15

15

STACEY

Kade is still out cold by the time night falls again. Tobias and Aria have gone for a walk through the woods, and Barry and Ewan are eating at the dining table. Some of the guards are sleeping while the others take over their duties, and the silence in the lodge is making me uneasy.

Kyle sits on the kitchen counter while I make us coffee. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner. I left the house as soon as you yelled that you were here.”

I give him a soft smile. “You have nothing to apologise for. I’m okay. You’re okay. Chris is locked downstairs. Nothing much worse can happen.”

“Bernadette Sawyer might know where we are.”

“She does,” I reply. “I’m not sure why she hasn’t stormed in here for Kade though. I think she might have a plan.”

“Is there anyone we can call? Police? Can we take to social media? Anything?”

“Too risky.” I hand him his mug. “Have you spoken to Nora?”

“She thinks I’m still looking for Chris. Told her he’d lost his mind and was trying to kill you.” He sighs, taking a sip of his hot drink. “She sends her best wishes.”

I snort. Nora won’t care about me. All she wants is her son back in her arms – she’ll cocoon him in bubble wrap like he’s a fragile piece of glass.

“I’m going to head to bed. Get some sleep,” I tell him, noting the bags under his eyes and the dishevelled hair. “And shower. You stink.”

“You’re one to talk.” He fakes a sniff in my direction and screws his face up.

I slap his arm and walk upstairs, stopping outside Kade’s room, listening to Jason talking. I’m not sure what he’s saying, but I know Kade is still unconscious. I hear a sniff, an “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from them” and I back away from the door to give him privacy.

I’m not sure how I manage to sleep. The room is cold, and the blankets are thin. Maybe it’s because I’m mentally and physically shattered.

I wake just a couple of hours later though. I know I won’t sleep any more, so I sit up, stretch and turn on the shower. While I’m pulling off my clothes, I hear the door of my bedroom open, so I quickly grab my PJs from the floor and hold them to my naked body.

From the outline, I know it’s Kade leaning against my door, his head dropping back against the wood. He’s breathing unevenly, running his hand through his hair.

I take slow, careful steps, still hiding myself. “Kade?”

His eyes flicker to me, but he doesn’t move.

He doesn’t have the material covering the lower part of his face either. If anything, he looks a little out of it – as if his mind isn’t here, but his body is.

I move forward and go to turn on the light, but he snatches my wrist. “No.”

“Why?”

“No.”

I blink and swallow, nodding.

“Christopher Fields,” he says in a quiet tone. “Where is he?”

My breathing halts. “Why?”

“Is he here?”

Slowly, in the darkness, I pull my PJs back on. “He’s tied up in the basement. We wanted you to get—”

He’s out the door before I can finish, obviously fuelled by adrenaline.

I swear under my breath and run after him.

“Woah!” Barry jumps out of his chair and drops the gadget he was holding on the floor when he sees Kade abruptly kicking open the door to the basement. “No, boss. Wait!”

Tobias, Aria, Ewan and Kyle stream into the kitchen, and we all follow him as he hammers downstairs and heads straight to Chris, slamming his fist into his face; he comes to with a pained cry.

“Wake up, motherfucker.”

The fear sinks in the second he registers who’s towering above him, and he begins thrashing in his seat, kicking his legs out and getting nowhere.

We all stand at the wall near the stairs, watching Kade blinking uncontrollably and screwing his face up like he’s trying to rid voices from his mind. “You have no fucking idea how long I’ve waited for this. Do you know who I am?” He points at himself. “I’m the father of the child you killed.”

Kade snatches a blade from a nearby table, flips it in his hand to catch it by the handle and plunges it into Chris’s shoulder.

He screams so loud my ears ring.

“You fucking—”

Kade covers his mouth and leans in, yanking the blade out. Chris looses a harrowing gasp against his palm then silently screams as he sinks it into his other shoulder and twists it.

