Eight

EIGHT

It feels like I’ve existed in this cell forever. I should have been counting the days more closely, but they all bleed together. And why does it matter how long this has gone on?

I wake to find Seven asleep on the floor. I shake him to try to wake him and realize it’s not normal sleep. Did our captor slip in and dose him again? He never drugs me. He doesn’t need to. I’m so small and weak, I can’t put up a real struggle, but Seven is his match. He may even be a bit stronger than our captor, so more precautions must be taken.

Though our captor plays with us and watches us fuck each other, he still hasn’t fully broken Seven. I know his eventual plan is for Seven to fully embrace this role as my master, so that our captor can let him off the leash. He’s tempted him. He’s promised him he doesn’t have to stay in the cell. There are much nicer rooms upstairs. They can be on the same side. I can be their captive together. But Seven refuses to take any of the bait on offer.

Our captor will never be able to trust Seven unchained. He’s not a dog that can be trained. I somehow have grown to think of him as my protector, even though he can’t truly protect me from anything. Not like this. The door opens, and I scoot back to the far corner of the cell. As much as he has taken me and shaped me to his will, as much as my body wants him, there’s the lingering uncertainty, the fear that the mask of calm will drop and this will all end.

He chains Seven up, then smacks him a few times in the face.

“Wake up!”

Seven slowly comes to. His eyes immediately find mine as if reassuring himself I’m still here and okay. It does something to me when he looks at me like this.

“Good. I need you both awake for this announcement,” our captor says.

I want to join Seven. I want to be wrapped in his arms right now, but our captor is standing beside him, and I don’t dare make that trip across the cell because something has changed, and I’m terrified that I think I know what it is.

I’ve craved both of these men, but it only feels right or sane with Seven, so I pour all my emotional energy into him and try to forget the excitement I feel when the other man touches me. Obviously, it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but even so, it’s convincingly real. It’s reminds me of a lucid dream I once had where I spent several minutes just touching this textured wallpaper, knowing I was dreaming but unable to comprehend how real it all felt. As I’d stroked the velvety smooth wall, I kept thinking to myself how can this not be real?

This dream is even more real.

“I’ve grown tired of this game,” our captor says.

The tears come immediately. It’s like I’ve locked them away and saved them just for this moment. He’s going to kill us. I knew this day was coming, but I’d hoped it would be farther in the future. I crawl over to him, forgetting my former resistance. “Please, Master... don’t...” But I can’t bring myself to say the words. If he’s grown tired of this game, there’s nothing I can do to change his mind. I’ve always known I existed at his pleasure, on his terms.

I flinch when he strokes my hair. He sighs. “I’m going to let you go,” he says finally.

“W-what?” I can’t have heard him right. He can’t just let us go. How would that even work? Isn’t he afraid we’ll report him? Before I can work through all the ramifications and how he could possibly let us go without endangering himself, the reality that I’ve spent weeks ignoring because it no longer mattered, slaps me in the face.

I still have no job, no money, no apartment. Probably not even clothes. I’m sure Carolyn must have tossed my things when I didn’t come back for them. I will starve to death out there. I’m pretty sure I can’t get Andrew to take me back, not after he thinks I stood him up that night and just never spoke to him again.

He probably thinks I was fucking around with him somehow. And after what has happened here in this cell, I don’t think I could ever...

“Master, please... I’ll starve. I have nothing, I can’t...” I can’t believe I’m saying this. But this is truly the situation I’m in, where being this man’s captive is a better fate than being set free because of my financial situation. In the back of my mind these weeks, I’ve feared he would eventually kill me, but it never ever occurred to me that I should worry about going back to the problems I was in before captivity.

He’s still stroking my hair, his fingertips moving down to rub the back of my neck. I’m ashamed of how much I love it when he does this. It still feels so wrong to love anything that comes from his hand, especially since I have guilt-free pleasure with Seven. Both men are equally beautiful, but one is a monster, and I can’t let myself feel anything for him, so I push these things down as much as I can.

“Don’t worry, Kate, I won’t let you starve. I’m prepared to offer you two million dollars.”

My breath stops for a second, and maybe my heart as well. I can’t have heard him right. Is he paying me for my silence? Or is this just another sick game? What’s the catch?

“Unfortunately, this offer is only for you. If you accept, I’ll have to kill your companion. But you’ll be free and safe. I think it’s a pretty good offer. You should carefully consider your answer.”

