“Master?” she asked, her voice faltering. Please be exposure therapy. Please be exposure therapy. Somehow she knew that wasn't what this was. Lindsay would never do that to her, but she didn't want to face reality just yet. Just another second of denial.
“Nope. Guess again,” Brian said.
How had she gotten here? How could this have happened... again? It wasn't like the last time when he'd dragged her kicking and screaming down to the dungeon and gripped her by the throat, binding her as she'd fought him. This had been a quiet kind of violence. Strangely polite in its execution.
But... how? He'd drugged her, she realized suddenly. When he'd bumped into her...he must have put something into her food or drink. He'd been planning this. But hadn't she known that the day he'd stared at her from across the cafeteria?
She cringed as his fingertips traced over the scars on her back. “Some of my best work,” he said, obviously proud of himself.
She recalled Hunter down in Damian's dungeon telling her he'd just created some of his best work. She was a creation of these men, all these men. She was a creation of Lindsay, and Brian, and Damian, and even Hunter. And before that, the man who had broken her heart and led her to Lindsay's office in the first place. Was there even a single piece left of her that she'd created? Had she ever created a single piece of her own self or her own life or had she always been a pawn and plaything acted upon but never acting for herself? Never making the choice she wanted or taking the risk she needed to take. She'd instead lived as everyone else's background, never the center of her own life.
But were the scars on her back really Brian's work? Lindsay had stitched her up that day. He'd been the one who'd fixed these scars into their final almost meticulous and neatly laid out form. These marks had more of Lindsay in them than Brian.
If they were truly Brian's marks they'd be more chaotic. The sadistic psychopath had left her to die. He hadn't intended for her to survive to have scars in the first place. They only existed because she'd survived him. They existed more because of Lindsay than Brian, and not because the doctor had brought her to the house but because he'd saved her that day.
Brian stroked the back of her throat around her collar as if he even knew how to be gentle with anyone but Mina. Or as if he wanted to.
He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Come on, Shannon, you always knew we'd end up back here. You had to know I needed to finish what we started.”
The tears were already falling, turning into gasping sobs. “Please, Sir. Please. I've never done anything... n-not since that day. Please please.”
“You're right. You've been a very good girl but you have terrible taste in men.”
“I didn't choose him!” she said. Even as she said it, it felt like a betrayal. No, she hadn't chosen to belong to Lindsay. He'd made that choice for both of them, but she'd wanted him. She'd wanted him from the first day she'd seen him.
“The doc has to pay,” Brian said. “He's got to lose something.”
“Please, not me,” she whimpered.
“Sorry, you're the only thing he cares about. So it's got to be you.”
But Brian wasn't sorry. He sounded giddy, gleeful. Like he couldn't wait to rip apart her flesh and leave her a bleeding dying mess. And this time she knew he'd finish the job. He'd make sure he did it right. He wouldn't give Lindsay the opportunity to save her this time.
She started to scream.
72
Lindsay had been looking for Shannon for the past twenty minutes. She was supposed to be waiting for him in his room but she was nowhere to be found. He asked several of the girls until one admitted she'd seen Brian carrying her down to the dungeon a few minutes before. He was so angry he wanted to fucking kill that girl.
Everyone in this house knew Brian wasn't supposed to be left alone with Shannon, and one of these young stupid twits had just watched while Brian had carried her away.
“I will deal with you later,” he snarled. Then he spotted Mina. “Mina!” he shouted. “Come here!”
Mina was not accustomed to following anyone's orders but Brian's. But something in his tone made her rise from the table where she was having dinner and cross the room to him.
“What is it?” she asked, a tinge of fear in her voice underneath the harder exterior she'd developed since she'd returned from Japan years ago. She didn't offer him a title. He didn't care about that one way or the other.
He gripped her arm and dragged her out of the cafeteria, down the hallway and down the stairs. He heard Shannon's screams before they reached the bottom. Lindsay jerked Mina along down the hallway. It was so easy to forget how fragile she truly was... how breakable... how much physically weaker she was than him or Brian.
Being the pet of the house psycho and having so many weapons at her disposal had made her seem superhuman, but she was still so breakably ordinary. Lindsay pounded on the door to Cell A, the one Brian didn't let others use.
“Let her out this instant, or I will snap Mina's neck,” he shouted.
Lindsay could see through the bars of the window. Brian had already struck Shannon a couple of times with the bullwhip. A few thin trickles of blood trailed down her back, but he hadn't really gotten to work on her yet.
Brian didn't bother calling his bluff because he knew Lindsay wasn't bluffing. Brian just smiled that evil soulless black-pit smile.
“If you kill her, I will drag out Shannon's suffering so long she'll beg me to take her life. Is that what you want? You know I have the only key to this cell.”
Shannon sobbed quietly. She seemed unable to even form words at this point.
“Let her go. Your issue is with me, not her,” Lindsay said, his grip on Mina's arm so tight, she whimpered in his grasp. “Quiet,” he hissed at her. All he needed was for Brian to flip out because Mina was crying.
“Maybe you should have thought about that shit a long time ago before you came between me and Mina,” Brian said.
“Oh for fuck's sake. That was years ago. You can't still care about that! I never hurt her!”
“Do you think she would have ever ended up in Japan with that monster if it weren't for your interference? If it weren't for you slithering inside her head so she wanted away from me?”
“That was all you! It was your cruelty that made her want to get away from you, not anything I said or did. Do you think if you kill Shannon, Mina will ever want you to touch her again?”
Brian laughed. “Mina's like me now. She's shut it off. All those inconvenient emotions. It's just me and her in the world now. She doesn't care what the fuck I do.”
Lindsay turned to Mina, studying her face. It wasn't true. There was still something human in her. She hadn't shut it all off. She wavered even now.
“Convince him to stop,” Lindsay whispered to her.
She shook her head furiously. “I-I can't,” she whispered back. “I can't get between him and... what he does. T-there would be consequences. B-bad consequences.”
“You think he would hurt you?” Lindsay asked.
“I don't want to find out.”