Destruction, p.10
Destruction, page 10
“Fuck off.”
“I think you should just enjoy your vacation. Weren’t you and your boys going to go to Vegas?” David rubbed the bottle of rum against his temple, trying to ease the ache, but the pressure was spreading. Making his ribs feel too tight, his heart beating too fast.
This is too soon. Too fucking soon.
“Yeah, we got here yesterday.”
“Sounds like you need to relax, lay off the smokes, and spend time with the family. Go to a strip club or something. You’re all away from the wives.” He was talking on autopilot, barely paying attention as he scrambled to stop the recording in the room and pull it into the software to trim it down, back to when he’d left her.
“This isn’t what your father wanted for you, David.” Harry’s voice was rough after the coughs, but there were no more prolonged inhales. He’d put out the cigarette, which was good for him, and the family he was lucky enough to have.
“To be frank, Harry, you didn’t know my father very well at all.” Grimacing, he turned away from the computer and stared at the ceiling.
“I knew him. I knew him for a long time before you even came along, and I knew him after too. You and Miranda were his life, and—”
“I need to go.” Cutting him off, David sat up straight, feeling the pressure reach a critical point inside.
“David! You need to fucking listen to me, he wouldn’t want this. He tried everything he could to—”
Ending the call, David slammed the phone down on the desk and picked up the rum, swallowing until the burn in his stomach started to match the one in his veins.
Too hot.
Everything was out of control, off-track, off the plan.
Mercier was reaching out to other people when he should be reaching out to him, when he should be breaking down and doing everything he could to get his daughter back… and the only person who could do that was him.
Just him.
Closing his eyes, David waited for the rum to work its magic, turning the boiling heat inside him into a simmer that thrummed through his veins. When the pressure of his ribs started to fade he turned back to the computer and moved the slider to crop the video until he found the moment he walked out of the room.
Staring at her form against the dull gray of the mattress, and the darker gray of the concrete, he clicked and hit play. The heavy metal of the door shutting echoed over the speakers, and then it happened.
Lianna Mercier started crying, almost too softly for the microphones to pick up, but he heard it. The hitches in her breathing, the quiet whines, the sniffles and the clank of metal chain as she tried to turn and wipe her cheeks on her arms.
The pressure was back, pushing at his skin like something wanting to escape, and he hit the space bar hard enough to make the keyboard jerk on the desk. Her body stilled, the sound gone, but he could still hear her crying as he adjusted the slider to the right point and cut the video off.
He was behind schedule, way behind schedule, and Mercier was only making the timeline more important by reaching out for information. Which meant he’d need to make his next deadline that much more explicit in terms of how she would suffer.
Chapter Fourteen
Lianna
The lock on the door made her exhausted muscles tense, but she knew better than to pull on the cuffs now. Bruised and aching, re-tethered on her stomach during his last visit, her wrists and ankles had to be a multi-colored mess under the leather. “Oh, princess, you lucky girl…”
Lianna didn’t speak, didn’t react, it only seemed to entertain him when she begged. He ripped her head back by her hair anyway, straining her neck as she tried to brace her elbows against the floor.
“Still in there, princess? Because we’re not done yet.” A low, dark laugh rumbled behind the mask as he dropped her back to the mattress. She waited for him to hurt her, to bring out some new torment, but instead she felt him working at the cuff on her ankle. “Daddy just sold his controlling shares in Dargen Technologies, and that’s one less way for him to launder money.”
Recognition bloomed inside her at the name. Dargen was a relatively small company. They made hardware. What exactly did they make? She couldn’t remember, but money laundering? Somewhere inside the mess her mind had become she tried to connect dots, but then her other leg was uncuffed and he flipped her effortlessly. Intense eyes stared out from the mask, wild in the excitement of his fresh success.
“Tell me, do you think he’s finally decided you’re important enough to protect?” He brushed her cheek and she turned away from him, refusing to answer as he started to uncuff her hands. Those fingers brushed her arm just below the last cuff. “Or do you think he’s enjoying the videos?”
“He’s going to find me.” The words were rough, her throat too dry, but he’d heard her. A huff of a laugh escaped him, and then she was free from the chains. The man didn’t even try to stop her as she rushed to get away from him, scrambling for the wall to curl up against it while her body rang with reminders of pain and the stiffness of being chained down for so long.
Laughing to himself, he gathered the chains slowly, but Lianna had no doubt as his hungry gaze crawled over her bruised skin that he would take great joy in punishing her, taking her again if her father didn’t jump through whatever hoops he had concocted next. He paused at the door, holding it open like a taunt. “Just one more question. Don’t you think if he could find this place, he would have already come for you?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but he was gone, and she wasn’t sure what to say anyway. As soon as the grinding sound of the lock confirmed he wasn’t coming back, she dragged the mattress into the corner and curled up where it felt safest.
Still a stupid idea.
She wasn’t safe. One thing the man had made very clear was that nothing could protect her. Nothing could stop him. If he wanted her chained, he chained her. If he wanted to touch her, he did. If he wanted her to scream, or beg, or cry, or come — she did.
