Dukes of Ruin: Chapter 30

One day.

It’s after midnight when Sy drops me off, idling at the curb. He watches me enter the tower, blue eyes glaring until the exterior door locks behind me. He’s impatient to go. The phone call from Remy has made him tense and rushed, but not enough to give me an opportunity to make a run for it.

He doesn’t speed off until he’s sure the door has locked.

The climb up the tower takes longer than usual. It’s dark and cold, and I shiver the whole way up, nearly sprinting at the prospect of a hot shower and the feel of Archie in my lap.

Upstairs, the living quarters are empty, and I stand there for a long time, gazing up at the silent clock face. I wonder if it used to whirr. Did the cables make sounds? Did the hands clank when they moved? Did the machinery fill this chamber with life and chaos, only to be replaced with a revolving door of three men who’d do the same?

Nick isn’t here. The knowledge ricochets through me like a bullet in a barrel. There’s nothing holding me here—not anymore. I could take the Archduke and maybe break the lock, run on foot. I could slip underground. I’ve heard there are passageways down there, and even though it’s probably no more than an urban myth, it’s said that they can take someone right out of Forsyth.

I drop the thorn and antler crown on the couch, and after a long stretch of searching, finally spot Archie, curled up in a ball inside a shoe box one of the guys left on the coffee table. It brings me up short, the thought of waking him and ripping him away from the scant comforts that have finally been bestowed on him.

I press a finger to the top of his little head, wondering if Nick would still fulfill his promise if I disappeared. Would he hand the kitten over to one of the girls? Would he keep him here, in this quiet place with its broken machines and heartless inhabitants?

I need a shower more than anything. I can still feel Sy’s come between my legs. It’s no longer warm, but sticky and cool. My cunt hurts from the pounding, my clit rubbed raw. For a flicker of a moment, I could see how good it could be, how good Sy could be, if we stopped fighting one another and he let go of all his insecurities and hatred.

I step into the bathroom and in the garishness of the overhead light; I see what a mess I am. The hem of my skirt is covered in dirt. The leaves around my breasts are now limp and stretched out from Sy yanking the top down. My makeup is smeared. My hair is a tangled nest from the crown and Sy’s hands. The fantasy goddess from earlier in the night is gone. Now I just look like a used-up sorority girl after her walk of shame.

I take my time beneath the spray, even though I should be rushing like Sy had. I should be preparing, grabbing everything of use to me and bolting right down the staircase. Maybe I can’t break the lock, but maybe I can.

For some reason, I just don’t feel the urgency.

One day.

The inescapable march of time has caught up to me, but I don’t feel the impending panic of an uncontrollable fate. In truth, I feel nothing. I’m numb from the surface of my skin to the marrow of my bones, like I’ve become Forsyth’s perverse version of a baseball card that’s been traded too many times, and now I’m faded, creased, worn.

I’m so fucking exhausted.

It’s a curious feeling, the absence of dread that’s made a home in the pit of my chest since Leticia disappeared. It’s not better. It’s not worse. It just is. But it’s a sad realization to have this awareness that I have nothing to really fight for. I remember first walking into this tower and wishing time was like that clock—frozen and still. Impossible. Time will always tick away. But the people within it?

Without even intending to, I’ve become the clock. Inert hands and silent cables. Motionless gears, rusting away inside of dark rooms. A monument that’s been hollowed out and occupied by ugly, twisted things. It was stupid to think I could fix it.

When I step out of the bathroom and see Nick, it’s with a new understanding.

I’m not his pet—not really. I’m a structure he’s laid siege to. I’m a tower of stone and mortar that he’s always been desperate to conquer. He wants my flesh, but he won’t be happy until he’s captured all it contains—until he’s swept the corners and made them his own.

“Where’s Remy, Lavinia?” he asks. He’s leaning against the back of the couch, looking as though he’s just arrived, still wearing his jacket and shoes. His ankles are crossed, hands pressed casually against the couch’s back. There’s an eerie blankness in his eyes that might have startled me a couple weeks ago.

Now, it just makes me feel tired.

Feeling thrown by the question, I say, “What? How should I know?”

He observes me for a long moment, utterly still. “First your sister. Now Remy. Just think it’s weird how people keep disappearing around you.”