I’m stunned for a moment. Why would he let me go but not Seven?

“No!” I say as soon as I can get my vocal cords to work again. My refusal comes out shrill and panicked.

He shrugs. “I could just kill you both. I’m offended that you would spit on my generosity in this way.”

I’m crying now, great heaving sobs that I can’t get control of. “Please, please...” I whimper.

Then I hear Seven’s quiet, strong voice rising above my crying and begging. “Take the deal, Kitten,” he says.

I extricate myself from the hand still stroking the nape of my neck. Our captor acts as if this entire conversation were about something unimportant—not two lives hanging in the balance. But our lives are unimportant to him. I crawl the few feet to Seven and bury my face in his chest. I’m grateful the chains give enough leeway for him to put his arms around me. He strokes my back.

“Shhhh,” he says. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. I need you to go. Live your life.”

I shake my head, my tears dripping onto his chest. “No, I won’t leave you. I love you.”

I involuntarily flinch when I say this because I remember our captor is standing so close. He heard this confession of love, and he surely won’t be happy about it.

There’s a long beat of tense silence, and then Seven laughs. It’s a dark, sinister laugh, like nothing I’ve heard from him before.

“What was that, Declan? Three weeks?” Seven says.

“Impressive. I thought she’d take the money.”

I pull away from Seven to look in his eyes, still not believing what I’ve just heard. This can’t be real. I trusted him. I thought that he... I thought he was like me...

“You are so adorable,” Seven says. “So sweetly trusting. I love it.”

“No! No, no no...” I can’t stop the word. It’s gotten stuck on repeat. I scramble back to the corner I was in only minutes ago when Declan first stepped into the room.

I’m still trying to put it all together. I had thought Seven was my captor that first day, but I’d become quickly convinced by the lie of his innocence which only became more convincing the more time passed. And after the way he was tossed in the cell all bloody and broken the day we were punished for speaking each other’s names in the seemingly safe space of the shower... Did he let Declan beat him like that?

It’s strange having a name for my captor now... my other captor. Declan unchains Seven, and the two of them stand together, watching me, amusement on their triumphant faces. It was a game, and Seven won. Good for him.

I seek desperately to put together a new narrative of what really happened these past weeks. Obviously, he did let Declan beat him that day, something I can’t begin to comprehend. But it served its purpose. It convinced me we were in this together. That we were a team. Us against the monster. It bonded me to him more tightly than any other play they could have made.

Did they plan and coordinate each move? Did Seven know ahead of time how every last detail would unfold? When Declan was keeping me in his bedroom and blindfolding me to take me to the dungeon... Seven had to have been walking around free outside the cell. Did he watch? Did he become the new voyeur?

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying not to think about the fact that while I worried Declan was starving him and beating him, or had even killed him, that he was just taking a break from the game.

Whenever Seven was dragged out of the cell, Declan wasn’t moving him long distances to punish him or whatever. It was all just a show until he got out into the hallway.

Seven knew there were no real drugs in the syringe the day of the escape attempt. He knew Declan was lying there fully conscious waiting for us to almost get free before pulling the rug out.

Another realization slams into me like a mallet. Seven was never drugged. The food he ate was the same as mine. And every time he was injected with what I thought were drugs, it was only a saline solution. Nothing was real.

Declan told the truth every time he said Seven wasn’t my hero and everything was an act and a game. He put the truth right under my nose in plain sight. He openly stated it while I thought he was just taunting me.

“You’re going to kill me aren’t you?” I say, the tears still flowing down my cheeks. I loved Seven. God help me, but I still love him.

“No,” Seven says. “We really are letting you go. I mean there’s only so long I can live in a cell with nothing else to do. So here’s the deal. You will sign a non-disclosure agreement, backdated to the date that we took you. The contract states that you were here of your own free will playing a game with us. You can tell no one about anything that has happened here.”

I wish it was Declan telling me all this because it’s so hard to see this change in Seven. I thought he cared about me... I thought...

“You will not go to the police. We own nearly every judge in this corrupt city, and we can guarantee we would get one of those judges should a trial ever occur. And we own about half the police. If you go to one of our guys, he’ll just bring you right back to us, and we will be very displeased. You can’t imagine the punishment.”

