Chapter 35

Prism

The repeatedringing of a phone cut through the sharp throbbing in my skull. I tried to focus on the ringtone, but when I did, the buzzing in my ears tried to snuff it out.

“Shut that damn thing off!” someone barked, the voice injecting ice water into my veins. It was frigid and so ominously familiar that it paralyzed my lungs and locked my limbs. The immobility forced on me was painful, and as much as my panicked brain screamed, RUN! the invisible shackles of terror held me in place.

The phone went off again, and I clawed at the blanket beneath my hands. Whoever didn’t listen is going to be punished.

Something crashed against the wall and then shattered when it dropped onto the floor. It was followed roughly by a smack and low grunt.

“I’m surrounded by imbeciles.”

Despite my jaw being locked, my teeth started to chatter, the clacking sound unwelcome to my frayed nerves. I bunched my fingers again into whatever I was lying on. It felt like a bed. How the fuck did I get into a bed?

Like the flicker of a movie screen, my brain replayed what happened in the parking lot at the radio station. How I’d been clobbered over the head. They must have dumped me in the car and brought me here… But where is here?

I could open my eyes and see. Get the answers to everything I was wondering.

I didn’t want to open my eyes.

If I opened my eyes, I’d see him.

The owner of that voice.

The source of all my trauma.

The man I thought I’d never have to see again.

It seemed preferable to not know where I was or even what was happening if it meant not having to face him.

“I know you’re awake.”

I pretended I wasn’t even if my shivering teeth called me a liar.

Being a liar was nothing compared to everything else this man had called me.

He grunted, footsteps moving away from the bed, but I didn’t unclench. The legs of a chair dragged over the floor, and I fought the urge to wince. The buzzing in my ears was loud but not loud enough to cover the sounds he started to make.

“Room service here was very accommodating. Look at this nice cut of steak they sent up,” my father told everyone and no one. Who knew which one?

The nerve-grating sound of a knife and fork scratching over a porcelain plate filled the room and shot the willies down my spine. I shivered and tried like hell to ignore it.

It’s just a sound. No big deal. Don’t react. Stay calm. Stay calm.

Squeeeal. Slice. Clank. Draaag. The sound of metal scraping against metal and then tediously dragging over porcelain made my eyelid begin to twitch. The chattering of my teeth turned into a painful grind, and I swear I could taste the enamel wearing right off my molars.

My hands fisted into the bed, a thin type of duvet. The fabric was not soft, not at all like the stuff Arsen used to make our bed, and the realization ignited a fire across my skin. My palms tingled and itched, burning with the need to scratch off the feel of this horrible material that was touching me from head to foot.

Clink, clash, tap-tap. My mind produced a visual of the fork and knife scraping together like he was trying to scrape off food that was probably not even stuck.

The twitching in my eye turned into a beating drum, and a tick started in my shoulder as my body began to succumb to my mind.

I knew he was doing this on purpose. It didn’t make it any easier because this was the way my brain was wired.

A long, high-pitched squeal of the prongs of the fork dragging across his plate was what caused me to snap. I shot up off the bed like I was on fire.

I was. Only, I was the only one who could see and feel the flames.

My skin felt hot, my limbs shook, and the throbbing in my head increased when I stood. The feeling of bugs crawling over the back of my scalp wracked me with a full-body shiver, and I reached up to smack them away.

Only, that crawly, itchy feeling wasn’t bugs. The red staining my fingertips told me it was trickling blood.

I stood there for long moments, a roaring sound between my ears blocking out everything else as I stared at the bright-red blood coating my fingers, making me look like a crime scene.

My eyelid twitched again. A nervous tick forced my head and shoulder together with a jolt.

“Ah, you’re awake,” John McClaren—aka my sperm donor—mused. He tossed the utensils onto the room service plate and picked up a cloth napkin to pat the corners of his mouth.

What a douchebag.

Forcing my eyes away from him, I noted the three men standing around in suits. Two of them were the guys who’d grabbed me at the station and brought me here. They stood against the wall near the TV.