“Not enough of them,” I bite back. “Anyway, Sy just got a call from Remy. Talk to him. Or would that mean you’d need to actually communicate with one another for a night?”

His eyes go tight at the corners. “Did you have fun with him?”

I answer, “Not particularly.”

His gaze falls to my shoulders, my chest. I’m in nothing but a towel, hair still wet, and I watch as his eyes follow a drop of water from my jaw to my cleavage. “You looked like you did.” He thumbs the corner of his mouth as he pushes off the couch. “I’m curious. Did you do it because you actually want him? Or was it all about me?”

My lip curls at the way he phrases it. Of course, he’d take a supposed show of rebellion as some kind of declaration. “I did it because I could,” I say, honestly. “I did it because there’s an increasingly small pool of things I can do, and that just so happened to be one of them. The Dukes are at the Duchess’ disposal.”

“Why?” He watches me for a long moment, blue eyes darkened in the dim light of the room. “No one will ever want you as much as I do. No one will ever love you like I do. No one will ever go to bat for you like I have.” It’s only then that I realize how bloodshot and glazed his eyes are. Alcohol, probably, but in this place, who knows? “Why isn’t that enough for you?” He says the words with such bald desperation that it takes me aback.

It’s a pathetic question with a simple answer. I give it to him earnestly. “Because you’re an insidious asshole who embodies every sick thing about this place. Because you claim to love me one moment and then hurt me the next. Because you’ll never see me as a person.” Walking past him toward the stairs to my loft, I scathingly add, “Because you’re you, Nick.”

He grabs me by the arm, jerking me back, and I get a good, long look at the belligerence in his eyes. “I thought about taking you, you know.” When I just stare unblinkingly back, he elaborates, “Back when you were in the motel. I thought about smuggling you out, taking you somewhere remote and just…” His fingers tighten around my arm, pinching the skin. “…ruining you. Making you mine. Proving to Daniel that you were too wild to cage up. Only one thing was stopping me, and it wasn’t him or your dad,” he says, using his other hand to finger at the bite mark his brother left on my shoulder. “It was the possibility I could make you love me back. And I knew I could. Even back then, I saw how dangerous you were. You were beautiful and sexy and forbidden—everything a foot soldier wants. But mostly?” He curls a finger, skating his inked knuckle along my collarbone. “Mostly you were just a sad, hurt, lonely girl.”

I jerk away, nerves flaring. “Shut up.”

Nick follows, his broad shoulders bearing down on me. “You tried so hard to keep up that bitchy front, but I saw the real you. You’re not dangerous because you’re tough. You’re dangerous because you’re not.” He looks down his nose at me, eyes heavy with a sinister satisfaction. “You know it’s true. You’ve been here for more than two weeks. You could have run, but you didn’t. It’s not because of our deal. It’s not because you’re afraid of being found. At the end of the day, you stay in your cage because it’s all you know.”

I shake my head, jaw clenched tightly. “That’s not true.”

“It is,” he insists, and he just keeps coming, that ember in his eyes growing, glowing. “It’s where you’re most comfortable. You might not excel at anything else, but this?” His laugh is somehow both soft and harsh. “You’re so good at being someone’s bitch.”

I strike out before I even realize my fist is flying up, knuckles slamming into the sharp ridge of his jaw. The pain explodes in my thumb first, and then radiates up into my arm, but it’s worth it to see his head jerk to the side.

Even if he looks unfazed.

The flame inside of me—the one I thought I’d lost in the shower—bursts to life, and drives my fist back toward his face. It’s a toxic thing, the urge to hit and scream and wound, and I don’t care. I embrace it, barreling forward, and it feels endless, like I could destroy anything in my path with the heat of it.

But Nick catches my wrist before it makes contact, wrenching me into his body. His arms lock around my middle as I wrestle against it, teeth bared in fury as I shove at his chest, trying desperately to injure.

I can’t hurt Nick, though.

Not physically.

“I’ll never love you!” I snarl, hoping it cuts like razor blades. “Never! I’d rather die in that fucking elevator than be with you. I’d rather be with Perez!”

