Chapter Nineteen

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“SIR.”

I groaned.

Pain tried to shove me back under, but familiarity forced me awake.

Cal.

Cal was here, and his sarcastic ‘sirs’ had to be reprimanded. There were only so many passes I’d give him. Otherwise, he’d start thinking he could force his opinion on me all the damn time.

“Sir...she’s arrived.”

I battled past the agony that’d become a cloying blanket. I groaned again as I stupidly tried to move. The daggers in my shoulders from being handcuffed, the stabs in my legs from being tied, the thousand metallic bites along my back from the cage, and the feverish infection in my leg.

It all pushed me down, down, down.

She’s arrived...

Fuck!

My eyes shot wide. My lips inhaled a torn breath. Aliveness crippled me as my heart did its best to cleave its way from my chest and charge to wherever she was.

She...

She’s arrived.

Eleanor.

FUCK!

I jack-knifed, clanging my handcuffs against wire, bellowing as my wrists began to bleed all over again from struggling to get free.

For hours, I’d been Drake’s plaything.

All night, he’d kept me in the excruciating role as his own personal guinea pig.

Around dawn, my system had given out, and I’d fallen unconscious. I’d been glad. Thankful to no longer feel the agony of my chest where he’d burned away the top layer of skin with his acid in my Euphoria oil. Grateful to no longer have to smell the stench of the nasal deceptor smeared beneath my nose, replacing my serum with a putrid form of bleach and sewer, making me gag until my ribs threatened to crack, one by one.

I’d managed to survive everything he did to me.

I even bared my teeth and promised him a slow death as a mercenary shoved finger sensors onto my every digit, replacing my flesh-approved adhesive with finishing nails.

As each nail dug into my fingers and more blood dripped, Drake grew drunk on his power over me.

I was his lab rat.

I had better endurance than a mouse.

I had a greater body area than a chimp.

He drove me to my breaking point, all while I saw past his pompous power.

He might laugh as his minions drew my blood and turned me into a grotesque experiment, but his debonair attitude and psychotic glee couldn’t hide the truth blazing bright between us.

When I’d felt it, I’d laughed.

I’d choked on spit and coughed on agony, but I’d laughed because I finally understood why he’d been such a cunt all my life. Why he bound my legs and arms, threw me in a cage, and let others torture me instead of doing it himself. Why he was here, stealing my shit, believing he could take everything I held dear.

Drake Sinclair might be the older brother.

But he was fucking terrified of me.

Afraid of his baby brother, trapped in a cage, and driven to insanity by pain.

I saw it in his eyes as he commanded poison to be poured down my throat that’d made me vomit until my guts churned in absolute misery.

I heard it in his voice as he’d ordered earplugs that’d been soaked in chilli to be driven into my ears, firing agonising pathways into my brain.

And once I saw it, our dynamic changed.

He might be the one in charge. He might kill me before I ever saw the sun again...but thanks to his fear of me, I was the one with all the power. I was the one who would survive because I was the stronger one, the worthy one, the invincible one.

So...I’d clenched my teeth and taken it.

I’d withheld any sound of discomfort until the final experiment.

He’d put the lenses in last.

He’d chuckled as three guards held me down and a fourth placed a tampered lens over my pupil.

I’d howled.

I couldn’t help it.

A harpoon to the leg was nothing, fucking nothing, compared to the convulsive crucifixion of what he’d done to my eyes.

“Like what I’ve done with the formula?” he’d snickered, yelling over the din of my handcuffs clanging, the cage groaning, and my motherfucking howl.

One lens was enough to break my brain, but when his men put in the second, I lost it.

I didn’t remember what I was, where I was, why this was happening.

I couldn’t rub them, remove them, couldn’t cry.

I’d passed out in a body slam of suffering only to blink now and...

See nothing.

Fuck!

“I didn’t hear the boat pull up.” Drake’s voice sounded to my left, slightly raised to combat the rain pounding on the villa roof.

I blinked back blackness.

I strained to see colour, shapes, life.

I couldn’t see a fucking thing.

No light.

No shadows.

No hint of cages or paradise.

Nothing.

I teetered on the precipice of giving in to the horror and the stubbornness of not accepting such a disability.

It can’t be permanent.

I balled my hands, feverish sweat covering me head to toe as a mercenary said, “She must’ve swum ashore. We caught her trying to swim away.” The man’s voice curved with a smug smile. A smile that was visible in my mind. A smile that brought disaster and death right to my stupid, pointless heart. “She’s feisty. Put up a fight but hasn’t said a damn word.”

My mind flooded with images of a girl who’d stood up to me from the very first moment I’d met her. The trafficked slave who’d stared at me like a priceless fucking queen.

Christ, Eleanor!

Run away, Eleanor!

What the fuck are you thinking, Eleanor?

I struggled in my binds, claustrophobic and driven to madness. My eyes burned, remaining as sightless and as useless as the rest of me.

“How do you know she swam ashore?” Drake asked.

“Just a guess, but she’s wet, so I’m guessing she swam from somewhere. Then again, it is pissing down out there.”

“She’s wet, huh?” Drake’s disgusting chuckle made violent rage burn through me.

Fuck him.

Fuck ALL of them.

“So her ride kicked her overboard, or did she jump?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” a mercenary grumbled. “I don’t know the logistics, Sinclair, only that she’s here.”

She was supposed to be safe.

She was supposed to stay away.

She was supposed to fucking run!

A grunt fell from my control, making Drake chuckle as his footsteps came closer. “Hear that, Sullivan? I think we have a visitor.” He rattled the bars of my prison, sending sound waves through my chilli-blocked ears and making my body flinch.

Everything was more intense without sight.

My body scrambled and instincts a mess.

The rustling of his clothing as he squatted by my head made me twitch. I could no longer tense before a blow or prepare for a strike. I couldn’t see what the hell would happen.

He had me at my most vulnerable, and he fucking knew it.

He tapped my cheek, making me recoil and blink agonising blind eyes. “Do you want to say hi, baby brother? Think she’ll find you a fucking turn-on in your current broken condition?”

I bared my teeth. “Touch her and I’ll rip your cock off with my bare hands.”

“Promises, promises.” He patted the top of my head. “Tell you what, I’ll go welcome her. You’re in no fit state for company, and you need your beauty rest.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, ensuring it slithered through my skull and made me snarl. “I’ll be gracious...I promise.”

I struggled in my cuffs and rope, activating bruises and blood, agony and torment. “I’ll give you the goddamn elixir recipe. I’ll sign whatever you want.”

“Maybe later, Sullivan. Right now, I have a date.”

The sound of his shoes was the worst goddamn thing I’d ever heard.

The slam of the door closing was the guillotine on the end of my life.

Eleanor...

Run!