Chapter Twelve
Idris
Iignore her.
She wants to team up? Not fucking likely. I work alone. Always have, always will. I push her voice away, ignoring her derisive laughter over calling me out on my shit. She should be disgusted, horrified by what I admitted to her… yet she didn’t even blink.
No, she told me to be who I am, to stop running.
Is that what I’m doing? Running? No, fuck no.
One little girl isn’t going to make me question my choices. I left that life for my own reasons. I’m happy now, retired, relaxed, enjoying the simpler things… Right? Yes, it’s fucking boring sometimes. Yes, I get antsy. I wake up with my hand on my gun, my heart racing and ears straining to hear enemy footsteps. So fucking what if I miss the adrenaline? If I miss the travel and excitement?
Being bored is better than being a monster.
It was always so easy for Donald to send me on the missions no one else could or wanted to do. The ones to hunt down our own, the ones where I should have died. But I never did. I was his favourite secret weapon, the monster in the shadows he warned you about, reminding you not to betray our people.
The Clergy doesn’t fuck about. You want out? You pay in blood. I did that. With my own and the thousands of people I killed for them. I push away thoughts of that last mission, of the one we faked my death in. It was a shit show from start to finish, but I was free.
How the fuck did I end up right back in the middle of the game?
“So, Boogeyman, I can see your muscles, but are you hot?” she queries, her voice loud through the hole. I frown. She wants to know if I’m hot? After we just discussed me murdering people? “Just a question, don’t get all growly again. Least if I die down here, I want to look at something pretty again.”
When I don’t respond, she laughs.
“Figured. You’re like one of those gym fuck boys with all the muscles but a weird face, right? Don’t worry about it, they fucked up my face too. And my body. Guess we match.”
“What did they do?” I find myself asking. Why the fuck can’t I stop talking to the woman? I should be planning my escape, not engaging this insane bitch.
“What didn’t they do?” she retorts, her tone cruel. “At least now I don’t give a fuck about hurting myself or getting fucked up while I escape and kill them. I’ll probably have to become a recluse in the woods after to find peace.”
“Peace is overrated,” I mutter.
“Huh?”
“It’s overrated,” is all I say.
“What about you, Boogeyman? Planning to return to your nice, quiet life when you get free? I’m guessing you’re aiming to escape, right? Mind telling me how?”
“I’m still working on it,” I mumble as I look around.
She laughs harder. “Sure, let me know when you figure it out.”
“I’m not taking you with me,” I snarl, straining in the chains to see her. I watch her head turn, and I catch a glimpse of pale skin intersected by scars and a smirking mouth. “You will only slow me down.”
“Or maybe you’ll slow me down, retiree. I’m not asking us to be besties or even fucking knitting partners. I’m asking that should you get free, at least let me out so I can kill these motherfuckers. So I can split their skin down the middle and let them feel one goddamn inch of the pain they made me feel. You can walk away and never look back and return to your perfect retired life. I don’t give a fuck. All I want is their screams and for them to pay.”
“They all say that, then they wimp out at the first sight of blood, of death, and their screams. No one can handle it, even when they fool themselves into thinking they can. If you get free, you should go back to your nice normal life.”
“You don’t know me, Boogeyman,” she shouts. “You don’t know what they’ve made me do, what they did to me. I won’t puke, run away, or be horrified. How could I? I’ve lived through worse. I don’t give a fuck about settling down, getting married, and having the perfect two-point-five kids and a house anymore. I don’t care about promotions or the best boring nine to five job, or even waiting around for texts from an idiot I like. That was the old me, a past fucking life. It seems so long ago. They stripped me back, tore me down, and burned that out of me. I’m nothing but an angry fucking psychopath now. I can feel the madness, the hatred leaking from me. I’ll never go back to a normal life. But what I can do is make them pay. So don’t you ever think you know me. Just because you’ve lived in darkness doesn’t mean you know someone else’s shadows. You’ll underestimate me just like everyone else always does, just like they did, and they’ll die for it. You can either help or stay the fuck out of my way.”
My eyebrows rise at her conviction, even as my cock hardens from the venom in her tone, from the fight. It’s not the cunt between her legs that makes me think she won’t be able to do what she says, but the lack of experience. Killing isn’t easy. She’s done it once and seems twisted up about it. Can she really kill those who have hurt her? Or will she falter and die herself?
Why do I care?
Maybe it’s the strength in her voice, the anger, the hatred I hear—it’s the same that flows through me. Maybe it’s just the proximity, or the fact I heard her suffering, which I saw firsthand. I know what it takes to stay alive, to keep your mind intact while being tortured. She’s clearly been down here a while, and to survive what they’ve done to her? That takes a strength you can never learn or gain. It takes mental fortitude, something you’re born with.
No, their dog, as they call her, is a lot stronger than they think. I just don’t know if it will be enough to survive what’s to come. She thinks what she’ll do to them when she escapes will be bad…
But she has nothing on me.
Bessie-Lola, although we weren’t friends or close, betrayed me. Tricked me. She’ll regret that when her screams ring through my ears, and as for the last of the Nikolic bloodline… It’s time that was wiped out for good.
I hear footsteps again, and the woman next to me sighs. “Want to take bets on who they’re coming for, big guy?” she calls, but I just stare straight ahead. “I’m betting on me. Try not to get turned on from the bloodshed and screams. Or if you do, at least wait until they’re done so I can watch you come,” she jokes as I hear her door open. My eyes widen, even as my cock pulses. The idea of her watching me, of me getting off while she’s hurt, is strangely arousing, even though I realise that thought’s wrong.
It’s sick, but when have I ever been normal?
“Hello, boys. Come to play, have we?” she taunts.