And that’s when he saw it. While he fought to stay with her, and while he slowly slipped away, he saw it. The look Patrick had talked about — the one that meant her spirit had broken, Xander recognized it and his soul felt like it shattered right there beside her.
Finally succumbing for the last time, he closed his eyes, his memory racing through images of his life — the look in Hope’s eyes taking him back to the time he’d seen it before.
~ ~ ~
“Gregory Shipp. You’ve been caught stealing money from my network, from all of the men in this room, from my wife who sits beside me.”
Xander looked up at the man on the stage. He was scared, his little knees knocking together as he attempted to move closer to his mother.
The man walked towards the front of the stage, his eyes locked to Xander’s father. “You’ve been a member of my network for quite some time, Mr. Shipp, and as I’m sure you are aware, there have been three other occasions where some ignorant fool has attempted the same thing.” The man paused and Xander fidgeted, not understanding what the man said. “Do you recall what happened to those men?”
His father looked up. “Yes, Joseph. The men were executed, they were shot.” Xander’s fear grew into absolute terror, scared that he heard his father’s voice, weak and cracking — his dad was scared, and he’d never seen his father scared.
The man on stage nodded.
“They were. So I assumed, as someone who’s seen that, you would have known better than to attempt the same thing. However, since I am obviously wrong for having assumed that, I realize that I need to step up the punishment. Shooting a man isn’t enough, is it? You still thought you could steal from The Estate. So, Mr. Shipp, I’ll be stepping up the punishment tonight, hopefully deterring the next ambitious soul who thinks he can cheat the network.”
The doors opened on the side of the large room. Everybody turned to look and Xander moved to grab his father’s hand — the palm sticky with sweat. Xander squeezed tightly, shaking his father’s arm, begging him to look down at him. He wanted to protect his dad, but his dad wouldn’t look away from the man on the stage.
Looking up again, Xander noticed a beautiful woman moving quickly down the stairs, her eyes glancing over at him — filling with pain immediately when she saw him. He became more nervous as she looked at him, but then she turned and disappeared out the large doors.
“You have a very beautiful family, Mr. Shipp.” The man looked over at Xander, an angry grin playing over his lips. “What a good looking boy. He looks to be my son’s age. What is his name?”
“Xander.” His father’s response was choked and fearful.
The man on stage paused for a moment, the room became quiet and Xander’s small heart was beating so fast he became dizzy.
“Aaron has been asking for a playmate.”
His father squeezed his hand so tight, Xander grimaced to feel the bones rub together from the iron grip.
The man turned his eyes back on Xander’s father. “Since you have stolen from me, I believe it’s only fair that I steal from you. An eye for an eye. You took from me the one thing I worked so hard to gain — you took my money. So, I will take something that is important to you.”
“You can have all the money in my account, Joseph, it’s more than I took from the network; three times more. You can take it all, just please don’t take my son.”
Tears streamed down his father’s face and Xander looked over to notice that his mother cried as well. She hugged his baby sister to her chest, shaking her head and attempting to back away from the large men that moved to surround them. He didn’t know why the man would take him, didn’t understand what was happening and why his parents were so upset.
“It’s not just your son I’m taking, Mr. Shipp. I have a much larger acquisition in mind … your entire family, in fact. But first, I’ll take your life.”
When the blast sounded, Xander jumped and his father’s grip released his hand. He felt something warm splash down on him, and he raised his tiny arms to see small drops of blood speckled over his skin. The sound of the large body falling to the floor surprised him. Turning he looked the dead eyes of his father.
His mouth opened and he screamed. Running to his mother, he wrapped his arms around her legs, felt her body shake with her own mournful cries. He was pulled away from his mother — held back to the side where he watched another man approach her, silently stalking her with a mean look and ugly face. His mother took a few steps back, shaking her head in defiance, but another man, held still as the first man approached her, stopped her.
Xander tried to pull away, desperately to free himself of the iron grip that held him, but he was too small. He couldn’t do anything but watch and tears burst from his eyes.
When the man reached his mother, he stopped in front of her and smiled.
“Emory, we are not monsters here. Take care of it quickly.” The man on stage laughed.
The man turned and ripped Xander’s sister out of his mother’s arms. She screamed and his sister screamed and Xander covered his ears to try and block out the terrifying sound. He saw the man’s hand slip inside the blanket covering his sister, and with a flick of the man’s wrist, his sister stopped crying — however, the shriek that tore from his mother’s mouth was the most painful sound he’d ever heard. She fell to her knees, shaking and crying and the man who held his sister smiled again. He walked away and placed Xander’s sister in his tiny little arms, smiling and patting Xander on the head. Sitting down on the floor, Xander held his sister in his lap. His mom was always afraid he’d drop her, so he placed her down carefully until his mom could come and help him hold her.
The men surrounded his mother, she fought against them and they tore at her clothes. Xander was so shocked — so scared — that he sat there quietly, too afraid to scream or cry. He didn’t understand what was happening.
The beautiful woman reentered the room.
“Stop!” The man on stage yelled.