There’s an ominous silence above me, and it’s nearly a relief that he’s finally going to do it. I’m ready, I think. Ready for the darkness and the suffocation. Ready for the panic. A small part of me worries that Nick is right. Maybe the only way I can feel comfortable anymore is within the small, malignant spaces I’ve grown used to.

I brace myself for it, feeling the elevator doors behind us like a tangible, looming presence.

Nick’s chest expands with a hard inhale. “Then I guess there’s nothing stopping me anymore.”

Before I can wonder what that means, he’s tightening his grip on me, lifting me off my feet. Instead of carrying me to the elevator, however, he drags me into his bedroom.

And then he pushes me back onto the bed, yanking my towel off as I fall.

Then it comes to me.

I thought about taking you…

Ruining you…

Making you mine…

Only one thing was stopping me…

The possibility I could make you love me back…

I watch him tear his shirt over his head, and his eyes hold none of the anger or misery I’d seen before. They’re a bottomless pit of black desperation, pinning me with a sharpness that makes my stomach flop uneasily.

I scurry back, away from him, saying, “No.”

“Yes.” He reaches out lightning-quick, those blue eyes searing as he snatches my ankles and yanks me down the bed. I strike out with my fists again, struggling to break my feet free, but he’s already got something wound around one of my ankles. A cord—attached to the frame beneath the mattress. I realize too late that he’s planned this, probably when I was in the shower. Maybe even earlier. I’m too slow to stop him from tethering the other ankle, his movements nimble and swift.

He’s on me in a flash, pinioning me to the mattress with his hard body. One of his hands captures my wrists while his other winds a third cord around them, tying them off with an aggressive jerk. “Go ahead and fight,” he says, voice eerily calm as he reaches down to palm my breast. “I always imagined this would be fast and hard. If you need it to hurt, that’s fine with me.” He rolls my nipple between forefinger and thumb.

I grunt with my struggle, ankles stinging from the tight stricture of the binds. His mouth brands my neck with a wet, open-mouthed kiss as his palm skates over my ribs, dipping between my legs. My pulse quickens into the same panic I felt that night at the Hideaway.

I could plead.

I could beg him not to do this.

I could scream.

And no one would hear me.

He pushes his fingers through my folds, prodding and invading, and then he forces a finger into me, pausing so briefly that I barely register it as a falter. “I knew you were just acting,” he says, nipping over the sore bruise on my shoulder—the one his brother had made. “He wouldn’t know what to do with one, even if you were throwing it at him like a slut. Did he even make you wet?”

“Yes. He also made me come,” I sneer and buck up against him in an attempt to throw him off. “Everyone saw it.” All it does is sink his finger deeper. He makes a gruff sound, licking downward toward my breast.

“No one could ever fuck you as well as I could, Little Bird.” He glances up at me through angry brows and thick eyelashes. “I might share it, but this pussy belongs to me.”

“Don’t,” I say, voice low and warning as he forces another painful finger inside.

My sharp wince just makes him glare back. “Your chance to have a say in this went out the door when you broke our deal.” Shoulders tensing, he slams his fingers into me, making me cry out in pain. Surging up, he snarls into my face, “When you kissed my brother!”

“Fuck!” I howl, the heel of his palm banging into my clit as he violently fucks his fingers into me.

“You’re going to open for me,” he seethes through clenched teeth. “You’re going to take every fucking drop of my cum into this cunt you think so highly of.” He grunts with the force he uses to batter his fingers into me and I know now that this is a punishment for me just as much as it’s a gratification for him.

“It hurts,” I keen, still sore from Sy.

“Good,” he growls, slapping against me once more and then crushing his palm to me, fingers trapped inside my body. “You hurt me, I hurt you. How’s that for a negotiation?”

It’s painful when he rips his fingers out of me, but then he’s crawling down my body and replacing them with his tongue. His hands shove my thighs apart and it pulls excruciatingly against my ankles, but it’s hard to think of anything but the blazing point of his mouth, devouring me.

That’s exactly what it is; the frenzied, overwhelming pursuit of someone who wants to consume. I clench against the sensation of it, but he makes a rough, irritated sound and wrenches my knees up, making my toes prickle with the loss of circulation.

He pulls back to peer at my hole, lips pursed tight as his cheeks shift.