And he proved it again and again as time passed in fits and bursts. Dragging in his absence, with no clock and no change in the strange lighting to signal it… and then there would be another sandwich. A paper plate of lunch meat. A protein bar. Meals that seemed to come at no set interval, but how was she supposed to tell how many hours passed? How long had she even been in this room? How long had it been since he’d come to the apartment, and taken her?
Days? A week?
A hysterical giggle erupted from her lips and she pulled her legs tighter to her chest on the mattress. If only she really were a princess there might be a prince looking for her instead of a father weighing the return on investment to each fucking decision. Because risk analysis and financial reports weren’t going to help her escape this prison. ROI wasn’t going to do shit for her against a thick, metal door, and there was definitely no negotiating with the villain in this hell.
Her gaze rolled upwards as she wondered if anyone was concerned about her absence, if her friends had even noticed she’d been gone. Maybe if she hadn’t just ditched Denise it was possible, but with the way she worked? With the way her father expected her to? It was likely no one even knew.
And the people who did know clearly weren’t rushing to save her.
It could have been days and days and she wouldn’t know. Was there even a point to time anymore with that neutral, half-light coming from the gray ceiling? Neither morning, nor noon, nor night.
It was nothing.
The room was nothing — and she was dissolving inside it.
David
Staring at the screen, he wasn’t sure how he felt. Good? Bad? Victorious? Corrupt?
All of the above seemed to fit, and not, at the same time. It was a fucking mess, and one thing he was sure of was that he had no idea how to reconcile it. Harry had called, three times in the last day, and he hadn’t answered. At least the man had been smart enough not to leave a voicemail, but the knowledge that Robert Mercier was calling in favors was still eating at him.
Somewhere there was someone who could probably route those videos and emails back to him. It would take time, but would it be enough time to destroy the man before it all came crashing down? That was something David couldn’t answer.
Thinking over the plan used to be comforting. He would outline every piece of it, down to the last detail, and it had felt solid. Perfect. Unbreakable.
Yet, here he was a full day or more behind schedule because Robert Mercier didn’t care enough to save his own fucking daughter.
And you can’t stop fucking her.
Kicking the leg of the table, David stood and paced away from the computer.
There was something undeniably satisfying in hurting Lianna Mercier, in hearing her scream and cry out — but there was also no denying the urge he had to hear her come.
Even when he’d uncuffed her ankles to flip her to her stomach, the entire plan had been to take her ass. To make her scream, to make it hurt, and instead he’d just taken her cunt again. Rubbed her clit, made her come before he’d chained her down once more. It was starting to become a problem.
Belting her again had been impulsive. Reactive. He’d been too close, too gentle. Fuck, he’d treated her like any other girl he might have taken to bed, and Lianna Mercier was not like any other girl. She was the heir to the devil, the man who had taken everything from him, from his family, and he owed it to them and so many others to get their revenge.
No matter how many graves it took.
But when he thought about Lianna in one of those graves, something reacted in him. Something he couldn’t quite describe, but it was twisted up in all of the confusing heat that dealing with the Merciers had caused. But had she been involved? Did she know? There was no more calming ice inside him, no more solid core to lean on, everything was shaky. Everything was melting and breaking down, and that made it hard to think straight.
Picking up the bottle of rum again he was surprised to see it almost half-empty. Hadn’t he just opened it? Ignoring the magic of disappearing rum, he sat down on the cot and picked up the picture he kept on top of the small fridge.
There were promises he’d made. Promises that meant more than the well-being of one spoiled blonde girl who was the heir to Robert Mercier’s corrupt enterprise… right? Staring into the picture he wished he could hear the voices captured there once more, to know for sure if he was correct, or if Harry was the one who was right.
When he leaned back on the wall he could see the monitor with her on it, her pale form huddled in the corner, a shining beacon of pale skin and golden hair.
An angel.
She looked like one, absolutely felt like one, and as he stared at the screen he realized what was really bothering him. The same idea that had come up once before — she had never threatened him. Not with the power of her family, not to kill him, nothing. After everything he’d done to her, after every way he’d hurt her, she had only ever talked about her father finding her.
Saving her. From him.
David’s stomach roiled, acid etching the back of his throat as he stared at her form on the mattress in the corner. Could she actually be innocent? Could she be good? Could the offspring of the devil still be an angel?
A beep came from the computer and he pushed himself up from the cot, carrying the rum with him as he moved towards it to see what it was. Laughing under his breath he sat down hard in the chair and read through the email again.
“Well, look at that, Dad,” he muttered under his breath and tilted the rum up again.
Chapter Fifteen
Lianna
There were fuzzy things in her brain, as if each thought was covered in dust that blurred the ideas and made it difficult to brush clean. Sound filtered into her head and she realized she was humming again, a half-chewed hangnail hung on one finger that she bit off to keep from tearing it to the quick.
I’m losing my mind… she thought, and the pulse of need between her thighs only confirmed it. He was horrible. A nightmare wrapped in a beautiful package, and some twisted part of her craved him. Some tingling place at the base of her spine woke up when she remembered his hands, the belt, the clips, the way he overpowered her when he came for her. Over and over.