The men obeyed and stepped away from the table on which they were forcing Xander’s mother.
“Arianna, so good of you to rejoin us. I need you to do me a favor.” The man pointed down at Xander and his sister.
“Xander here is going to be staying with us for a while, I thought he could be a good friend to our son considering they are around the same age.”
Xander’s mom began to scream again, her body choking on the force of her sobs.
“Can someone please shut that woman up? I can’t think with her screaming and crying like that.”
They tied something around her mouth and Xander looked from his mom to the woman who’d reentered the room. His tiny heart pounded in his chest and he cradled his sister to him closer, glad that she’d fallen asleep and wasn’t scared like him.
Smiling once that had been accomplished, Joseph turned back to his wife. “As I was saying, please take the child back to your suite. He’ll be staying with us indefinitely.”
The woman approached him and knelt down, he looked up at her not knowing if she would help him or hurt him. “May I take your sister from you, Xander, I promise I won’t hurt her.”
He didn’t know if he could believe her, but she looked so nice that he nodded yes, his body quaking with fear as he reached up to hand her the small baby bundled in a blanket. She opened the blanket and he noticed that her eyes widened and a tear escaped to roll down her cheek. She closed the blanket again and placed his sister on the floor beside her. Looking back at him, she said, “Xander, your sister is going to be okay, my husband just wants you to meet our son, Aaron. You’ll like him, I can tell already that you two will have a lot in common, don’t be scared, okay?”
He nodded, his fear paralyzing him to a point where he wouldn’t speak. His tiny hand in hers, the woman led him quickly from the room. He didn’t know if he should go with her and he didn’t want to leave his mom who continued to cry on the table. The woman tugged at his arm and he followed, worried about why they were lea
ving his sister behind. When the doors closed, he heard his mother scream again. He turned to go back, but the woman picked him up and ran down the corridor and away from his family.
The last thing Xander remembered seeing was the look in his mother’s eyes when his sister had gone to sleep and when he was being removed from the large room. It was a look he’d never seen before and a look that scared him. He couldn’t understand why, but he hated that man on the stage — hated him because of the look he caused in his mother’s eyes.
~ ~ ~
Xander opened his eyes one last time, the sounds in the room were jumbled together, indistinguishable if they were words, or cries of pain, or pleasure or both. He looked up, barely able to see beneath the fall of thick lashes.
Hope hung limply from the chains, crimson trails streaking over her skin, forming a puddle on the floor beneath her. Her eyes said nothing — they didn’t contain fear or pain or heartache — they were dead, lifeless, blank slates that no longer contained the spirit of the girl who’d longed to be broken.
Forcing his eyes to Patrick, his mind played cruel tricks and the face he watched shifted between that of Patrick — and that of another man who’d destroyed the people he loved. Keeping his eyes on Patrick, Xander realized that, although Joseph Carmichael had died years before, the evil he created was still very much alive.
Looking back at Hope, a tear escaped his heavy eye to find that she’d finally gotten what she thought she wanted all along — death had come to collect her. He closed his eyes again, his breath leaving him and his heart slowing down until it barely moved within his chest. He allowed the long dark tunnel to finally overtake him, dragging him away from the horrors and atrocities of his life and delivering him to a place where The Estate was no longer his prison.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The dark was disorienting. Waking up to what could be day or night, heaven or hell, death or life. She didn’t know. Moving her limbs, she felt it — her skin shredded from a razor thin chain, areas that had barely begun to heal, opening again from her movement. Her eyes had opened first and she was delivered into nothing. No sound, no sight, no motion — nothing. Her chest hurt, the slices opening there from her intake of breath, from the stretching of her skin. Burning and sticky, she opened her mouth, desperate for any type of moisture but knowing she wouldn’t receive it.
Her leg kicked out, her muscles regaining life and moving involuntarily over her bones. Striking against the metal bars, pain shot from her heel up her leg and her body jerked in response to the sudden sensation. The cage rattled from the strike and a small voice pierced the nothingness within which Hope had awoken.
“I thought you were dead.”
Hope startled, the small voice unexpected. She blinked repeatedly, shaking her head as if that would chase away the thick sludge that was smothering her mind. Opening and closing her mouth, she finally found her ability to respond.
“Where are we?” It was a bare whisper against the silence.
“In a side room of some sort. I’ve been in here longer than you. They dragged you and the entire cage inside. I was surprised. They’ve never moved the cages in here before.”
Falling back against the bars, Hope’s head pounded, her skull feeling like it would split apart from the pressure inside. Memories rushed back at her, images of her sister standing in front of her — her eyes completely flat, without emotion or comprehension. Her breath rattled in her chest while her heart sped to suddenly remember. The fog lifted slowly, each image coming back and striking against her as razor sharp and deadly as the chain her sister had used:
Her sister’s eyes …
Patrick’s cruel grin …
The laughter of the men in the room …
And then — then she saw something that she couldn’t stand to remember. She saw something that took the world she knew and twisted it, perverted it. Reality fractured and reformed, came back to life and left her stranded in a shadowed wasteland with her mind splintered and her heart broken.