The other was standing closer to the door and was the biggest of the three. His black suit jacket looked like it was hanging on by mere threads around his bulging biceps. His muscle didn’t intimidate me, though. There were far worse things than physical strength.

As if he could read my thoughts, or perhaps he was bothered I wasn’t giving him my undivided attention, McClaren lifted the silver dome that had likely covered his plate and smacked the outside of it with his knife.

The struck metal created a deep, resonant sound. It was like a bell the way it rang the wobbly wow-wow-wow sound sort of like a tidal wave crashing over the room.

Already at max capacity, I slammed my hands over my ears and bent at the waist. Eyes watering, I stared at my feet.

Fight-or-flight erupted like a volcano, and I realized I didn’t have to be here. I was not five. I was not trapped here at this man’s mercy. I was a grown adult with my own life, my own faculties, capable of making independent decisions.

I ran for the door, my eyes fixated on the locks and chain bolted across the frame like they were the only thing in my way.

My feet left the ground as I was wrenched backward, the guy with bulging biceps attempting to use his strength against me. I might not have been as big as him, but I had muscle mass of my own and was extremely motivated to get the hell out.

I twisted and fought, slamming my elbow into his ribs. Breath whooshed out of him with a grunt, and then I slammed my head back into his face. The pain caused black spots to swim before my eyes and what I could see to tilt on its side.

He let me go, and I fell onto the floor on my knees but didn’t stay down, scrambling for the door again.

A hand caught the back of my shirt, a ripping sound filling my ears.

“Nooo!” I wailed.

The brush of air over my back made me sob deep in my throat. This asshole just ripped my shirt. Arsen’s shirt.

I sagged, and the beefy bodyguard tossed me against the wall where my shoulders hit and I slumped. He came forward and grabbed my chin, forcing my face up. “You little fucking shit.”

His nose was bleeding, and it wasn’t from the wound in my head but from a new wound caused when I headbutted him.

My chest was heaving, and his fingers on my chin made my skin crawl. In a burst of movement, I brought up my knee, smashing it into his balls. Stumbling back, he bent at the waist, and I advanced on him, untamed anger rolling through me in a rage I hadn’t felt in so long.

It scared me. It scared me so much because when I got like this, I turned unhinged.

The bodyguard was still clutching his balls, and I sneered. “All those muscles didn’t help your sack, did they? I still managed to drop you in seconds.”

He let out an angry sound and shot up, leaping at me. My fist + his momentum = a punch that knocked him onto the bed.

The other two men who’d been standing there in shock rushed me. I could do some damage to them too, but all I wanted was to get away.

I took off for the door again. This time, there was nothing in my way.

Bang! The sound of the metal dome wow-wow-wowing dropped me to my knees.

“I hate you,” I said through gritted teeth. The inside of my mouth tasted like blood.

Pulling one hand from my ear, I noted the red still smeared on my fingers, a deeper color now because it dried into my skin.

Shivering, I wiped it across my thigh furiously, trying to get the mess off my digits.

The men grabbed me from behind, hauling me onto my feet and spinning so I had to face McClaren.

“Just as volatile as you always were.”

“What do you want?” I asked, the bones beneath my skin vibrating the same way that dome had.

“Me?” he asked, incredulousness in his tone. His eyes were blue, a flat, dull color. I’d gotten my brown eyes from my mother. “I wanted you to remember your place.”

“I don’t have a place with you.” I snarled. Suddenly, I was grateful for it. Grateful he’d disowned me because, seriously, he was the absolute worst.

“Then why are you still in my fucking way?” he roared.

His voice was so loud and so deranged that it silenced the chaos in my head for a fraction of a second. The men holding me by the arms went stiff as though his outburst was a surprise.

“I’m in your way?” I spat. “If I was in your way, then why the fuck did you have to come to me?”

Or, more precisely, bash me in the head and force me to your door.