“Master, please...” I can’t dwell on this betrayal because starvation is still a real possibility, and I have nowhere to go, and I’m sure the money was part of their sick joke—the carrot they could take away as soon as my greedy little eyes lit upon it. “Please... I have nowhere to go,” I say quietly.

“Yes, you do,” Seven says. “Declan has set up a bank account in your name, and we have all the paperwork and bank cards for you. The account has five million dollars in it. You also now own a penthouse apartment in the city, fully furnished. And a car, a blue Porsche 911 Carrera. You’re welcome.”

I shake my head. “It’s not real. You’re just fucking with me again.” I can’t take any more of these lies.

Seven steps out of the cell for a moment, the keypad accepting his thumbprint as easily as Declan’s. As if I needed any more proof of his role in this. No wonder Declan made me call Seven, master.

I cry harder now as I’m left alone in the room with Declan. The bad master. The scary one. But they are both utterly terrifying now. They were just playing good cop/bad cop with me, and I was too stupid to see it.

“You’re both psychopaths,” I whisper.

“Oh, come now, Pretty Toy. If we were psychopaths, you’d be dead right now. We’re sociopaths.”

“What’s the difference?” I never actually thought there was a difference. I’ve heard the terms used interchangeably so many times.

Declan walks over to me. I cringe away from him, my back now pressed against the wall with no more room to run. He sits on the ground beside me, stroking my hair.

“Sociopaths can form bonds with a select few people. And lucky for you, you’re now one of those people.”

I don’t believe him. I can’t. The amount of deceit both men have used with me these past few weeks is too great for me to believe a word out of their pathologically lying mouths.

“Did I ever once threaten your life?” he asks.

“No.” He did mention starving, but I know he means violent immediate murder threats. It’s fucked-up that I can read between his lines and know what he means even if he isn’t entirely specific.

“No, what? You aren’t free quite yet. Let’s not get too casual.”

“N-no, Master.” I can’t stop crying.

“Good girl. Did either of us ever physically harm you in any serious way? Any broken bones? Cutting? Amputations? Starvation? And I mean actual starvation, refusing you food with no way for you to rectify that situation. Were you at any point violently raped?”

“No, Master,” I whisper.

“That’s what I thought.” He stands back up as Seven re-enters the room with some papers, a pen, and the clothes I was wearing the night I was taken. The little black dress. He takes me by the arm and guides me to the bathroom where the light is better. The latest white roses are wilting in the vase. Some of the petals have fallen onto the counter.

It’s jarring, because there were always fresh roses. They never got to this state before being replaced with more, always while I was sleeping.

“Read, sign, and initial in the marked places,” he says.

Seven strokes my back as I read. I hate him more than Declan right now. At least I always knew Declan was the bad guy. Seven’s betrayal cuts deeper.

I can barely read through my tears but I get the gist of it. It doesn’t even matter what the fuck these papers say. I have no choice but to sign them. I’m not really agreeing to anything, just obeying one more of their whims.

I sign and initial in all the appropriate places.

“Good girl,” Seven says, passing the papers to Declan. “Now get dressed, and I’ll take you to your new home.”

My hands shake as I put on the bra, panties, dress, and heels. It feels so uncomfortably strange to have fabric resting against my skin after so much time naked.

He pulls a black scrap of fabric out of his pocket and ties it around my eyes.

When I panic, he says, “It’s just until we get away from the house.”

He leads me out of the cell, down a hallway, out a front door. Birds are chirping as he opens a car door and guides me inside.

“Buckle up,” he says before shutting me into the silence of the car.

He joins me a moment later and the engine revs to life. As we drive, I wonder how many women they’ve done this to.

There’s this sick part of me that still wants to be with Seven because a part of my mind is still in shock and can’t accept that he’s the bad guy. I’m still not sure he’s not just taking me somewhere to kill me. His level of elaborate deceit makes anything now possible.

But I don’t ask or beg because if he were planning to kill me, he wouldn’t tell me the truth about it anyway. I remember what Declan said back in the cell about how sociopaths could form a few limited bonds. Maybe they know they have to kill me but don’t want me to see it coming. Maybe this is their twisted way of showing mercy.

With a blindfold, I wouldn’t see it coming. Seven could just park the car somewhere, reach over and snap my neck. If he kills me, I hope he does it like that. Quick, where I don’t see it coming.

“I can’t believe I believed you. I believed you cared...” I say, needing to talk to get my mind off the dark fears consuming me.

