Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,218

warning."

"Says the man who has been outsmarted and restrained with little to no effort," Father scoffed as he opened a door and I was forced through it. "I think I'll take my chances."

My eyes widened as I was shoved into a room which was decked out like a fucking sex dungeon, though I seriously doubted I was here because anyone wanted to fuck me.

A black four poster bed hung with chains and manacles sat in the centre of the space and I fought harder as the men dragged me towards it.

I kicked and punched, hitting one asshole hard enough to knock a tooth out before one of my hands was locked into a leather cuff by the foot of the bed.

"What the fuck is this?" I roared, fighting savagely as two of them threw their weight on top of me and managed to pin me down on my back.

I bucked and kicked, my teeth sinking into a neck and ripping a chunk of flesh away, but it wasn't enough. Another cuff locked tight around my other wrist and my ankles were locked into the restraints on a spreader bar a moment later.

The guards scrambled away from me as I cursed and fought against the cuffs, tipping my head back to glare at my father as he narrowed his eyes at me, assessing me like I was a problem he needed to solve.

"Perhaps I should have taken a firmer hand with you before now," Father said, moving closer to me as the other men left the room.

I barked a humourless laugh because if he seriously thought he'd gone easy on me then he really was a fucking psychopath.

"Tell me what you did with the vaccines you stole from me," he said, his tone flat and icily cold. "Aside from the ones you wasted on those men out there."

I gave him my hardest, deadest look, not even bothering to reply. If he seriously thought I'd tell him that then he was insane. I would take the answer to that question to the grave. But of course he was going to try and force it from my lips anyway.

Father sighed as he turned away from me and for a few endless moments, I was left alone in the silence, straining my ears for some clue as to what was happening with Tatum and my brothers right now. Not that I heard anything, no matter how much I ached for some reassurance that they were close by. The stone walls didn't let any sound reach me before my father returned with a white dishcloth in hand.

Five men hurried in behind him, four of them placing metal buckets filled with cold water on the floor to the right of me. The last man placed a large copper trough at the foot of the bed behind my head.

Father calmly walked around the bed and tugged on something so that my legs were elevated, putting me on a slope and I slid down until I was hanging from the restraints by my ankles. My head hung over the end of the PVC mattress and I looked down at the copper trough as the guards left the room again.

"Last chance to make this easy," Father offered like he didn't have his only son strapped to a fucking BDSM bed in preparation for waterboarding him.

There was no way in fuck I was going to be giving him that answer, no matter what he did to me, so I offered him something else instead. Something which I knew would shatter all the illusions he'd ever had about me and the man he'd tried to carve me into with every single merciless act of fatherhood he'd bestowed upon me.

I spat at him, saliva landing on his perfectly polished loafer and actually making him flinch. For the first time ever, I saw his composure slip as his face crumpled with rage and disgust, but the vision was stolen from me as he dropped the washcloth over my face.

I barely had a moment to suck in a breath before the ice cold water crashed down over it and I fought against the urge to buck and flail as I held my breath and just tried to wait it out.

My lungs burned, my eyes scrunched shut and the cuffs on my wrists and ankles bit into my skin mercilessly. The sensation of drowning was almost overwhelming and when I had no choice but to try and suck in a breath, the feeling of it