Chapter 61: Chapter 61

CASSANDRA BATES

“W-WHAT?”

A pulsating headache threatened to split my head apart as I winced.

I moved my hand…at least tried to anyway because my hand felt numb. Both my hands felt numb and any tiny movement made something rattle against my body.

Prior memories of what happened came to my mind all at once upping the headache even further.

I was crying, damn it after what had happened with Lucia, Kade and Jace, I had ended up like some hobo on the street crying then…then…

My eyes shot open and like someone had knocked my head with a bat, everything came back biting me in the ass.

The unwelcomed light ate my eyes without mercy but that’s not what made my heart pulsate madly in my chest.

It was everything in my surroundings, it was in the way, my hands, my legs…I was tied up!

I was tied up!

What was this place…how…oh God what was…

I sat in the middle of the largest warehouse I’d ever seen and I would have been at ease if there were other thigs in here but no…it was me alone in a creepy place that reeked of bad fish and rotting things.

Squinting my eyes at the door way, there was no missing the dry blood on the floor.

And when I gazed forward expecting to find another metallic wall, a well-set camera stared back at me and I was on the edge of throwing up, crying, screaming, having a full-blown heart attack.

“Any…anyone there? P-please I think you’ve got the wrong woman”

I was trying to sound brave but my voice came out weak and strained. I was trying to tell myself none of this was happening but deep down, I was mentally screaming, I was mentally shaking trying to grasp at straws.

Everything’s alright.

It’s all a fucking nightmare. I was hungry. I was weak. I must have been seeing things.

Yet when I opened my eyes, I was still tied up, metal biting my wrists and my ankles. My heart bleeding with raw fear I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

And when I looked back into the camera, the tears were so close to falling I could taste their salty taste in my mouth.

“P-please don’t do this. Please I haven’t done anything-“

And the tears fell.

And on cue, the psycho behind the camera switched off the lights.

I screamed.

Everything got shrouded in darkness I could hardly see a thing.

Add in the hard pummeling of my heart against my chest and I thought of all the possible ways I was going to die.

Some dipshits kidnapped me and even with the fear clutching my senses to the abyss, I knew they knew me.

I knew I was collateral damage.

I knew they were going to kill me to get to Kade and that realization had my knees buckling in total fright.

An hour, five minutes, two hours?

I didn’t know how long I had stayed in the darkness. All I knew was there were bad men watching me, there were bad men plotting what devious ways they were going to kill me and with every second my voice died in my throat and my resolve to get out of here dimmed.

I hated the darkness.

I was scared of it because in the darkness I felt the sharp stare of my captor lingering on me.

He was here with me, watching me, plotting, wondering just how and what buttons to push to make me go crazy.

And every time I heard him breathe, my body zinged with a new bucket of tears.

Every time I felt him move in the dark, I tried jumping out of my seat.

“Stop! Just stop!”

I screamed, my neck drenched in sweat, my voice lacking its usual strength.

“Please”, my nostrils clogged with snort and tears, my throat ached so bad I thought come a few seconds later, I would pass out.

And damn it, I wanted to pass out.

To be put in misery before the creepy man behind me reached towards me and yanked my very life from my body.

“Don’t come any clo- “

It all happened in a dash, my gasp came out as a startled whimper.

“Feisty”, his voice came out paper-dry and so menacingly grating it was like hot coal was being shoved down my throat.

His hand squeezed my neck and I felt sick every time his fingers dug into my flesh, every time I felt him nearing my trachea, nearing the only thing giving my lungs air.

He sniffed me.

The ridge of his nose gliding against my tear-stained left cheek torturously.

I couldn’t scream. I didn’t have the power and with that realization came the burn behind my eyes, the anxiety, the fear all wrapped as one huge ball about to take me down.

“I can see why they want you. You act just like her. Damn it, you smell like her and if I dig down just a little bit, your body is just like hers”

I’d hoped he was bluffing.

I’d hoped he was playing the whole ‘I’m the villain and I have to intimidate you’ trope but the minute I felt his free hand on my clavicle heading south to my cleavage I knew that this was the real deal.

And with that information, my brain jumped into overdrive, I tried darting from his hold, from the chair but not only did the bastard nearly choke the life out of me, his fist collided with my face, I saw stars.

And in my delirium, in my half-dazed state, I heard my dress getting torn apart.

I heard the sharp tear of fabric getting ripped and I couldn’t do a thing.