“Shhh,” he says before I can start sobbing again. His hand strokes my knee, and I can’t bring myself to pull away, and it isn’t the fear. I hate myself right now for still wanting him to touch me.

“Don’t feel bad,” he says. “There are women married for decades to serial killers, with children even. They never suspect. Without a real conscience, it’s easy to hide, and normal people can’t even fathom what goes on inside our minds. And you never really know anyone anyway. Everything you think you know about anyone you’ve ever met is just the parts they’ve shown you. You never really know anyone,” he says again. Does he really believe this? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s true though.

We always have a skewed perspective of other people, even those closest to us. We make shorthand assumptions about their thoughts and feelings and motivations. We project ourselves onto them. We become disillusioned when we find out we were wrong about people.

My hands are clenched together in my lap. “I felt safe with you.”

“You were safe with me. You’re still safe with me. Tell me, Kitten, if you needed surgery, would you prefer to have someone very empathetic or very sociopathic operate on you?”

What kind of question is this? “Someone empathetic, of course.”

He laughs. “No, you wouldn’t. Very empathetic people are the type of people who break down into tears when a disaster happens on the other side of the world to random strangers they’ve never met. They hold candlelight vigils and pray and wring their hands. They see a starving African child on a television commercial and send money they probably could put to better use for their own family because they felt sad seeing a small sad-eyed hungry child. And they need to assuage their guilt at having a full belly. They are altruistic even to the point of neglecting their own needs or their family’s needs. They have no strong loyalties because they love everyone with a shallow love that is really just their lack of emotional control.”

I let these words fall over me. I don’t know if I should believe them, but they do sound true. I’ve known people like this. Every news story depresses them or makes them anxious. They get emotionally over-involved in the lives of strangers.

“It’s not black or white, Kate. I guarantee you every top surgeon in the world is at least a bit sociopathic. You have to be able to shut your feelings off and just see a body in front of you so you can make clear-headed rational choices. You don’t want someone who is too emotional or falls apart at every little thing or feels everybody else’s emotions. Most politicians are sociopaths. Most CEOs are sociopaths. And yet the world still spins.”

“You didn’t really feel anything for me. I didn’t expect Declan to, but I thought you...”

“Obviously, I felt something, Kitten. He does, too.”

And that’s all I’m going to get from him. I know this because he seems to become a wall. He turns on the radio to a classical music station, and we drive the rest of the way in silence.

Finally the car stops, he removes the blindfold from my eyes, and he gives me a folder with all my bank stuff, my purse, and a set of keys.

“Your car is in the parking garage. And you live on the top floor.” He winks at me. “It’s where they typically keep the penthouse. Goodbye, Kate.”

I swallow back the tears. I’m never going to see this man again. I shouldn’t want to see him again. And now that I know they were both bad, it seems stupid to deny I also felt something for Declan. Because one of them isn’t the safe guilt-free choice anymore. They were both evil. And suddenly, in this moment, I’m flooded with my feelings for Declan, these soft feelings I’ve denied myself because it was so wrong.

I get out of the car, and before I close the door, I say, “Can I ask you one more question?”

“Ask,” he says.

“How do you know Declan?”

“My only friend since childhood. He was the one person I knew who was like me. Empty.”

These are the last words he says to me. I shut the car door and watch him drive away. I manage to get inside the building and onto the elevator, riding up to the penthouse before I break down into sobs again. I feel so lonely and so wrong in every way one can be wrong.

I feel... discarded. And I am. But at least I won’t starve.

I’m surprised when the elevator doors open directly into the penthouse. I had to use a key in the elevator for this floor, but I still somehow expected a hallway. There are floor-to-ceiling windows, and the view is astounding.

I drop my purse, keys, and large bank envelope onto a chair next to the elevator. And then I freeze. Right in front of me, on a marble table, is a vase of fresh fragrant white roses. There’s a card in the flowers with my name on it.

My hand shakes as I pull out the card.

When you are ready to come home, call, and we will come get you.

There’s a phone number at the bottom.

They’re still playing with me. They think I’m so addicted to what they turned me into that I will give up freedom and luxury to go back to them and live in a cell like some animal.

Fuck them both.

I pick up the vase of flowers and hurl it against the wall. The glass shatters into hundreds of tiny shards. I rip up the card with the number on it and throw it in the trash. I will not play their new game.