Everlasting fire incinerated his back, his ribs, his arm. Dizziness dulled his thoughts. But at the outskirts of his senses, he tracked the clang of Van’s chains and marked the moment Lucia’s weak cries dissolved into wheezing breaths. God willing, she must’ve passed out. He couldn’t imagine what his back looked like and didn’t want her staring at it.
How much blood could a person lose? Was he reaching his limit? It drained from his arm in steady red rivulets, leaving tracks down his bicep and ribs and soaking his jeans. The same wet warmth flowed from his back beneath the relentless slice of the blade. There was so much blood his feet slipped in the sticky pools cooling on the floor.
“How long have you known her?” Badell traced a soft finger through the agony along his spine.
He swallowed, tried to clear his head. Five days? That was when they met. But he’d known her for six years through photos, Camila’s stories, and the depths of his investigations.
“Long time.” He choked on a throat full of phlegm and bile and spat it out.
“And Van? How do you know him?”
Another stroke of that finger down his back, a gentle taunt that fired muscle-flinching pain. But Badell wasn’t cutting. Conversation meant a reprieve from the blade.
Tate tried to make his mouth work, to give an answer that would delay the torment. Words eventually slipped out, but they were strangled and unintelligible.
“I kidnapped him,” Van said from across the room.
“Explain.” Badell shifted, creaking the stool beneath him.
Van outlined the sex trafficking operation, focusing on the training and the network of slave buyers. His words were carefully chosen, avoiding details that might’ve suggested they had friends or family. He also didn’t explain why or how it ended. As far as Badell knew, it had been just Van and Tate and a dozen other faceless slaves.
He wasn’t sure why Van shared any of it. Maybe Van was angling to connect to their captor in a companions-in-kidnapping way.
Badell listened, but he wasn’t distracted from his mutilated canvas. The vicious, incessant cutting continued, shoving Tate into a hazy fog of gasping, retching distress. He vomited everything he’d eaten in days, heaving until blood vessels burst in his eyes. His suffering was so acute he felt every twitch of the blade, every notch, slash, slice, and cleave.
He was cold. So fucking cold he feared he was nearing the dark dismal nothingness Lucia had talked about. His lungs produced weak, shivery sounds, and the breaths trembling from his throat cracked his dry lips.
But he still had his mind, and he let it travel to the quiet woman across the room, absorbing himself in hallucinations—the softness of her hair as he ran it between his fingers, the ferocity of her expression as she argued, and the sweet perfection of her submission as he commanded her to kneel. A man could get lost in a dream like that, and he did, for a time.
Badell and Van continued their conversation while the dissection stretched over the expanse of his back. There wasn’t an inch that hadn’t been carved. He’d been in excruciating pain for so long he’d forgotten what relief felt like. The razor penetrated again and again, and he no longer had the energy to tense or resist. The fight had bled out of him. His life would soon follow.
It must’ve been nearing dawn when the last of his alertness faded. His groaning had become a heavy, hollow drum in his ears, booming in the black cavern of his mind. He was stuck there in that desolate vacuum, unable to escape the throbbing pressure. It was the only thing that existed. One continuous, torturous throb.
Throb.
Throb.
Throb.
Then he was cold again. A suffocating, liquid kind of cold that washed over his face and seeped into his nose. He choked and hacked, fighting for air.
I’m drowning.
It wasn’t real. He wasn’t under water. He just needed to return to that room. To Lucia.
Open your eyes.
Wake up.
More icy water. He coughed, taking the cool liquid into his mouth. His throat filled with shrapnel.
“Open your eyes.” A deep voice breathed at his ear. Badell.
He blinked, moaning against the bright light as he tried to find his bearings.
Pain flared and flamed everywhere, but the pressure on his arms was absent. Nothing cinched or tore at his wrists, and his legs weren’t pulling him down. He was weightless.
I’m on the floor.
Concrete pressed against his cheek and shoulder. He lay on his side, his good arm stretched toward the closed door. The other arm extended from beneath his torso and tucked against his stomach. He refused to glance at it, couldn’t bear to see the ruin from the icepick.