And then he pitches forward and spits on me, right against my entrance.

My chest heaves up and down as Nick’s fingers return, pushing his saliva inside, making me slick. Without the sting and stretch, I can feel myself responding to it on an involuntary level. It begins as an ache, deep within the pit of my belly, and it doesn’t lessen any when his tongue flicks out to toy with my clit. There’s a moment where I sink into it without meaning or wanting to. Nick eats pussy just like he kisses, so full of tongue and intensity that there isn’t room for thought.

I know he can tell when the wetness slicking his fingers becomes less of him and more of me, because he begins frantically clawing at the button to his jeans with his other hand, shucking them down his hips sightlessly, lips still sucking wet kisses against my clit.

Then he dives down to lick between his digits, entering me with the eager tip of his tongue. He groans and takes his fingers away to make room, shoving his tongue as deep inside as he can.

My breath hitches painfully when he rears up, leaving my clit a throbbing mess of need.

I know I’ve lost when he notices the writhe of my hips, a viciousness falling over his features as he licks the taste of me from his lips. “The time for requests is over,” he says, pulling his cock free. “But maybe if you’re a good girl, I’ll let you come on my dick.”

I twist my wrists against the binds, feeling it pinch and chafe, but the knot is too secure. Frustrated, I rear up to sneer at him. “This is the only way you can get it from me,” I say, panting from the struggle. “How does it feel to know you’re so revolting, you have to tie me up and hold me down just to get your dick into me?”

Bending, he braces himself above me, fisting his cock against my entrance. There’s a moment where he just…watches me, as if he’s giving my question the consideration it deserves. The tattoo beside his eye twitches when his gaze narrows into a scowl. “It’ll do.”

He slams forward, forcefully plunging the entire length of his cock into me.

I throw my head back, crying out at the sudden intrusion, back arched as if I could get away from it. The noise that punches from his chest is animalistic and he fists a hand in my hair before driving his hips impossibly closer.

The stretch burns, but it’s the sudden sense of fullness that takes my breath away. My body feels crowded and too tight, invaded and altered, and Nick’s mouth is resting against my jaw, teeth dragging against the bone.

“God, you’re so fucking tight,” he grits out, and when he eases his hips back—the drag of his cock tearing a sob from my chest—it’s only to slam right back into the cradle of my thighs, rocking every bone in my rigid body. “Won’t be like last time,” he pants, snapping forward again. “Gonna fuck you open until this pussy remembers me.” The last words are growled into the skin of my throat and all I can see are the shifting muscles in his back as he surges into me like a hostile wave.

I clench against the pain of the violation, but it just makes him grunt, spurring him to push harder, deeper. This isn’t sex. It’s a fight our bodies are having. It’s aggression and refusal, and the most awful part about it—the absolute fucking worst—is that my body is losing.

And it doesn’t care.

“Fuck,” he spits, lips dragging over the swell of my cheek. “Feel how wet you’re getting for me? You say you don’t want me, but look at you, trying so hard to hide the truth.”

He’s talking about the clench of my teeth, the stiff set of my thighs, the way my eyes are squinched, refusing to see all the raw power in his movements. “It’s a lie,” I bite out.

His fingers dig into my chin, forcing me to face his vehement gaze. “This is the only goddamn thing that isn’t a lie, Lavinia. When are you going to get it?!” The words are spoken in a harsh tone, but the way he tips his forehead against mine is perversely gentle. His hips roll against mine, sending wild zings through my clit. “I fucking love you. You’re it for me.”

I can’t explain the feeling that swells in the back of my throat like a boulder. It makes my vision swim with tears. It brings a tremble to my chin. It steals the breath from my lungs and hides it away somewhere inaccessible. “You don’t know how to love, Nick.” Even if he were being honest—even if this is the only love he’s capable of feeling—it’s corrupted and gnarled, and what I’m feeling must be heartbreak.

Because this is the closest I’ll ever get to being loved. It comes to me in a certainty that makes the tears spill over, running down my temples in lazy rivulets. This is all I’ll get. And for a moment, I can almost understand why Nick expected my gratitude. Out of everything in this town—my family, the girls at the Hideaway, the other Royals—Nick’s the best there is for me.

