his laugh, making my fist clench in anger.
He finds this amusing!
You should have killed him, my demons taunt. In the midst of my anger, I accidentally pressed the power button on my hacking app, shutting off the power to his apartment.
“Fuck!” That wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to know how much I’ve infiltrated his life. Looking back at the now dark screen, Masons godly laugh filters through the speakers. Instantly my body heats as darkness brews beneath my surface. Feelings unknown to me begin to form. The screen flickers, starting to glitch from the pressure my now white knuckles are putting on it. Taking a deep breath, I release it slowly. Congo tightens his hold around my neck, sensing my disturbance. Once I’m slightly more stable, I return the power to his apartment.
Monty’s fear filled eyes scan the room repeatedly while Mason stands there smirking.
“Mason…” Monty says, eyes filled with worry.
“She’s watching us.” I can visibly see his chest rise and fall. Smiling, I’m loving the effect I’m having over him but Mason’s deep laugh pulls me from my bliss.
“Oh, I know she is.” With that, he turns around and stares straight into the security camera above the front door, staring right at me through our connected screens.
“I’m coming for you princess and when I get you, I’ll make you my queen.” He winks and before I can even think, he pulls out his gun and shoots the camera, destroying my eyes from the inside.
A scream blasts through my throat as the iPad goes flying through the air, barely missing the TV that's mounted on the wall by inches, shattering upon impact. I drop to my knees on the floor as tears and screams mix together. I feel like I’m losing control of myself. He’s pulling all these emotions out of me that I’ve never felt before. My hands reach for my hair, pulling strands as I clutch my head wishing for them to stop. I don’t want to feel this, this, whatever it is, that’s happening in my chest. Feeling after feeling break free within me. Wants and needs I’ve never felt before crash through my walls. A faint beat where my heart should be, starts warming and beating harder at the thought of Mason. Hands clutched to my head, I start to shake, my crying and screaming never ending. I don’t hear the door burst open until I feel a pair of warm hands wrap around my small crouched form.
Keenan.
“Lake, what’s wrong?!” Worry and stress evident in his voice. I’m too broken and confused to filter myself from opening up about my inner turmoil's and struggles that I’ve felt slowly start to form and take over me the past few weeks.
“He won’t stop! He..he’s making me f..feel things!” I continue to scream, tears running down my face as I grab at my aching chest. Keenan instantly holds me tighter against him. Rubbing his hand soothingly up and down my back.
Mason doesn’t know what he’s doing. I grew up treated like an animal. Caged by my father, tortured until I had no will left. He taught me that these feelings will kill me. Drilled it into my young mind that love will kill me, painfully. The only emotions he allowed me to feel were anger and bloodlust, everything else was forbidden. I was stabbed, sliced, cut and tortured into forgetting everything it means to be human. My trembling form shakes violently when my heart beats harder for Mason. Infatuation set in as feelings of want and need start to grow stronger for him. My throat starts to constrict, feeling my father's cold hands around my throat, making painful memories flash through my eyes.
My arms ache from the harsh sting of the metal chains that holds my weakened body up. Wrists chained together above my head, arms burning from being hauled up for hours. I made a mistake today. As my father beat and raped my mother in front of me, her screams and pleas pushed me to do something I’ve never done before. I begged him to stop hurting her and he did, instantly. He stood up, fixing himself as he made his way to my cage. Slowly opening the cage door, he reached in and pulled me out by my throat. Roughly dangling my tiny form in the air.
“Oh, Little One. You made a very big mistake. What’s my first rule?” He says deathly calm. My small form shakes violently as I remember his words clear in my head.
“Love means weakness and weakness means death.” I said, petrified of what’s to come.
“Good.” He let my neck go, dropping me to my feet as his hand slid behind my neck, grabbing me tightly and holding me firmly in place.
“At least you remember, Little One.” He leans forward and places a gentle kiss against my forehead. Before I can even think, my head is yanked back roughly, my skull burns from his fist holding my hair in a tight grip, making me strain my neck to look up at his tall form towering over my little one. Eyes burning with a rage I knew all too well.
“But I still need to teach you a lesson.” He says before dragging me behind him by my hair. My ten-year-old self screamed as I clutched onto his wrists, trying to alleviate the pain from my head.
He grabs the chains from the benchtop that held all of his devices and chained my wrists together before hanging them over a hook. He pulls a different chain that hauls me up in the air until the tips of my toes barely scrape against the concrete floor. He proceeds to beat my ribs like a punching bag, not stopping until I can no longer breath. Although my tolerance for pain was pretty high at this point, he continues to find new ways to make me hurt.