“How does it feel? Huh? How does it feel to be helpless? To not be able to control your pain? To receive and not give.” He pushes the blade further, and Tobias chuckles while Kyle turns away. “This, right here, is for my daughter, you piece of shit.”

Aria covers her mouth on a whimper and runs upstairs. For once, Tobias and Ewan don’t chase after her.

Kade pulls the blade out again and slaps him across the face, wiping the bloodied knife on his trousers.

“You were full of words in that little recording you took. Why so silent now? Because you don’t have my girlfriend or my brother drugged and at your mercy?”

Chris doesn’t respond, hunching over as far as he can in his restraints, the two stab wounds gushing down his top and onto the dirty floor.

We once sat in this very basement and played Twister. I got into a position where he could touch my boob without anyone noticing. From then, he was obsessed with touching them. Always looking, trying to grab them. I was never allowed to wear a bra around him.

Hours after that game, he dragged me down here, young and helpless, and made me strip while he touched himself. He took pictures of me. Told me I was his, even as I cried for my dad and took punches to the face until I removed my underwear.

I was fifteen.

I’m hauled from the memory when Kade pulls away and heads to the table filled with devices. Tobias set up when we first got here. He grabs the hammer, flips it in his hand like he did the blade then grabs some nails and strides towards Chris like a panther stalking its prey.

“You see her?” He grabs his head with one hand, his fingers and thumb at his temples, and turns him to look at me. “This will be the last time you see her.”

Chris must think that means figuratively as he laughs through his pain, but Tobias moves behind him and pries his eyeball open. I quickly turn away as Kade hammers a nail into it.

The scream – it’ll be burned into me forever.

He deserves it. He deserves it. He deserves it.

I keep my back turned as they do the same with the other eye, blinding him. I can tell he’s shaking from the rapid gasps he lets out, and when I turn to face him once more, bile rises in my throat. He’s crying tears of blood, and it’s a horrifying sight.

Kade doesn’t fuck around with words, and Tobias crosses his arms, waiting for his son’s next move. Kade paces between me and Chris. Blinking fast. Tugging at the hair behind his head – agitated.

Chris is chittering, trembling with pain and fear, shock consuming him as his fingernails sink into the arms of the wooden chair.

Kade stops pacing and looks at me. “Go upstairs.”

I tilt my head. “What? No.”

“You know he’s going to suffer – I’ll make it painful – so go upstairs. You don’t need to see this.”

“I do need to see this,” I retort. “He took everything from me.”

Kade stares at me, snarling and blinking. So much blinking and pacing and muttering under his breath. I’m more concerned about his mental state than taking revenge on my abuser.

Then he grabs a small hacksaw and stops in front of me again. “The first time he touched you, what did he do?”

I try to speak, my voice breaking. “I… was unconscious.” Chris told me about it at breakfast the next morning.

Kade’s eyes darken even more, something I thought would be impossible.

“Never mind – I have a better idea.”

I frown as Kade turns to his dad. “Hold his hand still. The left one first.”

Tobias doesn’t seem to enjoy taking orders, let alone from his chaotic son, but he obeys anyway. Chris is thrashing again as Tobias holds his wrist to the wood, and Kade saws off four of his fingers.

The digits drop to the floor like bullet casings, and I nearly vomit everywhere.

Chris sounds like an animal being slaughtered.

“Now you won’t be able to look at her or fucking touch her.”

“He just pissed himself,” Barry states.

“I can see that,” Tobias snipes, flicking his boot out to banish the minuscule drop of piss that touched it. “Just stand there, you useless prick.”

Barry shrugs. “I don’t want his dirty blood on me.”

Blood squirts all over Kade, but he keeps going with the other hand, yanking at the digits he hasn’t managed to fully detach while Chris lets off more harrowing screams.

“I won’t kill you,” he tells him in a bored tone. “I want you to live and know you can never see her beauty or touch her perfection. I want you to be helpless and unable to walk.” On the last word, he puts a bullet in Chris’s knee, and I close my eyes at the sound that comes from him. “I’ll leave your hearing, so I can tell you when I win her back, so you can hear her moaning my fucking name. When I marry her. When she births my fucking children. And guess what? I’ll have all of that. You won’t. Because Stacey Rhodes has been mine since the day I fucking met her.”