He struck out, his fist connecting with my jaw. My head few to the side, but I stayed upright because of the men holding me.

Tears blurred my vision, the wound on my head stung, and my face burned. It was all secondary, though, to the noise in my head. To the overlapping trauma, voices, and panic.

“From the moment you were born, you were nothing but a liability. A stain on the family tree. An insult to my name. The only good thing you ever did for me was disappear.”

One of the guys pinning my arm jolted as if the barbs aimed at me hit him too. I felt him stare at me from the side of his eye, but I had no energy for that asshole. I had no energy left at all.

It was like I was four again. Nothing I ever did was good enough, and my mere existence was a burden. My head hung even though I told myself to hold it high. This man’s opinion didn’t matter. His words were only that: words. Words had no meaning unless the person listening assigned a definition.

“I should have drowned you in the pool like I wanted. Held you down and took away the very life I gave you.”

I sucked in a breath, and my head whipped up. “What?”

He sneered. “That’s right. The only reason you’re still alive is because I allowed it! I could have drowned you in the backyard and then played the part of the poor, broken man whose son went swimming when we told him not to and died because he was too stupid to listen. Everyone would have believed it. You were such a foolish child. Completely unruly and defiant. It was your mother who wanted to send you away, and I went along with it.”

The men holding me let go, and my body sagged toward the floor like a limp noodle.

My father planned to kill me.

“This is what I get for showing leniency. Not only are you queer, but you get involved with Andrews’s son and completely ruin my attempts at getting him out of office! Your existence got me blackmailed!” he wailed. “And I had no choice but to comply. Do you have any idea what you’ve cost me? What you’ve cost the state?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, broken.

“Sorry!” He laughed. “You think sorry is good enough? You’re bad! A bad seed.”

“Boss.” Someone in the room admonished him.

I was beyond seeing. The world was just something I was trapped in, something I could no longer actually participate in.

“Your mother is ashamed as well. Refused to even come here and look at you.”

A sob tore into my throat, and a tear slid over my cheek.

“Put him in the closet.”

Adrenaline shot into me so hard that I bolted upright and stumbled back. Pungent fear washed over me, drying my mouth and stealing my breath.

“No,” I rasped, starting to wheeze.

“I don’t think that’s nece?—”

“Who signs your paycheck?” McClaren snapped. “Put him in the closet and keep him there until I decide what I’m gonna do with him.”

Do with me?

“I can’t keep pretending he doesn’t exist because now people know he does.”

I was pushed and fell onto my knees. Another tear dropped from my eyes and hit the floor.

“C’mon, kid,” a gruff voice said, yanking me up.

I fought him, kicking and punching and going wild.

Someone hit me in the back of the head over the wound I already had. The warm rush of blood saturated my hair, and I fell forward again.

They dragged me down the hall, and I stared at the front door. Right beside it was the dark closet. They tossed me in, and I sprang up, but the door slammed in my face.

I started banging on it. “No! Let me out! Let me out!”

I tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge, so I started beating on it again, then threw my entire body into it. The door shuddered and something cracked, but it still held.

“Put that in front of it,” someone ordered.

The sound of a heavy piece of furniture being dragged came closer, and I knew they pushed it against the door.

Frantic, I reached for my phone only to realize the one going off earlier had been mine. They’d thrown it against the wall and broken it. I had no way to call for help.

“Sit in there and think about what you’ve done.” My father’s voice rumbled from the other side of the wood.

Anger so hot burst over me. I dropped onto my hands and knees and vomited. When I was done, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and climbed onto my wobbly feet.

I was so angry I was sick with it. So panicked I could barely stand.

I couldn’t yell. I was done with pleading.

Instead, I pressed my blood-and-puke-stained hand on the door. I spoke quietly, so matter of fact, I gave even myself chills. But they heard. I knew they did.

And I knew they were afraid.

“You better kill me this time, old man. Because the second I get out of here, I’m going to rip out your intestines and use them to strangle you.”