“You’re going to understand something today, Little One.” He says happily, smiling down at my beaten form. Watching me breath in ragged breaths and struggling to breathe from the beating I jus
t got.
“Love is a weakness. Feelings, are a weakness, which WILL kill you. I’m not going to stop until you believe it with every fiber of your being. Once I’m done, I’m going to finish off your mother and you ARE going to watch and you will do NOTHING, because there is nothing to be done. You will not care for her and you WILL NOT love her!” He screams. Tears stream down my face as I look into his monstrous eyes. From this day forward, his piercing blue eyes will always be a painful reminder of each and every lesson he taught me.
By the time he was done, I’d been hung up for hours, maybe even days. I couldn’t remember anymore. He beat my battered body regularly. He sliced up my bruised ribs and continued to beat the broken and bloodied skin. Every cut and punch he made, he told me this is what happens when I love someone. He hurt my mother in front of me until I no longer cried. Until my tears dried up and my eyes turned empty, void of all emotion. I became a shell of a husk that day. Never again feeling anything other than what he wants me to feel. I found myself wanting to prove to him that I can be strong. I found myself fulfilling every wish he asked for, making him proud of the little monster he created. A true killing machine, my father’s personal weapon.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I cried for hours reliving that night over and over again. I was chained for days being taught a lesson my mind and body will never forget.
With trembling hands, I wiped away my tears. My head was still resting on Keenan's shoulder with Congo restricted around me painfully, only loosening up when my tears ceased to fall. It took a while before my breathing calmed down and I could finally sit up on my own. I hate showing Keenan this side of me but thankfully he hasn’t said anything and I know he won’t. I sit up, moving back onto the couch from my position on the floor and taking in deep breaths. I look at my phone on the couch arm beside me to see the time.
12:01 am.
It’s officially Keenan's birthday. What a way to start a day he loves.
“I’m sorry. I’ve ruined your birthday.” I look up at him, my voice full of vulnerability. Unshed tears cloud my eyes as I look at his smiling face, head shaking slightly from side to side.
“It’s okay, Lake. Technically I wasn’t born for another four more hours, so you’re good.” He smirks and I couldn’t help but chuckle. He’s amazing at calming me down, making me feel like everything will be okay.
After my little breakdown we ended up eating our usual Chinese takeout order and watching movies on the TV. Keenan ended up staying the night. I guess he was worried about me. I woke up in the early hours of the morning next to a sleeping birthday boy who fell asleep beside me, when my phone started vibrating somewhere on the couch. I fished it out between the cushions and saw a notification from the door man.
Keenan’s present has arrived.
As much as I hate birthdays, I’ve never been able to feel that way about his. He’s shown me what it’s like to have a birthday, a real birthday. Where you wake up in the morning all high and giddy, where you get calls from friends and family. Well, just friends in his case. His parents never cared to call or even send a card. He spends the day doing what he wants until it falls to night, where he holds a house party in his apartment. I never had that. My birthdays were spent being whipped for every year that I ‘survived’. The older I got, the more bearable the whips got. I never made it to seventeen whips because I decided I’d had enough. My father gifted me something new that year. He told me if I fought him and won, he’d gift me my freedom.
Drakon Stepanov was an ex Russian military man. He was a skilled fighter and an even more skilled torturer. He found his calling and exploited it. The military sought him out time and time again for his skills. When prisoners weren’t being cooperative, they’d call him. What they didn’t know was that he used every torture technique he knew, on me. Not for practicing but for teaching. Teaching me how to deal with pain, how to inflict the most damage, how to hurt someone severely without killing them. Those times when he was called away from work were the only times I felt relatively normal. My mum would break out of her trance and unlock me from my cage. She’d make up the guest bedroom for me as a temporary room. I’d have three meals a day, a bed to sleep on and somewhat of free will. I could watch TV when I wanted to, I could speak when I wanted to, I could shower when I wanted to. But those days weren’t as great as my mother thought they’d be. I never spoke, never travelled outside of my room, too afraid of what would happen if my father found out. Then I just grew dead inside, not bothering to interact with anything anymore, even with her. As much as she’d try to get me to speak, I just wouldn’t. Because I knew it would all come to an end eventually. I’d have to go back in my cage. As soon as he’d return home, he’d begin my ‘training’ again. So, I would sit on the bed and stare outside the window. Russian winters were always the coldest but I was used it. Temperature conditioning training he called it. My father would turn the heat off in the basement where my cage was located. I’d have to suffer through the harshest winters with little to no warmth. That’s one of the reasons why I moved to New York. The snow. It was familiar to me. After years of living in certain environments, I come to need them for stability. The snow one, the underworld another.