I was back to being the little girl who’d been abandoned. The girl who cried on the floor while the world beside her crumbled.

I was back to being a wimp as I felt his filthy fat fingers cup my bra.

I was back to being a sobbing loser even as his hand trudged north up my dress stopping near my panties.

I tried screaming but my body had given up.

And when I thought this was the end, the man pulled away from me, spitting words I couldn’t quite fathom.

“When they are gone, you’ll be mine to keep. You’ll be mine forever and this time you are not going to die”

Silence took the space.

Two seconds later, the lights came on.

My boogeyman had disappeared like a bad dream.

I breathed in taking in what had happened, what would have happened.

Fear trickled from every damn pore in my body, my heart beat with wrath and my tears tried to wash away the memories from a few seconds ago.

Nothing changed though.

I was still scared.

I was still tied up and this time I had been gagged. I didn’t know when he gagged me, I didn’t know when I’d lost reality. I didn’t know how long I had been tied to this chair.

The chair that hurt my back, the chair that restrained any movement and the chains that ate my skin like I was one juicy feast.

Day two, maybe three?

The same man was back, the one who smelled like bad whiskey, cigarettes and reeked of bad cologne.

“Try to move, try anything sweetie and my men will shoot your fucking spine and when you are helpless and about to die, I’ll fuck you all the ways to Sunday, you’ll remember me in hell”, his voice came out hard and this time I couldn’t unhear the age in his voice.

He was almost as old as my father maybe older.

My chains loosened against my legs and arms and I felt his hands trying to lift me up.

I could have fought back but with no food and no water, there was only so much my body could do right now.

He lifted me up, tossing the chair to the side with his foot. My back hit his chest and he took advantage of the situation by wrapping his hands around my waist and keeping me close to him.

“Good girl, Cassandra. I need you to be good for me again and we can put all of this mess behind us, okay?”

He wasn’t asking because even now with the lights on and the sun’s light filtering in, the man had worn a scary Kabuki mask and right by the side of my waist was his gun digging into my skin.

“Now, we wait”, he whispered.

I was so scared. So out of my element the only thing that kept me sane was that my father and his buddies would find me, they would eliminate the man who’d ripped my dignity in half and I would watch as they killed him.

We waited for a whole thirty seconds in that warehouse, standing in the same spot with the camera still in front of us, when creaks of doors opening assaulted our ears.

The door to my right—the only door I thought was in this place opened.

The other door, the one across the room I hadn’t figured was there, opened too.

Two men sprinted inside with Kevlar vests and rifle in their hands.

Kade Hawkins stood gallantly to my right looking like a bull about to commit a massacre of cruel bullfighters.

Jace Asher stood to my left, in black and ready to smear the whole world red.

My throat wobbled, the man behind me snickered.

Both brothers looked at each other like they didn’t expect each other to be present.

“It’s about fucking time, boys!” the man behind me cackled.

“Let her go. You are outnumbered”, Jace grunted, the veins in his neck looking like they were about to pop as he and Kade cornered us.

“Every man you had on guard is fucking dead, I made sure of it so for the last time, let her go!”

“Always with the self-confidence, boy. I should be proud but how can I when you betrayed me?” the man spat acidly.

I trembled in his arms. Who was he? What was going on? What did he-

Jace pointed his rifle at us, at me, his eyes speaking to me words that I didn’t want to believe but believed.

‘I won’t shoot you. I would never hurt you’.

“Don’t shoot”, Kade’s hard voice interrupted before he looked me in the eyes and begged Jace, “Don’t shoot till she’s out of the picture. Please”

“Son of a bitch. You fell in love with her this bad? She’s pretty fuck she’s a goddess but I didn’t think you were this weak. I never thought you would be this weak”

“That’s enough! Here’s how it’s gonna play out you motherfuck—”

Jace got cut off midsentence. The next words being words no one in this very room would unhear.

“I wish you were this brave when I beat your mother every night, Jr. I wish you were brave enough to rescue your mother while she exploded inro a tiny million pieces but you aren’t. you are the same fucking boy who escaped narrowly from death, the same fucking boy who sat in my house, enjoying my bed, my food…hell inheriting all my names when he wasn’t mine to begin with.

You are the same parasite you were then. The same kid I should have killed properly when I had the chance”

Pindrop silence followed before both brothers spoke in unison.

“Lucas?”

“Dad?”

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

See you in the next chapter, hopefully I can update two chapters next week too