26
Laura
This thing with Dax was getting way too deep, so I did what I did best, and displayed indifference.
He was reluctant to share with me why he was so deadly. Dax had deep demons, the kinds that sent him in pursuit of delivering death to the powerful and wealthy. The kind of demons that had him disappearing from his bed in the middle of the night when his shadow would creep out of the room, attempting not to wake me.
His hands tightened around my waist as he readied himself to tell me his story.
“On the night after my sixteenth birthday, I woke up to cold and darkness. I’d been partying and celebrating my sixteenth like some celebrated their twenty-first, partying the day of and the day after my birthday. I stumbled around, fumbling through the darkness until I discovered that I’d been thrown into a stuffy room. I couldn’t recall how I’d gotten there and didn’t remember being taken. The last thing I remembered was being out with friends, underage drinking, and getting high.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his attempt to find the right words, and his warm breath brushed my face as I glanced away to give him a moment.
“I sat in the dank, dark space for what felt like days, dismissing the idea it was my friends playing a cruel joke on me. After searching the area, I found that it was a standard-sized basement room. Tiny elongated windows, no wider than my spread fingers, were blacked out. Only when the sun was at its highest, could I see rays of light peeking in. Those narrow beams provided the only clock I’d have. The area was empty except for a mattress, no covers, and a bucket for a bathroom. Food and water came once a day, some form of meat and stale bread.”
My brows pinched, but I sat, balancing patience with my eagerness to know more.
“Ten steep wooden steps led up to the metal door surrounded by the cement walls that kept me prisoner. The people who’d taken me never allowed me to see their faces. They’d come down into the darkness, and they’d brief me, letting me know that they were negotiating with my family for my release. After a few more days of waiting, I started to wonder why my family hadn’t paid to get me released. Had my captors been lying? Did my family even know I was missing? The first time they dragged me out of the darkness they cuffed my hands, sacked my head and led me to a shed. It was the first time they introduced me to the cutting.”
He closed his eyes to the memory of it, making me tighten my hand on his forearm when I felt him shiver.
“They kept their faces behind masks and promised they’d keep cutting until my family gave them what they wanted. They were deliberate in their actions, wanting me to observe what they were doing before they delivered every single slash. The first day I received ten while they asked questions about my family I didn’t know the answers to. Questions they knew I’d not know like my father’s business practices and business partners. A week later, after my cuts had started to scab, they gave me twenty more. After a month, I started to believe that maybe my family didn’t care and they had chosen money over me. As if things couldn’t get any worse, they upped the ante.”
The arm I had over his shoulder tightened my hold on him, sensing his distress over telling me this story.
“Sarah Morganson lived less than a half mile from my house. At the time, her parents were richer than mine. I knew her because I went to school with her. She was bright, pretty, and popular. Sarah and I weren’t the best of friends, but we’d stop and talk whenever we would run into each other. My capturers had snatched her and thrown her into that dark basement with me. I prayed they wouldn’t do to her what they’d been doing to me. My prayers weren’t answered because they did worse. They allowed Sarah to sit for three days and bond with me before they yanked her out.”
The sound of the calling city murmured in the background, but my determined focus was on Dax. He’d dragged me in, captured my concern, and I cared about how he felt.
“When Sarah returned, the darkness did nothing to hide her pain. She skirted away from me, yelling when I tried to comfort her. It took two days for her to trust me enough to allow me anywhere near her. She cried off and on the entire time, her weeps and sobs the only thing breaking up the darkness. When they came for her again, she begged for my help. I fought the men, but for my effort was led into the shed, strung from the ceiling, and sliced open until my mind started to walk out on me. The pain….” He paused. The shivers running through his body were making their way into mine, allowing me a taste of his despair.
“I still feel it. I still find myself yelling out, knowing that it was in vain, begging for mercy, knowing that none would be given, and telling secrets that most teen boys would never tell a soul. I still fill my skin ripping apart, the blade sliding over the surface and leaving a trail of fiery aches, icy pricks, and stabbing pain that left me without the mental capacity or physical ability to control my bodily functions. They.…” He faltered at the start of his next sentence. My hand skimmed delicately across his back.
