Walsh makes his way over to my cage, a place he promptly forced me back into after I was finished following his sick demands. His eyes find mine, his lips curve up into a devious evil fucking smile and he lets out a chuckle.
“You had more fun than I expected,” he announces coolly.
“Fuck off,” I grind out.
He shakes his head once. “This was an experiment.”
“Experiment?” I ask.
He snorts. “Yeah, I wanted to see if you’d do everything I wanted you to, on demand, without the use of little blue pills. Seems you’re just as depraved as I am, Orson.”
Choices.
I felt as though my choices were taken from me, but were they? Sure, he hurt the girl when I didn’t perform his demanded task, but my dick still got hard. I still did what he wanted, the way he wanted it.
Maybe I am just as sick as he is?
Fuck.
We both freeze, our heads whipping to the side at the sound of footsteps walking down the concrete steps. One of Walsh’s goons is already standing silently against the wall, an almost frozen fixture to the room.
The second goon appears in the room, clearing his throat. He doesn’t even chance a glance over to the still-frozen naked woman on the middle of the bed.
“We have a visitor, sir,” he announces.
“How? Nobody knows I even own this house,” he growls. “And I haven’t even sent the official invitation to my group. Who the fuck is here?”
The goon’s gaze flicks from Walsh to me, then back to Walsh. “It’s her.”
“Her?” he grunts. “I’m not ready for her. She is not supposed to come to me,” he barks, and I expect him to stomp his foot, but he doesn’t.
His face turns an odd shade of red and then the color starts to shift a deep purple color as his entire body trembles with anger. Knowing exactly who she is, I press my lips in a straight line, and wonder what in the actual fuck she’s doing here.
“Strip her and bring her in here. I want her naked and on her knees at my feet,” he growls.
Chapter Twenty-Three
AVAH
I didn’t expect the house to look so… normal. I expected the place that held evil, to look exactly like it housed some disgusting and vile fucker. Black and bloodred décor and paint on the exterior, a wrought-iron gate, a gargoyle guarding the entrance. It looks nothing like that, in fact, it looks exactly like suburbia.
There is a wrought-iron gate around the property, but there are no gargoyles, and it’s a brown stucco with some decorative rocks on the elevation. Reaching for the intercom, a man grunts into the speaker.
“I’m here for the senator,” I announce.
There’s a moment of silence, then the gate begins to squeak open. I don’t look around, I don’t have to. I know that the men are somewhere out there, watching me. I also know that they will be able to have eyes on this place. As soon as I put the small device that’s in my hand in the room where Hawk is located.
Squaring my shoulder, I walk through the gate. I will not be nervous, I refuse to show any kind of weakness even though I am completely terrified of what is to come.
I halfway expect a husband, wife, two children, and a dog to come running out of the front door as soon as it opens, that’s just how suburbia this place is. It doesn’t happen though. What does happen is one of Walsh’s men appears. He glances down at me, shakes his head once, then wraps his meaty grip around my bicep and tugs me behind him.
My feet stumble, but I don’t fall, mainly because his grasp is so damn tight. I also don’t say a fucking word to him, absolutely nothing. Biting the inside of my cheek, I grip the device in my hand, hoping that I’ll be able to place it somewhere useful.
“Stay,” he growls as he pushes me inside of a coat closet, like I can go anywhere.
My breathing starts to come out in pants as sweat starts to gather between my breasts and at the small of my back. I don’t know if my vision is blurring, or if the room is just really that dark.
Visions of my past, of my father locking me in closets for hours, sometimes forgetting about me and it being days, come back with vengeance. I thought I was over it, over this. I thought that I had moved on from my past, but clearly, I have not.
I whimper as my legs give out beneath me. I keep repeating a mantra to myself so that I don’t completely lose my shit. Over and over, I remind myself that I am here for a reason. I am here to save possibly dozens, if not more, women. I am here to save Hawk. I am doing this to make a difference, to have my life matter, something that I never truly thought it would ever do.
It feels like a lifetime passes until the door is wrenched open. Lifting my face, I look up into the guard’s eyes. He doesn’t show an ounce of surprise at my deteriorated state. Instead, he grunts and jerks his head.
Standing on shaky legs, I’ve lost all of my bravado. I feel like all of the hard work that I did mentally preparing myself is completely gone, it’s gone out of the window now. I’m fucking broken and all it took was locking me in a closet for probably ten minutes that felt like ten days.
“Strip,” he barks. Tilting my head back, I blink up at him. “Now,” he growls.
He doesn’t have to demand it twice. With my device firmly in my grip, I try to make it look effortless and I strip out of my clothes. He doesn’t say anything as I ball both of my hands into fists and hold them to my sides, my clothes in a messy pile
