lip that I taste blood as the man stands there staring at me with a smile on his face. He’s over six feet tall, and I have to crane my neck to look up at his face. It’s a face that immediately makes me think of nightmares and scary movies. He’s got a scar that runs from right below his eye to his bottom lip, and I can tell that he was most likely on the receiving end of a knife fight. The stubble on his face makes him look dirty, and the dark color of his eyes as he stares down at me reminds me of a black, bottomless pit. The tattoos that run up and down his arms are of flesh-eating monsters, devils with flames shooting out of their heads, and other sinister markings that make my skin crawl. The fingers that he uses to touch me are inked with what look like hand-made prison designs, and I cringe in disgust as he uses a dirty, broken fingernail to scrape the trail of blood off of the side of my face.
“I really don’t like this new look you’re going for with the hair. You look like a whore,” he tells me seriously as he runs his dirty fingers through the short locks.
I jerk my head away from his hand, and he grabs my chin roughly, forcing me to turn my head back and look at him. My fear is quickly being replaced by anger. Anger that this man thinks he has any kind of claim over me. He’s kept me in fear long enough.
I growl at him. “Like I give a shit what you think.”
My boldness is quickly silenced with a backhand across the face. I cry out in pain and my eyes immediately start to water, the hands holding me in place clenching tighter and tighter to my arms as I struggle as hard as I can against them.
“Billy, man, not so rough,” Finn scolds.
My confusion mounts as I listen to Finn talk to this man like he knows him.
“Finn, let me go, please,” I beg him softly. “Why are you doing this?”
He still doesn’t speak to me, and after a few seconds, I stop struggling and immediately let my body relax against him, remembering each and every thing Brady taught me that night in my bedroom.
“You’re so clueless about everything, Layla. All this time, all these years, and you never figured it out. How is that fucking possible?” Finn finally speaks, the contempt for me dripping from his voice right by my ear. “All of this should have been mine. The fame, the fortune… I should have been the star, not you. I came first, I was the one with the talent, but she threw me away like yesterday’s trash.”
What the hell is he talking about? Nothing he says makes sense. Why is he doing this to me? I have to get out of here. I have to get away from these two men who have obviously lost their minds.
While Finn is distracted telling me all the ways he hates me, my body goes limp and his hands loosen on my arms. I close my eyes and throw my head back, smashing it into Finn’s nose as hard as I can. While he screams in pain, I collapse to my knees on the floor, whirl around, and slam my fist between his legs. He lets out another painful shout and drops to his knees right in front of me, holding his hands over his crotch while blood pours down his face from his broken nose.
I quickly crawl away from him, but in my haste to get out of his grip, I forgot about the other man in the room. His hand quickly grabs a handful of my hair and yanks me up off of the floor while Finn continues to whimper and moan.
“Get up, you weak fuck,” the man spits at Finn as I flail my arms and try to hit my target. I get a few smacks and punches in before he grabs onto one of my arms and wrenches it behind me so hard and fast that I hear a snap in one of the bones and a white hot, blinding pain shoots up my arm.
A blood curdling scream flies out of my mouth, and he suddenly shoves me away from him. I trip over my feet and throw out my uninjured arm to try and brace my fall as I smack my hip