I get up off the couch, slowly as to not wake Keenan up. Congo left me during the night to curl up next to Keenan’s warmth. As a growing boy, taller and bigger than me, he produced more heat. Congo loves the heat.
After making his favorite breakfast, waffles with ice cream, caramel sauce and crispy bacon, he finally woke up. He all but ran to the kitchen to grab his plate. I didn’t know how to act around him today. He was never meant to see me like that last night. Hell, even I have never seen me like before.
“Are you coming to my party tonight?” His voice broke through my thoughts. I usually leave him just before his parties start. But after last night I kind of felt like our bond was strengthened. Not that it wasn’t already strong before, it just felt like it grew stronger.
“Why not. There needs to be at least one adult there, right.” I tease. His smile was blindingly wide. Why stop making him happy now?
“I also bought you a present, but we have to go downstairs for it.” If he could eat his food any faster than I think he would have. He cleaned off his plate, even going as far as licking it clean. Finishing off his orange juice in one big gulp, he runs off, straight out the door. I heard his front door open a few seconds later before slamming closed behind him. I chuckled as I made my way inside my bedroom in desperate need of a shower.
✧✧✧
Stepping out of the steamed filled shower, I head to my closet. Looking for something simple to wear today, maybe even something pretty for a change.
I end up choosing a pair of ripped faded blue skinny jeans, a white crop top and finished off with a pair of white high-top converses. Standing in front of the mirror, I inspect myself before leaving. The clothes hug my slender but curvy figure nicely. Like a femme fatale, my looks are also lethal. Luring men and women to their death. The gold crescent moon necklace that Keenan gave me lays delicately against my chest. I found it hard to take off, wanting it to be with me every second of the day. It reminds me that there’s is good in my life. Albeit in the body of my sixteen-year-old neighbor. Tying my long hair in its normal high ponytail, I walk out and find Keenan sitting on the floor playing with Congo. By how playful he is, you’d think he was a dog and not a near three-meter snake. With one last rub to his head, Keenan stands up and walks to the door.
“Lead the way, milady.” He bows.
“Oh god, never say that again. It makes me feel old.” I cringe at him.
“You are old, Lake.” He says highly amused by the situation.
“I just turned twenty-five.” I scoff. This kid is delusional if he thinks that’s old. I roll my eyes when I see a smirk make its way on his face. Clearly trying to get a rise out of me. Working.
I huff as I walk past him to the front door, debating whether I want to give him his present or n
ot.
We make it into the elevator quickly pressing the button for the basement. Since he’s sixteen, I thought I’d buy him something he’s been wanting for a while.
A car.
Good idea? Probably not.
As we near the basement I turn to Keenan and pull out a blindfold from my back pocket. At first, he gives me a questionable look before a mischievous grin makes its way across his face. Groaning, I brace myself for whatever dirty comment is about to come out of his mouth.
“Oof, Lake, If I knew you wanted to blindfold me, I would’ve let you done it a long time ago.” Ew. I roll my eyes at his comment but I have to give him credit, he never gives up.
“Don’t be weird.” I turn him around, placing the blindfold securely over his eyes just as we come to a stop.
I had the keys sent up while I was cooking breakfast. In front of us is a 2018 Ferrari 488. I had it wrapped in Keenan's favorite colour, chrome blue. He always said he loved my chrome wrapped cars and his favorite colour is a blue. The colour itself is a dark blue and in certain shaded parts, the car looks black. It came delivered wrapped with a big red bow on top but I had that shit taken straight off. In my opinion it just ruins the surprise, making it look tacky. It takes away from the sleek and sexiness of it.
I position him in front of the car. It’s parked on an angle so he can see both the front view as well as the side.
“Okay, you can remove the blindfold now.” I say holding up my hand with the keychain that contains the key to his dream car, dangling from my finger.
He doesn’t say anything for the first few minutes. Just looks from me to the car and back to me again. Then his eyes zero in on the key I’m holding out to him and back to the car again. After a few more blinks he crashes me into a death grip of a hug. Any harder and I’d passed out.