“You’re wrong,” he insists, lips moving against mine as he fucks into me. “I know how to love better than anyone else in this town. Tell me you don’t feel it.” His lips pinch my own, tender but demanding.

I lay perfectly still, voice bland. “I don’t feel anything.”

“That’s the lie,” he says, levering himself up to watch my face. He reaches up to thumb a tear from the corner of my eye, twisting his hips. “Your pussy is so soaked for me, Little Bird. You’re trying to push me out because you’ve already let me in.” He tilts his head, kissing me, and it galls me to know he’s right. I can’t control the writhe of my hips or the curl of my toes. I can’t stop the liquid-hot shot of lust that’s settled into the pit of my stomach. I’m powerless to deny the throb between my legs, the instinct to meet him—to take from him.

My heels dig into the mattress as I lift my hips into him, driving his dick deeper. His mouth parts with a gasp and I use the distraction to jerk up, clamping my teeth over his bottom lip and piercing into soft flesh. Blood pools into my mouth and Nick lets out a loud, pained hiss.

But he doesn’t stop.

His eyes roll back into his head and he punches forward, a long, gruff groan erupting from his throat. He clamps a hand over my tit but doesn’t try to pry my teeth from his lip. He takes it, tongue licking out to run over one of my blood-stained incisors.

I finally give, wrenching my face to the side with a disgusted grunt. “Fuck!” His blood is bitter and tangy in my mouth, and maybe I’d spit it out if Nick weren’t there to push it back between my lips with the artful twist of his tongue. He invades my mouth as he fucks me, harder and deeper, his fist tugging sharply at the crown of my hair.

It quickly becomes apparent that my body has fallen prey to the charade. It doesn’t care that Nick’s love is a fake, perverted thing. It feels the way he’s crashing into me—these hard, ruthless jabs of his hips—and it sees the way he looks, some unholy marriage of desperation and resentment, and all it wants is release.

“Don’t fight it,” he growls, smearing his blood across my chin. “I can feel how bad your pussy wants it. Let it go. Give it to me.”

I thrash my head to the side and battle to push back the storm building between my legs. “No.”

He answers by wedging an arm between our bodies, his fingers finding my swollen clit. His voice emerges in a strained snarl. “I’ll fuck this cunt all night if that’s what it takes, but you’re going to come for me.” When I wrench my head to the other side in a sorry attempt at escape, he just presses his bloody lips to my ear. “I want you to feel what it’s like to be owned.”

I gnash my teeth against the rising tide, his fingers working tight, torturous circles into my clit. His dick pounds into me relentlessly, and there’s no escape from it. Every nerve in my body has been distilled down to the point of his touch, shooting right to my center.

The orgasm gets ripped out of me like a tangled vine of roots, so piercing and abrupt that I lose control of my body, seizing forcefully beneath him—around him. My mouth opens in a strained scream and I can feel him watching me even if I can’t see it, my eyes clenched tightly shut against the explosion of aching pleasure.

The sound he releases seems torn from his stomach—a deep, guttural groan that drags across my skin like sandpaper as the warmth of his release begins filling me.

“That’s right,” he grunts, following me with every turn of my head. “Every drop, Little Bird.” He thrusts hard, cock jerking inside of me. His shoulders heave with the force of it, and I see him for what he is. A pulsing mass of muscle and ink, hardness and softness, obsession and contempt. Nick orgasms as if it’s a weapon he’s inflicting on me. I doubt he even lets himself enjoy it, he’s so busy forcing me to feel his pleasure, emptying himself into me like it’s the most vital part of the act.

And he just keeps going.

And going.

I can feel him deep inside, his cock pulsating as his cum rushes in. Nick does exactly as he promises, pinning me with blazing eyes as he wrings every drop into my hole, shoved as deep as he can go.

When it finally ends—when he finally lets out one last sharp grunt and tears himself out of my body—I find that I’ve lost control of everything.

A deep, pitiful sob erupts from my throat. I think it’s been hiding there since that night in the basement—maybe even sooner than that. Maybe this sickness has been lurking dormant inside me since my father put me in that chest. Maybe I’ve been carrying it around with me like a lead weight, slowed by gravity and my own inability to carry it.