“They did this repeatedly, ripping apart pieces of my soul each time it happened. I remember each time, remember where the blade landed. I can remember the hate in their eyes when they delivered each cut. I can recall the satisfaction they took in seeing me suffer, humiliated, and torn apart. Many nights Sarah’s cries and mine colored the darkness. I’d suspected it, but Sarah revealed that they’d been raping her. They’d fed her the same story they’d fed me. They were negotiating with her family for her release. I’d sat and listened as Sarah would comb every square inch of the basement, searching for something to slit her wrist with. It became an obsession to her, to find something to end her life, and I was grateful she’d never found anything. She, like me, had given up the notion that our families would pull us from the situation.”
A heaving sigh left him, and I comforted him the best I could. I squeezed his forearm to let him know I was there and rubbed his back to hopefully ease the pain I realized he still harbored.
“I’d long stopped counting days, so I couldn’t recall if it were day or night when Sarah came stumbling down the steps after they’d finished with her. We were each other’s warmth, so she squeezed her battered body into mine and cried the most haunting cry I’d heard. I felt it. I felt her pain as deeply as I felt my own. Since we were without sight, we’d brush over each other’s cuts and bruises, the only salve we had to ease the pain. She begged me to help her die, and her pleading cries touched me in a way that I wanted to give her what she wanted.
“Dax, I can’t possibly live through it again. It’s worse than death. It’s ripped my soul apart. My innocence has been ravished, turned into this dirty horrid thing that I can’t live with, that I don’t want to live with. Please, Dax. You have to set me free of this. You’re the only one who can save me.”
“It took hours, days, possibly weeks, of me listening to her pleas before I rose to my knees. I placed my feet against the wall, my tears falling as hard as hers. She scooted up to a sitting position in front of me. Neither of us spoke because we’d talked about this in great detail many times before. However, I never imagined I’d actually have the guts to do it. Sarah knew about my martial arts training because her older brother was in my class. She allowed her head to fall against my chest. “Thank you, Dax,” were the words she expressed before I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. Placing my hands on her shoulders, I positioned her in front of me. I took my position like I’d been trained, locking my fingers around her jaw and with a firm grip at the top of her head. Although I couldn’t see a thing, I closed my eyes to summon every bit of strength I could muster and snapped her neck. No crying, pleading, or begging, she fell to the mattress instantly.”
“Dax, shit,” I uttered, unable to hold my tongue. I’d killed for vengeance. He’d had to do something much harder. He’d had to kill for mercy.
“I lay beside her until her body grew cold and stiff and I no longer sensed her presence in the dark space. She’d been set free of the hell we’d been cast into, and all I could think about was finding a way to set myself free.”
The soft stroke of my finger brushed up and down his nape as I drew my body into his, pressing tightly into his warmth. Was I providing him any level of comfort? I’d never offered emotional support to anyone but teens, women, and children.
“When they came down the next day to get Sarah and found her dead, they pulled me from the basement along with her. Instead of taking me to the shed for torture, as I expected, I was led to a vehicle. With a sack over my head, I assumed they were taking Sarah and me to bury us. I was however, slung from the vehicle and thrown onto the pavement. I didn’t lift the sack off my head although my hands had been freed. I’d been captive for so long that I just sat there with my head covered, hidden in the darkness I’d grown used to. They’d never given Sarah or me any clothing to wear, so I was in the street, stark naked. A screaming woman jarred me, awakening my awareness. It took me a moment to discern that the woman was calling my name and it was my mother’s voice that I was hearing.”
Dax squeezed me to him, his forehead dropping against the side of mine as he clung tighter. The sensation of our closeness scared me, but I believed it was something he needed, we needed.
“When the sack was yanked from my head, I glanced into the terrified faces of my parents. “What have they done to you?” was the question my mother kept repeating. She was afraid to touch me, could hardly stand to look in my direction. I was this hideous creature that my own mother feared. A twisted ankle and a broken wrist were the results of the car toss, but so much pain had been introduced to my body that I was unaware until I was in the hospital. That was when I got the first peek at myself, and I was able to see for myself why my mother couldn’t look at me. They’d turned me into a monster with so many cuts that it appeared my skin had been burned instead of sliced. I didn’t understand why, but they’d spared most of my face, only leaving a few large gashes across it. My parents revealed that they’d never been contacted for ransom after I’d gone missing three months prior. It was the same with Sarah’s family.”
Why the hell would they take him if they didn’t want money?My brow pinched in thought.
“It took a lot of money, time, and resources, but my father found the man behind Sarah’s and my abductions. A former business associate of his, Douglas Gonzales, the man believed my father and Sarah’s father had stolen his business plan and cut him out of the business. Douglas had established his own wealth without my father, but his bitterness was endless enough to seek payback against our parents by using us kids.