cheated.” I spit the words at him like venom. “You cheated!”
“Oh stop it, silly girl. Do you really think I’d coerce you into violating yourself against your will? What kind of sick fuck do you take me for?”
“You cheated!” I bang my fists down on his thighs in rage.
“Indeed, I think I did not. What I failed to do is make you fully aware of the rules, though I maintain a morsel of rational thought from your side would have been enough to figure them out.”
I shake my head at him in disbelief.
My mind is too thick with red mist to process what he’s saying straight away. I say his words back to me, wishing he would speak in simple sentences. Wishing that for once, he would just tell it to me straight.
Just fucking tell me what I’m supposed to do.
He did tell me the rules. He’s trying to trick me. “No,” I argue. “You told me that if I did what you said, he’d live. You’re a liar.”
“I told you we would see if you’d obey or defy. I told you if you won, I’d spare his life, and if you lost, he’d lose it. You’d have won the game if you had only chosen to defy me. You should have known any man who looked upon your naked flesh would not live to recite the memory. If you’d kept your clothes on, he would have lost his teeth, but I would have spared his life. Now do not think to twist my words, sweet girl, for I always know precisely what I’m saying—even if you do not.”
“You’re mad,” I tell him. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
He stands up quickly, pulling the zipper up on his jeans and taking a step around me before yanking me up with him.
He holds me close to his chest, and I feel the rise and fall of it against my back. His hand twists in my hair, the other one pressed firmly into my stomach.
“Three reasons. The first is that no matter how much I claim I’d never molest or rape you, you would never have believed me. I tend to think actions speak far louder than words, don’t you?”
The hand against my stomach slides around to my hip, rubbing gently as he continues. “The second… well that is perhaps the most obvious. The man is dead because you fail to stop and think, you fail to question, you fail to see anything other than surface level. You think in a straight line, sweet girl, and if you want to survive in this world, you will have to learn to think in corners. Twists. Bends. Assume everyone else employs chicanery. Assume everything is possible and assume nothing is probable. As for the third—this way.”
We’re moving now.
He moves his hand up my body, caressing my breast on the way until it rests on my shoulder to steer me. The one still wrapped in my hair ensures I can’t run from him. He unlocks the door and presses me up against it before letting me back a few inches.
“Read,” he commands.
There is a sign nailed to the door that I swear was not here when we entered. I couldn’t have missed something so obvious. “What is this?”
“This, my dear, is your second lesson. The one that will hopefully make you think twice before giving in to that lovely conscience of yours. I assure you, there are very few people alive today who deserve the effects of you keeping yours intact. Now read.”
Robert Hamel.
Notorious cannibal. Wanted for the murder of eight children. Found guilty and sentenced to death.
Baron stares at me while my lips move silently and then he spins me around and pushes me up against the wall. My skin is freezing all over—it’s cold down here—but it’s not just the external temperature. I feel cold inside, too.
This is too much.
He is too much.
The whole fucking thing is just far too much.
My lip trembles as I try to hold it in. Keep it locked away. Did I do the right thing? Baron seems to think I did. The man was as good as dead anyway.
“Now do you see? That is the world out there, Sapphire. It is a brutal place, filled with death and suffering. You think you and your fellow sisters are so hard done by? I think you are indeed the lucky ones. You wanted answers to your questions? So you could form a plot to escape? I have just shown