Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

AMETHYST

I stand on trembling legs, staring into the cold blue eyes of Xero’s dad. The tent lights make my vision go strange, but I blink away the glare.

“What do you like to be called?” he asks.

My lips part, but I can’t make a sound. Delta’s presence is so intimidating that he swallows up my words and makes my tongue feel like lead.

He chuckles, but it’s a hollow, heartless sound that makes my skin erupt into goosebumps. Did he laugh like that when his sons beat Xero half to death? Or when he relegated Xero to a windowless box and made him eat scraps?

How about the children he groomed into becoming assassins? Did he laugh like that when the little girls returned from missions traumatized?

“Amethyst, is it?” he asks.

I manage a feeble nod. His gaze is so piercing, it feels like being trapped in the coils of a snake that hypnotizes its prey.

“Then let me give you a choice, Amethyst. I can make this experience pleasant or add to the trauma you’re likely suffering from having been exposed and humiliated in front of your twin sister and half a dozen men.”

I flinch at the reminder, my eyes squeezing shut.

“Now, lie on the couch like a good girl, and we’ll talk,” he says in a voice so smooth that it slips through my defenses.

Swallowing hard, I walk across the swept floor toward the peculiar looking tent and lower myself onto the bondage furniture upholstered to look like a psychiatrist’s couch. A voice in my head is screaming at me to do anything else, but it’s dull and far away.

Delta points a remote toward a camera mounted on a tripod on the other side of the room. It whirs to life with a small red light indicating it’s recording.

Shivers travel across my skin at the thought of appearing in yet another movie clip. I glance back to Delta as he activates smaller cameras hidden within the tent’s metallic structure. Their tiny lights remind me of spiders’ eyes.

He pulls up a director’s chair and positions it at the foot of my couch. “Lie back. Locke gave you a powerful herbal extract from the nightshade family to help make you more obedient and to reduce your inhibitions.”

My stomach lurches at the realization of just why I feel so out of control. Is this where I’m raped and killed, like Lizzie Bath? Or does Delta have something else in mind?

“Why?” I whisper. “Don’t you make snuff videos?”

His breathy laughter makes my skin crawl. “This session is for me, not the movie. I plan on taking you deeper into your subconscious than you’ve ever gone before, so I would prefer if you would recline before your body collapses.”

A rapid beat echoes through my ears, and the blood racing through my veins heats. Sweat breaks out across my brow, and my head swims. I don’t want to know what’s buried in my mind, and I sure as hell don’t want to be vulnerable to this monster.

The words from earlier trickle into my skull, and I blurt, “Locke gave me deadly nightshade?”

“Devil’s trumpet,” he says with a fatherly chuckle. “I can see from the flush across your skin that it’s already taking effect.”

I drop back on the couch, my breaths turning shallow and erratic. My limbs are so heavy, it feels like I’m sinking into the upholstery. The lights tilt and spin, creating a monochromic haze. Every shade of white, from ivory to alabaster, transforms the world into a maelstrom of colorless hues.

“Good girl. Now, I want you to relax and answer a few questions.”

When I blink, my lashes flutter like butterfly wings, cracking through the room like a whip. They slice into the echo of my pulse and the roar of blood rushing in my ears. Delta’s serpentine voice slithers through the confusion.

“Tell me about your relationship with Xero Greaves.”

The truth surfaces, breaking my defenses. A single word spills from my lips. “Xero.”

“Yes?”

Alarm bells ring in my head. He can’t know about all the people Xero worked so hard to protect.

“Tell me about him.”

I blurt truths that were recorded across social media, harmless pieces of information in the public domain. I tell him about the murders, how he was caught by the police holding his stepmother’s heart. How they called him the angel of death because of his masculine beauty.

“Enough,” he says, his words sharp. “What did he tell you in his letters?”

“He doesn’t like fava beans or chianti.”

Delta scoots his seat forward, frustration radiating off his shoulders in silver waves. “Regarding his plans,” he says, his voice a low rumble that shakes my eardrums like thunder. “What did he tell you about his organization?”

I picture Camila and Jynxson and all the people who worked so hard to protect me from X-Cite Media, and how I betrayed them by setting their boss on fire. I can’t let them fall into Delta’s clutches, so I dredge up information about the fan club.

“There were two organizations,” I murmur. “One official. The other is unofficial.”

“Tell me more,” he says, his voice slipping past my guard.

“We made the warden increase their recreation time, and we raised funds to buy things for their book club?—”

The director’s chair topples back, sending shockwaves through the room. Delta looms, his large hand crushing my throat.

“What did Xero tell you?”

“About what?”

“People, plans, places. I want to know it all!”

“Death row?”

“What was in his letters?” he hisses.

My eyelids droop. “He told me about his piercings. The pervy prison guard… He wanted me to send nudes.”

“That’s it?”

“He wanted a conjugal visit.”

Delta chuckles. “I can hardly blame him. You are quite the beauty.”

His fingers travel down my collarbone and over the swell of my breast. “It’s like having two wives. One who’s battle-forged and the other a blank slate.”

“I belong to Xero,” I whisper.

“How did he survive the execution?” Delta asks.

The question knocks me sideways. “We called his spirit from another realm.”

His hand slips down to my breast, his fingers closing in around my nipple. Revulsion ripples through my chest, making my stomach lurch.

“Are you telling me the truth, girl?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. “Sometimes, it’s hard to tell what’s real.”

“Who were you talking to in your cell?”

“Xero.”

His fingers squeezing my nipple loosen. “Do you hallucinate him often?”