That part of her was evil.
She had to fight it.
Swallowing, Lianna leaned forward and picked up the plastic cup, sipping water carefully before she set it back down. One, two, three, five, eight red lights. Eight cameras. Eight like the number of legs on a spider, and this was the web. This room a cocoon of silk he’d wrapped her in so he could devour her slowly. Empty her out. Bit by bit. Destroying her at his leisure until she was a simple husk of herself.
And, worse, she was letting him.
“Stop it,” she whispered to herself, a harsh hiss. Where was the girl who walked into meetings with her head up? Where was the woman who had presented her Bachelor’s thesis to a bunch of smug professors who had doubted her, who had taken one look at her and sneered? The same woman who had then impressed them with her discussion of Titian, and Caravaggio, and Gentileschi? She was still that person.
Even naked and bruised and welted and violated, she was still smart, could still be strong.
The frigid water settled in Lianna’s stomach with a shiver that made her sit up, pressing her spine into the concrete wall. A tiny flicker of strength surfaced in the dimness of her thoughts, the color of Titian red. It brushed across the inside of her mind, called her forward to claim her strength. To be brave. To be unbreakable. To seek vengeance.
She would not be a damsel in distress, a princess waiting for a rescue.
Staring at the door, Lianna thought of her captor. The mask, the hard body, the hard— With a shake of her head, she took a deep breath, and drew strength from some unknown well inside her. She had to act or she was going to dissolve in this cocoon.
“Hey!” she shouted, glancing up at one of the cameras.
Why are you summoning the villain back?
“I want to know what you want! What are you doing? Why do you want my father to sell these companies?” As she rattled off questions, emptying her brain of the twisted cloud of thoughts, the camera lights started to tick off one by one. Her muscles tensed, fear zipping up her spine, but the tingle was there too. A warm, buzzing, hungry sensation in her lower belly.
Stop it. You don’t want him. You just want answers.
No more red eyes staring down, cameras off, but the lights at least stayed on.
It was only a moment later when the grating sound of the metal lock filled the room, and then he was there. No shirt, no gloves, no pants, no shoes. He was in black boxer briefs, molded to him so closely he may as well have left them behind, and — of course — the damnable mask. Every tanned inch of him was power, and she stared as he leaned his head against the doorframe. “You called, princess?”
“What—” She jerked back because there was a warm, rumbling slur to his voice. “What the fuck? Are you drunk?”
“I’m celebrating.” He stepped into the room, a large bottle of some dark liquor in his other hand. The door snapped shut beside him, but he barely twitched.
“Celebrating what?”
“Your father is finally taking me seriously, and I am pruning the tree of his empire branch by branch.” Raising one hand, he mimed scissors cutting through the air. “Snip, snip, snip.”
“What do you mean?”
The man had let his gaze drift to the side, but he looked back at her when she spoke. “I’m taking everything from your family. Just like I promised.”
“Promised who?” she whispered and he walked towards her with slow steps, his bare feet padding across the floor, the muscles in his legs and abs shifting in time with his movements. She fought the urge to run, driving her nails into her palms to stay seated.
No more games.
“You are beautiful.” He stopped close to her and set the bottle down on the floor, lowering into a crouch. “Even more so than you are on TV. I think it’s the fire inside you. You always look like a lifeless doll on television. But… you’re not.”
“Not what?” She dodged his hand as he reached out to touch her cheek.
“A lifeless doll,” he answered flatly. A low laugh rumbled in his chest as he moved and sat on the other end of the thin mattress. “I thought you would be.”
“A doll?”
“Empty. His puppet.” His words made her forehead crease, her brows drawing closer together, but her eyes stayed on the bottle.
Keep him talking.
“Why would I be empty? Why would I be a puppet?”
“Because of him. I don’t know how you exist at all. You shouldn’t exist. You shouldn’t be… you.” He shook his head slowly and shuffled backwards until his shoulders met the wall.
“I don’t understand.” Lianna watched as his eyes closed through the holes in the mask, and she carefully inched forward.
“Of course you don’t, princess. You’re so blind. So innocent.” The words were slurring more, and she reached for the bottle just in front of his feet, her hands closing around the neck of it, still warm from his touch.
“Innocent?” she asked softly, trying not to alert him to her movements as she lifted the bottle silently from the floor and moved to her knees.
“Like an angel, like he stole you from heaven. I don’t know how you’re like this, I never expected you to—” His hand caught her wrist as she swung the bottle hard towards his head, and pain shot up her arm as he twisted his grip sharply. A yelp escaped her as the bottle dropped, undamaged, to the mattress.
Shit.
Tawny brown eyes stared out from the mask, somehow angry even through the watery haze of the alcohol. “Princess,” he growled, and she channeled all of her terror and rage, shouting as she reared back and hit his arm hard, breaking his grip on her wrist.
As soon as she was free, she threw herself backwards, almost tripping over her own feet, but she recovered and rushed for the door. Her hand closed around the handle and ripped it open in a single breath. Brighter light, more concrete, but she didn’t care. She was out of that damn room, out of the web.
