In the years that he had still been under his mother's control, he had seen a lot of girls online who, like Sara, had fantasies about being abducted and forced against their will. Those were the girls his mother had targeted, and he had seen all of them break one by one within an hour.
His Sara, however...
If she had shown the smallest sign of breaking down, he would have returned her to her home, and she would never have seen him again. He would have forced himself to forget her, or at least stay away.
But she had survived.
For now.
Tomorrow, however, was another day.
Tomorrow, he had no choice but to fuck things up for her again, and he would keep fucking her up - destroy everything she thought was good and proper about herself and him - until she understood the vicious difference between him and her fantasies.
He had never imagined that he would find someone like her, and if she had said yes to him the first time he asked her to come away—-
He had promised himself that he would strive to change for her and never show her his darkness.
But she had said no.
And it was how she had sealed her fate.
In the days to come, for better or for worse, she would see the real him, and once she fully understood that it was a monster that was fucking her—-
Only then they would know...
If she would still choose to stay.
The Finger
The first thing I see when I wake is a dreadfully familiar sticky note taped on the remote control on the bedside table.
It simply says 'please watch', but that somehow makes it feel worse, and for a while I simply sit unmoving on the bed, knees tucked under my chin while I stare at the wall-mounted monitor across me.
Deep breaths, Sara, and then let's just do this.
The video opens up this time with security camera footage at some large, dimly-lit warehouse. I have to squint a bit before I can make out what I'm looking at, and my heart nearly skids to a stop.
One guy is strapped to his chair while the other one is Mr. Sinister...from a time long gone.
I stumble out of the bed, moving closer to the monitor so I can see more clearly, and my chest squeezes painfully when I see that it really is him.
It's Mr. Sinister when he was a teenager, and while he does look a lot younger and skinnier, it hurts to see that his eyes even at that age can be so heart-wrenchingly empty.
My guts tell me it can only go downhill from here, but that turns out to be an understatement when I finally get my trembling fingers to hit Play.
The video turns out to be nothing but a seven-second clip.
Because that's all it takes.
Seven seconds.
Just seven seconds for a teenage Mr. Sinister to cut the other man's fingers off...one...by...one.
I'M STILL CRYING AND throwing up in the en-suite when I hear the thud of footsteps. He shows up by the doorway a moment later, and I just...snap.
I lunge for the door, wanting to shut him out, but of course he's too fast for me. He's always too fast, and the next thing I know he's thrown me over his shoulder like I'm nothing but a bag of bones. I scream, kick, and beat his back with my fists but this, too, is no use.
He throws me on the bed, and before I can even roll away, his big, powerful body already has me trapped underneath. I try pushing him away, but this only makes it easier for him to catch my wrists and hold them over my head.
"Struggle one more time," he warns, "and—-"
"And you'll what?" I choke out. "Are you going to cut my fingers off, too?" Just saying the words makes me want to throw up again. I can even see it happening again inside of my mind, and my heart starts to shrivel. "How can you do that—-"
"Because back then, I was a fool, and so I thought it was the right thing to do."
God, how I want to spit on him, just to let him know what I think of his words, which can be nothing else but lies.
"Do you really expect me," I ask brokenly, "to believe that anyone would believe something like that can ever be right?"
"I do."
"Then you must think I'm an idiot," I retort.
"I don't, but it wouldn't matter if you were. You didn't ever think I kidnapped you for your brains, did you?"
He says the last bit so, so smoothly that it leaves me staring at him in open-mouthed shock. Is that supposed to be a joke or did he really just go there?
Mr. Sinister's lips tighten. "It was a joke."
Oh my God.
"You're crazy," I whisper. "You really are crazy—-"