He shoots Chris’s other knee as Tobias whistles.

Chris has saliva dripping from his mouth, his face red with pain and rage. “She. Mine.”

“Yours?” Kade wipes blood from his eyes with the back of his hand. “Everyone, get out.”

Tobias grunts and grabs Barry by the collar to pull him out, but he shrugs him off and scowls. “I’m able to take myself out, you barbaric wanker.”

Ewan goes upstairs first, and I chew my lip and watch Kade run his hand through his hair, smudging blood everywhere, little trickles going down his nape.

Barry gestures for me to follow, and when I take a step, Kade says, “Not you.”

For a second, I hesitate. So does Barry. He’s hesitant around Kade after he shot at me, like a bit of trust has vanished, but finally he nods and goes upstairs, leaving me and Kade with Chris.

“I almost feel sorry for you,” Kade says to Chris when the door at the top of the stairs closes. “No, in fact, I do feel sorry for you.”

“Why?” Chris replies, the word broken, weak and slurred. I’m surprised he’s even answering back, considering he’s bleeding from multiple places.

Not to mention the nails stopping his eyelids from fully closing.

Kade grabs another chair, settling it in front of Chris before sitting down on it, his eyes flickering over to me. He holds out his hand. “Come here.”

I hug myself and step forward, and my breathing pauses when Kade pulls me into his lap. My nerves come alive from his touch, at feeling his thighs beneath me, at the way he wraps one arm around me while he settles the gun by our side.

“Do you trust me?” Kade whispers in my ear.

I give a slight nod.

The arm wrapped around me slackens at the same time his lips press to my nape. His hand slides up my bare legs to my PJ shorts, not stopping as he reaches my inner thigh and keeps going.

My heart races from his touch, a tingling sensation working its way to my core just as his fingertips brush over my underwear. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been touched in so long, or maybe it’s because it’s Kade, but I instantly part my legs to give him better access while I watch blood trailing from Chris’s eyes and hands.

Kade’s lips lightly graze across my nape to my ear. “I’m going to make you come in front of this piece of shit.”

I don’t have a chance to respond. My teeth bite into my bottom lip on a moan as he shoves aside my underwear and sinks two fingers inside me. “Oh God.”

My mouth opens, my eyelids closing slightly as I feel him going slow and deep.

“You hear that?” Kade taunts as he works his fingers in and out in a rhythm. My body reacts the only way it can, and I rock my hips; feel him growing hard against my ass. “You hear the noises I can pull from her pretty mouth?”

Chris pulls at his restraints. “Don’t fucking touch her.”

I moan as he pushes a third finger in, fucking me with them while he alternates between sucking on my skin with his blood-covered lips and teasing my abuser.

He curls his fingers, and I whimper, parting my legs wider as my head drops back onto his shoulder. “K-Kade,” I moan, moving against his hand. My hand grips the hair at the back of his head, using it as leverage to grind into his hand and push my ass against his cock.

More. I want more.

But this isn’t romantic or anything other than Kade claiming me for Chris to witness – showing him that no matter what, I’ve always been his. Not Chris’s, not the men he made rape me – two of whom are still walking around freely. Though Tobias has already said he’ll deal with them if his son doesn’t.

Teeth sink into my neck, and he sucks my skin harshly, causing me to cry out. “Tell him who you belong to,” Kade orders. “Tell him.”

“You,” I breathe.

“Don’t fucking say that!” Chris yells. “Leave her alone. Stop fucking touching her!”

Kade lets out a deep chuckle against my skin. “You want me to touch you, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” I moan as he rubs his thumb on my clit. “I want you, Kade, not him. Never him.”

“Stacey, please,” Chris sobs, blood still pissing from his eyes. “Please stop. Please.”

