Chapter 11

ELEVEN

DOMHNALL

She makes it all of thirty-two hours.

It’s quite impressive, really. But then, Mads always was stubborn.

I work from home for the day, one monitor full of code I’m barely looking at, and the other… My other screen is full of the entertainment du jour .

God, she is magnificent.

She flips me off whenever she remembers to look up at the camera, which makes me chuckle. Even after all this time, I still know her so well. Mads can barely go ten minutes without needing someone to talk to. In the only way available to her, she’s trying to interact with me. She needs to feel a sense of connection with someone. Even if that someone is me.

Being proved right brings a warring tug of satisfaction in my chest even as I watch her struggle to crouch-crawl towards the bathroom. It’s the only way to move when you’re locked up like that, and she’s smart to have figured it out so fast. It took me forever. But then again, Mads always was clever. So, so very clever.

I squint at the screen and turn up the volume when she discovers the feeder, in a room off to the side by the bathroom. I smile at the blue streak she swears. She always could swear the skin off a donkey’s arse.

I’ve got a whole arrangement set up down there for food to be dispensed into a bowl. She should be grateful—it dispenses granola.

I had to eat actual dog food when I was made to be a pet, and not the expensive shite.

She has no choice but to bend over and eat it like an animal would. Same with the water bowl beside it. The bowl by the bed was just a temporary convenience. This is the self-filling one.

Afterward she lies on the ground near the elevator. As if she thinks she might ambush me when I next come down.

But I’ve learned patience since I first knew Mads.

Back then I was young and impulsive and sure that if I just tried hard enough and sprinted fast enough, I’d finally outrun all the bad shite and get to the good part of living. When you had a little sister depending on you, you were always promising ‘em rainbows and unicorn shite like that. For Moira’s sake, I tried to believe it longer than I should’ve.

Nothing gets you in trouble faster than hope.

Sitting in my office chair that costs more than my first car, I feel a fucked up, twisted satisfaction as I watch Mads’s hope drain. She gives up her vigil at the elevator to waddle back to the bathroom, then goes for some more food.

I’ve known for a long time that something was off inside me. Bent sideways. Wrong.

Before I found the club, I just kept to myself, apart from taking care of Moira. I knew that part inside me that I never let myself look directly at was too dark to ever let out. Well, it did boil over occasionally and I’d do dangerous shite like street-racing and intentionally picking fights with bastards bigger than me. But then came Crave, and I found a disciplined way to take the beast out, on a very short leash, and only at the club.

Now though?

I watch Mads weep in despair around hour fourteen and it makes me so fucking hard. The mascara tracks down her cheeks are even more beautiful than I could’ve dreamed of.

All day I sit obsessively watching her on my screen, even when she sleeps. I’m fascinated when she wakes up screaming. Twice, she screams herself awake from little naps, as if the devil himself has just shoved his poker straight through her belly .

I lean in closer to the screen as she waves her arms to make the lights turn on. Then she curls up into a little ball. Well, as much as she can with the barred cuffs.

She knows I’m watching. Is this more performance theater, or are the nightmares real? I want to know. I’m hungry to know everything about her. I’m obsessed. I recognize it but I don’t particularly care.

My sadistic monster is the real me. The center of me. He’s hungry for her in a way I can’t explain. I need to know everything about her. What scares her? What she sounds like when she comes. When she screams.

Some things have to be real, and I’ll discover each true thing one at a time as I break her. I’ll sift out the real from the false, and then she’ll be mine completely.

We’ll finally be in control, the monster and me.

I know she’s lost sense of time by how often she feeds. There’s no daylight down there—just the motion-activated ceiling bulbs. There’s nothing but silence and her own thoughts for company.

I can see it starting to wear on her. I mean, it’s pretty obvious when she starts screaming and jerking in her bonds at hour twenty. I’m glad they’re lined with soft, faux fur. I wonder if the screaming feels like a good release. I know I’ll play the sweet soundtrack of her screams back later when I rub one out.

She doesn’t ask me to come down, and she doesn’t relent; she just screams and screams. That’s my Mads, as stubborn as ever.

To double check, I press a button on my laptop connected to a speaker in the basement. “Do you yield?”

Her head immediately jerks upwards towards the ceiling, and I see fury and fire replace despair.

“No, I don’t yield, you twisted kidnapping son of a motherfucking cuntbag!”

I smile and reach a finger out towards the screen to caress her image. I’ve missed that mouth of hers. I never thought I’d ever meet a girl with the face of an angel who could swear a Donegal lad like me under the table.

This distance between us feels good. Necessary. Will she finally crack and do away with this ridiculous amnesia farce? How much will it take to break her the way her father broke me?

I don’t have a clue what to do with the warring affection and vengeance in my chest, but I suppose that’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? I never was good at expressing my emotions. Moira’s always saying so.

But I’m happy to show Mads exactly how I feel. I’m better with actions than words, anyway.

As soon as she gives in to me and lets me start to train her flesh, oh yes, I’ll show her exactly how I’ve felt all these years.

It will be so satisfying, in a way that has my fingers itching for her skin, once she finally yields.

I’ll be a far more benevolent owner than they were to me. And once and for all, the control will be mine.

After more screaming, some time spent curled up in a ball—or as much of one as she can manage with her shackles—at six minutes past hour thirty-two, she finally whispers in the tiniest voice that I have to reverse and playback with the volume cranked all the way up: “I yield.”

Immediately, I race to the elevator, my heart thumping. I force myself to stand there for five minutes more before hitting the button to call the elevator. I can’t have her thinking I was waiting for her, after all.

Control is a tentative game of temptation and withdrawal. I’ve become a master at it over the years, but this is truly the greatest test of my skills yet. I’m finally faced with the only other master to have ever bested me.