“Yes.”

He sighs. “Your mother damaged you more than I anticipated. Tell me what happened to the men we sent to your house.”

“I think they’re dead,” I murmur. “It’s hard to tell. Men keep popping up at the worst times.”

“More hallucinations?”

I nod.

“And you killed them?”

“I didn’t mean to. Not really. It was self-defense.”

He laughs, a maniacal sound that penetrates the marrow of my bones. “Maybe you aren’t so useless after all. Dolly wants you to remember her, so cast your mind back to the last time you saw your sister.”

“She was holding the camera,” I say, my breath hitching. “Filming me while Locke did all those horrible things.”

He slaps my cheek so hard that my vision bursts into white-hot sparks, my head snapping to the side with a sickening crack. “Can one person really be so stupid? You’re like a child, stumbling into dangers you’re too feeble-minded to comprehend.”

The words would sting if I gave a shit about what he thought, but I remain silent.

He pulls out a pair of scissors and snips through the neckline of my straitjacket, exposing my collarbone and the tops of my breasts. “Melonie did a marvelous job, keeping you hidden from the outside world. We couldn’t find either of you, anywhere, until you went viral with your Xero fanclub.”

A riot breaks out across my brain, but my senses are too muffled to react. I concentrate on his words, trying to commit them to memory.

The scissors glide down my skin, the cold metal making me squirm.

“Melonie coddled you so much that you have no function in the world. I researched your past extensively, hoping to find something of value, but there was nothing but a string of failures.”

My breath quickens as his fingers slide over my bandaged belly and toward my crotch. Alarm snakes through my veins, freezing me from the inside. I throw every ounce of energy into my limbs, but they refuse to move.

“Tell me something. Has any man touched you since that teacher?”

“Mr. Lawson,” I whisper.

“That’s right. Have you taken any cocks since then?” He parts my legs, his thick fingers rubbing over my genitals. Everything down there is numb.

“No.” My voice catches. “I can’t. Don’t.”

“Isn’t that precious,” he says. “Such innocence. No man who ever touched you is still alive.”

When he pulls away his hand, the tightness in my chest unravels, and I release a shuddering breath.

“Shall we try again? Next time you fail to give me a satisfactory answer, I won’t hold back.”

I want to scream that this is sick, but the words die in my throat. The world dissolves into a storm of swirling whites. Delta’s shadowy figure looms closer, the point of the scissors tracing a cold, cruel line up and down my folds.

Panic mounts. I try to fight back again, but the drug won’t let me move.

“Cast your mind back to when you were ten.” His voice snakes into my thoughts. “What was the last thing you remember before the asylum?”

“I don’t know.”

“Close your eyes.”

My eyes flutter shut.

“Good girl. Now, picture yourself with Lyle. He was taking you somewhere, yes?”

I want to ask how he knows Dad’s name, but the words remain stuck in the back of my throat. All I can choke out is, “Yes.”

“Where did he take you? What happened that day?”

My mind rolls back to the blank wall encasing my earliest memories. It’s made of gray bricks, covered in the same photos Mom placed all over my bedroom. Among them are sticky notes, reminding me that I lost my memories in a car crash brought on by unbuckling my seatbelt.

I try to tell Delta what I see, but he tells me it’s a construction of lies. I float around it and find a tiny crack.

“Good girl. Look harder. Squeeze through. What’s on the other side?”

Images explode through my consciousness in glorious technicolor. My nostrils fill with the mingled scents of burnt metal, gasoline, and motor oil. Looks like the car accident was real.

“I’m lying on a stretcher, surrounded by paramedics,” I reply.

“Look around. Where are you?”

“I don’t know. There’s an ambulance. Its lights are still flashing. A truck. Lots of bystanders in a circle behind tape. And the police.”

“What else? Can you see anyone familiar?”

I turn my head to find a gray car, crumpled beyond recognition. Firemen just extracted a man from the wreckage, but his body is limp. I relay all this information to Delta until I catch a glimpse of the man’s face.

Heart clenching, I choke out, “It’s Dad. He’s dead.”

“Good girl.” Delta says. “What else?”

The girl I was then and the woman I am now are swamped by the pain and horror of that day. My throat closes, and I force out the words, “They’re putting him in a body bag.”

My stretcher gets wheeled backward and lifted into the interior of an ambulance. I reach out with my mind, wanting to stay with Dad, but the paramedics close the doors.

“What happens next?” he asks. “Focus.”

Darkness overwhelms my vision, and my ears fill with the sound of beeping machines. My mind gets pulled under until even the grating sound of Delta’s voice fades into the echoing drone of my pulse.

I did it. I finally broke through the wall of false memories and found a sliver of truth. Dad died all those years ago, yet I remember him so vividly during key points in my later childhood and adolescence.

While I was recovering from the accident at home, the father who came to my room and kept me company must have been a hallucination. All those words of comfort he offered when I got into trouble at school were figments of my imagination.

Somewhere on the edge of my consciousness, I’m aware of probing fingers, scissoring and twisting, and of Delta’s voice comparing the state of my vagina to my sister’s. I summon every ounce of energy into my legs, desperate to kick him in the balls, the face, to launch myself off the couch, but the drugs keep my limbs paralyzed.

A whimper lodges in my throat. My tongue is so heavy, I can’t scream at him to stop.

“If you want this to end, you’ll answer some questions about Xero and his organization.”

As I slip into unconsciousness, my last thoughts are to protect Xero’s people from Delta.

He must never know their location.