And his back… Fucking God, his back felt skinless and exposed, as if the flesh had been shaved off and the muscle had been torn from bone. Grisly images of a bared spine and vertebrae flooded his mind.
Footsteps circled around his head as he tilted his neck back, aching, needing, searching…
There she is.
Eyes glazed, face blotchy, and frail body shaking violently, Lucia reached for him from a few feet away. Her fingers stretched toward his, too far, and her head lolled on Van’s lap.
She was still alive. He was still alive. They still had a chance.
What time is it?
He tried to ask, but his vocal chords had been reduced to rock and gravel. “T-t-time?”
“An hour till dawn.” Badell crouched in his line of sight, blocking his view of her.
Then he lifted a bucket and trickled cold water over Tate’s face. When the rest was dumped on his back, the frigid drops felt like razor blades slicing across his skin. He bit down on his tongue, trapping a godawful bellow.
“You are my greatest masterpiece.” Squatting with his sleeves rolled to the elbows, Badell rested scarred forearms on his thighs. “I haven’t decided your fate. Quite frankly, I loathe the idea of destroying such a beautiful creation. If you live, you might one day come to value the artwork.” He ran a hand along the welts covering his own arm. “Took me twenty years to appreciate mine.”
Since he didn’t wear a mask, Tate could identify him. The nutjob had no intention of letting him go.
“You promised,” he ground out. “Meds.” Her medicine. Give her what she needs.
“My promise was,” Badell said, setting the bucket aside. “Once I know how far you’ll go for her, I’ll give her the medicine.” He stood, slid his hands in the pockets of his blood-stained trousers, and paced the room. “I was going to have Van fuck her while you watched, but after hearing the history between you and him, I have a much better idea.”
Profound relief mixed with overwhelming dread, curdling a venomous concoction in his stomach. The darkness in Badell’s expression was sinister. Haunting. Whatever he had in store would threaten to break Tate’s mind. He was certain of it.
He shifted his gaze across the floor and found Lucia staring back. Silent tears spilled from her eyes, and her mouth trembled with
heartbreaking fragility. Her arm still lay outstretched toward his, fingers twitching to close the distance.
His chest heaved as he strained toward her, extending useless joints and failing to erase the inches between them. Goddammit, he just needed to touch her. Fury rose above the anguish, hardening his body into stone.
“Make your demands, Badell.” He flexed his jaw, battling the never-ending pain that dotted his vision.
“One more trial.” Shiny, blood-splattered shoes paused inches from his face. Badell lowered to a crouch and rested a hard, cool hand against Tate’s jaw. “Van will take his pleasure in your body. Then you will take pleasure in his. Come inside him, allow him to release in you, then I’ll know how far you will go.”
“No-no-no-no-no…” Lucia chanted in a scratchy, tear-choked voice.
The hammering bang of his heart drowned out her cries. He was sprawled on the floor with his cheek against the concrete, frozen in place, silent and breathless as his vision lost focus.
Deep down he knew it would come to this. Badell wanted a trial, one Tate was sure to fail.
Hot moisture dripped from his unblinking eyes and traced a sodden stripe across his face. Such a strange sensation, that warm soundless trickle. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried.
He would never be able to perform, let alone ejaculate. Not with a mutilated body. And not with Van.
But it was better than the alternative. If Van were forced to rape Lucia, Tate wasn’t sure he’d ever get back up again.
Was that why Van had volunteered so much information about Tate’s time in the attic? Perhaps he’d predicted Badell’s plan for Lucia and steered him in a different direction. It took a sadist to know a sadist. Van probably saw the blood-smeared writing on the wall from a mile away.
Shifting his gaze, he sought the man who’d become his friend.
Van sat against the wall with his arms shackled, head tilted back, and eyes closed. Tate didn’t have to be a mind reader to interpret the conflict twisting his face.
If Van participated in this, it would be a betrayal to Amber. If he didn’t, they were all dead. He and Tate were probably dead regardless. But Lucia had a chance.