She saw Xander — unmoving and lifeless in his chair. His hair was slicked back with sweat, his broad shoulders had fallen limp against his seat and his hands hung from the chains that encircled his wrist.
Her eyes suddenly burned when they struggled uselessly to forms tears. Her breath left her chest in quick, strangled gasps and her heart beat with pure rage. Twisting over itself, her stomach heaved, and every muscle in her body tightened when she lurched forward, retching so violently that she convulsed.
No … no … fuck … NO!
She screamed inside her own head, the sound ripping her insides apart, bouncing off her skull and drowning out the sound of her pounding heart and the rushing blood through her veins. She fell back against the cage, balling over herself and shaking — quaking — from the torrent of heartache and loss that consumed her. Desperately, she tried to breathe, but air was only entering her body in quick gasps, her throat closing from grief.
“Are you still with me?”
It was a disembodied voice that Hope couldn’t understand. The waves of nausea returned and she rolled over, dry heaving to a point where the muscles of her stomach had cramped, leaving her locked in a fetal position on the floor.
“Are you okay?” The voice was quiet, but carried the small hint of concern.
Hope nodded her head, but couldn’t voice her response. She lay still on the floor of her cage, curled around herself, hugging her abdomen in her arms and crying so pitifully, she hated herself for it. She was a murderer — a killer. She faced death every day, never bowing or buckling at how ugly or soul crushing it could be. At six, she’d stared into the dead eyes of her mother when they’d found her raped and beaten in a dirty alley and she’d gone absolutely cold. She’d sought death, bathed in it and danced around it, never allowing it to touch her or affect her even though it was something she wished could finally take her.
And now that she was balled over herself, wallowing in her own sweat, blood and vomit, it finally did — just not in the way she’d always imagined it.
She wanted to shrink away, wither and melt into the rusted metal base of her cage. Every time she felt herself slip, felt her mind fall into a thoughtless void, her body worked to keep her awake and aware — trapped in the insufferable knowledge that the man she wanted so badly to despise had not only captured her heart, but crushed it when his own ceased beating. Her lip trembled and her face scrunched up when she thought about how he’d been the only one — he’d defeated her by taking her body, he’d defeated her by taking her strength, and he’d defeated her by taking the stone cold heart that existed within her chest, only to breathe life into it once again and leave it mangled and shattered, useless for anything else but to force blood through her body.
Hours — it could have been hours or days that she lay there catatonic. Every once in a while the other woman in the room would move or talk, her chains rattling from wherever it was that she sat.
She was falling into a void of resignation and loss. Eventually, the memories of Xander slipped away, replaced instantly by visions of her sister. The woman they’d brought out of that room, looked like Honor — but what Hope had seen in Honor’s eyes made it frighteningly apparent that Honor was no longer the woman Hope had known. Her once vibrant eyes were dull, her voice weak and timid. She obeyed the men, didn’t ask questions and would only talk about some fucking angel that couldn’t have existed in the nightmare of The Estate. Tears finally forced their way free of her eyes when she remembered how she’d reacted to the pain her sister inflicted. It was wrong and it was sick — she was, for once, disgusted and afraid of the part of her that had always scared and repulsed the people who knew her. Her body found release while her mind splintered, small shards tinkling against one another like crystal broken and crushed. The only solace she had was that she couldn’t remember anything but bits and pieces, the intoxicating waves once again stealing her from reality, only to replace her long enough for her to comprehend was happening
around her.
Hope became angry and a spark burst inside her. From that small spark, rage ignited, building itself into churning fury against the man who’d broken Honor, who’d killed Xander, and who’d attempted to break her.
Pushing up weakly, her foot struck the side of her cage, the sound ringing through the dense silence of the dark room.
“So you are still with me.” The voice sounded weak and bitter. “To be honest, I really couldn’t care less whether you were rotting or still breathing — considering you’re the reason I ended up here.”
Hope was confused. “I don’t know you, I’m not sure how any of this is my fault.”
The woman laughed humorlessly. “You know me, although, our meeting was only for a second. I opened the door to peek outside and there you were — dressed in black, like a shadow. I didn’t even have time to scream before you hit me and left me outside completely defenseless for the assholes who came along to find me.”
Hope closed her eyes when she recognized the woman suddenly. She’d only seen her face, so she wasn’t surprised that the woman’s voice wasn’t familiar. “You’re the woman who let me into the mansion.”
“Yes.”
Shit. Hope let out a frustrated breath. She didn’t feel bad for what she’d done because she would do it again if it meant she could save her sister; but at the same time, she’d never meant for the woman to end up in a place like this. “They’ve had you since that night?”
“Yes.” She sniffled; the soft cry of hopelessness echoing softly throughout the room.
“I didn’t intend for this to happen. They had my sister, I had no choice.”
The woman laughed, the sound harsh and judgmental after hearing Hope’s words. “You could have chosen to leave me inside.”
Hope grinned, the futility of their situation finally driving her to a point of madness. “You wouldn’t have turned out much better inside that mansion either.”