Maybe Nick’s right.

Maybe I’m just weak.

My body strains with the release of it, chest constricted around an awful wail. I try to stave it off, wrestle it back, but it claws free, rending the air with loud, wracking sobs. Some part of me is so eager to let it go, to finally be free of its weight in my chest.

I cry.

I cry for my body, sore and discarded. I cry for the two years I’ve lost, trapped and helpless—and yes, Nick was right—sad, lonely, and hurt. I cry because I might be strong, but even steel bends under enough pressure. I cry for my mother, and for some reason, I cry for Leticia, too. For the fact that one thing bonds the three of us, and it’s something as terrible as this: To belong to a Kingdom we never wanted, to be used, to be Royal.

It feels like I cry for hours, purging the grief from my system in gulps of air and deep, wet sobs, and maybe it was better that I never let myself expunge it, because now tucking it all back into myself feels like an impossible feat.

In the end, I’m just too exhausted to keep it up.

The cries fade out into hitched breaths, slow sniffles, and aching eyes. I don’t feel my body anymore, just the tempting tug of oblivion dragging me under, covering me in its cold embrace.

The last thing I see before succumbing to sleep is Nick.

He’s standing beside the bed, a shoulder propped against the wall. He’s pulled his boxers on and his arms are crossed, the one solid-black forearm flexing and unflexing in some incomprehensible rhythm. He never unties me. He just stares out the window with this look on his face. Creeping.

He doesn’t look happy. He doesn’t look angry. He doesn’t even look desperate anymore.

He doesn’t look at me at all.

The first thought that comes to me when I wake is that I haven’t slept nearly long enough. My eyes feel crusty and sore. But then, everything feels sore. My wrists, my ankles, my cunt. All of them throb and twinge.

It isn’t until I turn, tucking a hand beneath my cheek, that I realize Nick’s untied me.

I blink my eyes open to a pitch black room, and it’s just like the other night when he put that tracker in me. Nick is standing at the end of his bed, fully dressed. Watching. Waiting.

But this time, he speaks. “Get up.” There’s no inflection to it—no clue as to what new hell awaits me—but it lacks bite. Perfectly flat. His silhouette shifts, and then something soft and cool lands against my side. Remy’s hoodie. A pair of pants. Underwear. Socks. “Meet me out there in ten.”

He turns and exits the room, and it all comes crashing back to me. The sex. The hurt. The invasion.

His cum is dried on my thigh.

I follow his orders mechanically, as if I’ve lost the will to ask questions or feel concern. My brain runs on autopilot because I’m thinking… anything that means leaving the malice of this bed must be worth it. The sheets are stained with our fluids; blood, semen, tears, saliva. I can’t get away from it fast enough.

Walking hurts and I get this feeling that my sore ankles are holding me up because it’s all they know how to do. They allow me to step into the panties, and then the pants. My wrists concede to the hoodie, letting me slip my arms into the sleeves. My muscles protest, but I put my head through it, feeling soiled and broken and confused.

Nick’s waiting by the door to the stairwell when I emerge, holding my shoes in his hand. He’s wearing his jacket and his boots, and a set of keys hangs limply from his hand. “Come.”

I’d ask him where we’re going, but I find that I don’t care. I put on my shoes and follow him like a wraith, slow and trudging as we drop, step by step, down the tower. The descent must hurt—must be fucking agony—but I’m numb to it, my footfalls heavy and labored, but even and dogged.

Maybe he’s going to kill me.

We reach the bottom before I’m expecting to, and I find myself feeling a nudge of surprise, wondering where I’ve just been. Trapped in my head, bound by my thoughts. But when he pushes the door open, it’s all wiped away. It’s still night, or more like early morning. There’s something I should be worrying about, but I can’t touch it in my mind. Nothing feels urgent anymore. I just walk with Nick to the SUV and climb into the passenger seat without having to be asked.

The drive is silent but void of the tension I’m used to. Nick keeps one hand draped over the steering wheel and the other against the center console, unmoving. Occasionally we pass by streetlights that flash over the sharp angles of his face, but mostly he’s just a shadow, inert and looming.

