“She served her purpose.” His words are cold, then I notice him pulling up his zipper on the dark slacks he always wears to work.
I don’t understand. My brows crease in confusion. He hurt her. I know that.
“Perhaps we can have him trained?” the man asks the ogre. They both look at me as if I’m an experiment. I’m not sure what they mean, but my chest tightens, and my breathing gets more difficult.
“I think he’ll be a good investment,” the ogre agrees after a long while of studying me. He smirks, his mouth curling evilly as he watches me.
“Tie him in the training chair.” The old man grins happily. He cups my cheek in his hand and leans in. His breath stinks of alcohol and blood which makes me choke on the spit dripping down my throat from his open mouth.
“What if he doesn’t—?”
“I said tie him to the fucking chair,” the man bites out angrily at the ogre. “He’ll learn to appreciate my business. He is my son after all.”
Shaking my head to clear it of the gloomy time in my life, I move into the empty cell and start my clean up. I couldn’t sleep after I’d left her in that room, so here I am at one in the morning working when I should be asleep.
The wet mattress has already been pulled out of the room, and the bucket needs to be removed and cleaned. Grabbing the mop, I start on the floor now dried where she’s pissed herself while I was holding her. I shouldn’t have gotten angry, but it was her weakness I hated.
When he told me there would be more coming, he mentioned bringing a new, special girl in. I knew what he’d want from me. I’ve become wary of the girls who arrive, because I know the moment I see them in their beauty, it will be the last time they’ll ever look that way again. But after my jerk-off session last night, I closed my eyes, with River curled around me in bed, and saw her eyes. I recognized the plea in them. She needs a knight to save her, and as much as I never believed I could be anyone’s savior, this girl makes me feel something I never did before — I want to be the one who saves her from the Devil himself even though it may kill me.
I want to sever the link to him and have her be mine.
But as much as I want that, I know I can’t ever have her because he owns them all. Each one brought into hell, he takes them and makes sure they never see the light of day again.
But it’s not the fact that he takes from them, it’s the way he does it. A scrape of a boot sounds from behind me, and I find my brother at the door. He eyes me warily. We’ve both been working here for the man we call father for so long it’s become second nature to clean up the mess left by each toy.
“She going to last?” he questions naturally, as if we’re talking about the fucking weather. He looks like he’s been well fucked, and I wonder who the girl was.
“I hope so.” I’ve never uttered those words. Never once cared if the girls come back from their sessions or not, but with the pretty toy I’ve just led to the den, I wonder if I’ll ever see those soulful eyes again.
“There’s no hope in here, Drake,” my brother grunts in frustration. He’s younger than me by two minutes. But I was dragged into the darkness much earlier than he was.
“I know,” I finally respond, causing him to glance at me. The blue eyes that match mine stare at me for a moment. My father told us we were a gift to him from our mother. That she had told him how special we were as she birthed us. In her screams, she told him we’d carry on the Savage legacy. I think he’s full of shit.
My mother may be a stranger to me — I’ve only ever seen a handful of photos of her — but there’s something in her gaze whenever she looked at the camera. A faraway look that reminds me of the girls in here.
Her ancestry took us back to Europe. Both our mother’s and father’s bloodlines originated there. But now we live in what is known as the “land of the free”, which to me is a lie, because it seems to stifle everything good in our lives.
“Is she pretty?” he questions as he unscrews the bottle of bleach. The harsh scent still bothers my senses as he douses the floor in the clear liquid.
Is she?
Yes.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, not answering his question because I know there isn’t any reason for me to want her. As much as I could attempt saving her, it would be pointless.