“He killed our daughter,” Kade says as he slips a blade into my hand. “Hurt him.”

My eyes close momentarily, my high building, and I grit my teeth, remembering everything he ever did to me, to us, while Kade keeps touching me, his other hand sliding up my chest, between my breasts, until he’s holding my throat.

“Hurt him with me, Freckles. Make him pay for ruining our lives.”

I barely register the blade lodging in Chris’s thigh, or Kade’s fingers wrapped around mine, both of us holding the blade’s handle now. My stepbrother cries out then grits his bloody teeth, unable to move from his restraints.

I breathe, pulling the blade out and doing it again, but Kade lets go, dragging his hand up my thigh and circling my clit while his other fingers keep fucking me.

Each time I stab Chris’s thighs, he cries a little louder, his voice croaky and dry, begging me to stop, but I keep going and going and going, until my arm gets tired. I drop the blade on the ground and wrap my blood-covered hand around Chris’s throat instead, cutting off his air.

I’m not strong enough to kill him with one hand, but the pressure building in his face brings me joy while Kade grinds his cock up against me through his trousers, dropping a “fuck” and a “keep going”.

My hand cramps, so I let go of Chris’s throat. He gasps for air, his entire body trembling as his blood pools beneath the chair.

I yelp as Kade pulls his fingers out, grabs my nape and bends me forward, my head dangerously close to Chris’s knee. He’s tugging at my shorts again, and I tense with euphoria as he finger-fucks me from behind then leans forward to circle my clit.

“She’s such a good girl for me, Christopher,” Kade teases. “Such a good, good girl.”

He goes harder, and I need to grab the arms of the chair, careful not to touch Chris as my vision blurs and warmth gathers at my core, which is clutching at the fingers pummelling into me now.

“So,” Kade continues, “back to what I was saying because we got distracted.”

He thrusts his fingers faster, and I cry out as a wave of pleasure hits me. It happens again, and again, until my orgasm overtakes the feeling, and I’m seeing stars and moaning.

“Fuck, she’s soaking and tightening around my fingers, Christopher. I bet you wish you were me. I bet you always wished you could be me. She’s fucking drenched for me. Do you know what it feels like to be loved by her? To see a future with her? To watch her grow your child, only to lose it because of a piece-of-shit jealous cunt?”

Chris is trembling, yanking at his restraints still – fighting against them to try to… what? Stop Kade from touching me? To take over himself?

No one ever knows when it comes to Chris.

“F-Fuck you,” he spits.

I gasp and tense all over when it finally gets too much. Kade pulls his fingers out and tugs me up by the hair to sit on him again as I try to catch my breath.

“You good?”

Tears sting my eyes, my lips trembling. “Can I go now?”

I’m scared. For the first time in a while, I’m scared of Kade. Not because he touched me, even if it was only to take revenge against Chris, but there’s something different about him. Like he’s fallen into a deep, dark hole and is trying to get himself out of it.

He stares at me, searching my face with a confused look. Then he lets go of me, and I don’t wait a second to run.

I hear the door opening – Tobias and Barry are standing there – then Chris starts calling out my name, stopping me at the stairs, but he’s silenced when Kade smashes a hammer into the side of his face.

I should be basking in his pain, but with all the blood, the thumb rolling near my feet and the other fingers on the floor… I try not to gag as Kade lifts another tool. The small hacksaw again.

Barry watches Kade lift one of Chris’s fingers and toss it aside – he glances sideways at an impassive Tobias and sighs.

Then his eyes drop to me.

“Are you okay?” Barry asks me, his gaze flickering between the blood coating my hand and Kade. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” I say quietly. “I’m going to my room.”

Barry nods and steps aside just as Tobias goes to the table filled with blades and grabs the largest one.

Kade watches me take the stairs two at a time, and he honestly looks terrifying. He has a saw in one hand and a hammer in the other, and his face is red with blood, the whites of his eyes the only light present.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Freckles,” he calls, spitting out blood that’s leaked into his mouth. “This is for us.”