I watch the West End pass by, distracting myself with the shape of it. It’s different here at night: quieter, emptier, darker. It’s as if somewhere between leaving Sy and waking up, the whole world has ended, everyone zapped from existence.

Finally, I speak, my voice harsh as gravel. “Are we going to find Remy? Did you hear from Sy?”

His eyes never leave the road, but the back muscle of his jaw pulses with a tic. He doesn’t answer me, but swings the SUV into the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. The headlights burst against the aged metal in front of us, nearly blinding my still hazy eyes. For some reason, my eyes stick to this tattoo on Nick’s elbow as he shuts off the car. The design is a circle—red rays of sun, expanding outward. It reminds me of Remy’s Lady of Sorrows, all those points stabbing inward.

If I had the motivation, I’d count the points on my star.

Maybe this is all a dream.

Nick gets out first and I follow him automatically, only distantly concerned about why he’d bring me to an abandoned warehouse at four in the morning. I can’t shake this feeling, as if he couldn’t do any worse to me than he has.

I know the second we walk through the rusted doors that I’m wrong.

“No.” I take two steps back on instinct, but Nick’s there behind me, pushing me forward. “No, no, no…” This isn’t a dream. It’s a goddamn nightmare.

Fifty feet away stands my father and Perez, waiting.

The air leaves my lungs in a painful squeeze of panic and I whirl around, gazing wide-eyed into blue eyes. “You gave me up?” My voice is rusty and torn, and it’s his fault. As if that wasn’t enough. As if he hadn’t broken me to a satisfying degree…

He’s staring straight ahead, dead-eyed and motionless. “It’s what you wanted.”

My breath comes quicker because I can feel him. I can feel my father, so close and malignant, and I can hear him crisp and clear when he speaks.

“Don’t make a fuss, Lavinia.”

I flinch at the sound, years of memories rushing back to me like a freight train of hurt and fury. “Nick…” I fist my hand in his shirt, and I’m not proud of the way my voice cracks, but I can’t seem to care. I feel every bit of color leave my face. “Don’t make me go with them.”

He says nothing.

I’ve sunk to a lot of deep places in my life, but none so deep as the one I lower myself to when I ask this, “Please? I’ll be better.” The crest of his lip twitches in a ghost of a sneer and I fist his shirt, completely lost to any sense of shame when I spring up on my toes to kiss him.

He turns his head away.

My lips stutter over a stubble-rough jaw, close enough for me to see that there’s nothing in his eyes anymore. No anger or want or frustration. I used to think being under the weight of his oppressive pining was the worst of Nick. His cockiness, his demanding nature, his need to dominate… they all rankle, but none so much as how gravely he wants me.

Only now I know better.

This is the worst of Nick. His aloof posture, the curve of arrogance in his brow, the complete disregard. It was bad when he wanted me, and it’s petrifying now that he doesn’t.

I fall to my knees. “Please. Please, Nick?” That boulder returns to my throat, making my eyes water as I begin fumbling for the buttons on his jeans. “I’ll—I’ll be good for you. I’ll make you feel good, sleep in your bed, give you whatever you want. I’ll let you love me, I’ll—”

He wrenches himself away from me, leaving me there on the cold cement floor, and all I can do is stare up at him like a wretched, discarded plaything. Pretty Nick’s broken toy, debasing myself in front of our enemies. Trash, just like everyone has always said of me.

He stares back at me with those cold, fathomless eyes, and inexplicably, I think of that moment in the gym. Standing under the heat of the spotlight. Looking out over a crowd of ruthless men and feeling a kinship I had no right to. The tears spring up, but they don’t spill over. I take them into myself, tucking them back into their dark places, filling my crevices with the misery of them. A few days ago, I spent the evening with one of Remy’s philosophy textbooks, finding myself engrossed in a passage. It posited that the absence of time is the absence of life, and I spent hours staring up into the cables and gears, wondering if it could be fixed.

“You’ve killed me,” I tell him, voice just as numb as Nick looks. “You might not have the guts to do it yourself, but it doesn’t make it any less true.” I believe the words just as firmly as I say them, and I stand, refusing to take this fate on my knees like a weak little bitch.

I turn to face my father.

Somewhere in Forsyth, a clock is ticking.

But not for me.