Page 38 of Slaughter

“We wait.” My brother has the patience of a fucking gnat. “Sit back and wait. He’ll either come for her or do his fucking job.”

“And if he comes for her?”

“He won’t get what he wants,” I answer. It’s that fucking simple.

I hang up, done with the conversation, and look back at her sleeping form. I recognize an empty bottle of scotch on her nightstand as the same bottle that was here in my study. I smile. She wandered around tonight. I wanted her to. I wanted her to see that her chance of freeing herself was nonexistent.

I press the buttons on the computer and mumble to myself. “Let’s see what all you did this evening.”

Going back to after our dinner, I see her storm into her bedroom. Her hair a ratted mess and only wearing her tank top. Her nipples are hard. She’s breathing heavy and looks around the room at a loss before heading into the bathroom. She slams it shut as well and locks it. My smile grows. As if that would keep me out. She removes her shirt and starts taking a shower. She falls to her knees and buries her head into her hands and screams. Then she quits. She’s still hunched over, breathing heavy, shielding her face from me. Then she sits up and her hands go to her boobs. My brows lift when they lower. She spreads her legs wider and then her hand disappears between them. She throws her head back, and my cock hardens while I watch her finger fuck herself. Her eyes land on the camera, and she freezes, remembering what I said I’d do to her if she touched herself. Just when I think she’s gonna stop, she smiles up at it and finishes herself off.

I turn off the screen and sit back. This Presleigh has some fire to her. The old Bunny I knew would have never dared to do something that would get her into trouble. She preferred to stay unseen.

CHAPTER NINE

AVERY

Seventeen years old . . .

“I’LL WAIT FOR YOU UP here,” she says, crawling into my bed.

She should go home. The scene downstairs wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. “I may be a while,” I tell her, and my chest tightens when her face pales a little. I kneel by the bed. “We can watch a movie when I get back.”

She nods but stays quiet. I get up, kiss her on the head, and then walk out of my room. Heading back downstairs, I see my brother Vaughn in the hallway, putting his camera back together. He looks up at me and gives me a shit-eating grin, then picks up his equipment. We make our way to my father’s office and enter to find it empty. I go over to the back wall and open the door, entering a narrow passageway. Taking the steps to the bottom, I pause, allowing Vaughn to pass by me. I stare at the tunnel. My brother Vaughn calls it the tunnel to heaven. Tristan and I refer to it as the tunnel to hell.

“Come on, pussy.” I hear him call out with a chuckle.

Straightening my back, I walk through it. Coming to the end, I enter the cellar. It’s lit up like an arena on Friday night. To the left are cages. Each one a prison cell for a girl or boy who caught my father’s eye. To the right are shelves holding instruments of torture.

“About time,” my father announces, getting my attention.

He stands over to the right with Presleigh’s dad on one side of him and my brother on the other. They all stare at me. There’s a girl at his feet on her knees. Her head is tilted back while she stares up at him as though he’s a fucking God. It’s pathetic. How easily they break for him. He brings them in kicking and screaming, and then a month later, they’re nothing but life-size dolls being tossed around however he wants to display them. He takes their souls and devours them. They’re nothing but an empty shell when he’s done with them. What a waste.

“Where is Tristan?” my father demands.

“I saw him earlier with Maria,” my brother answers.

My dad shakes his head. “I’ve told him to leave the maid’s daughter alone. One more year and she’ll bring in a lot of money.”

My father thinks Tristan is in love with Maria. He’s not. He fucked her last year so she could lose her V-card. He was fourteen, and she was thirteen. Virgins are always worth more. Our older brother, Vaughn, had thrown a party, and when I asked why she was drunk, Tristan told me that he told her to drink up. He was gonna take every hole she had. Later on the next day, I just happened to see him walking out of her room while slipping on his shirt. When I asked him if he regretted it, he said not one bit and that I should fuck Bunny before they sold her for her innocence. I just shook my head and said that her father wouldn’t do that. She was off-limits from them and their world. To everyone but me.

“These boys need to stop playing with things that don’t belong to them,” Presleigh’s father adds, and I don’t miss the fact that he’s staring right at me when he says it.

“Come on.” Vaughn gets their attention when he lifts his camera, pointing it down at the girl on her knees.

I enter her room to find her lying in the same position that she was in on the surveillance. But she won’t be for long.

Going to the end of the bed, I reach out and grab the duvet and yank it off her. It falls to the floor at my feet, and she moans, pulling her legs up to her chest while lying on her side. I undo my tie and rip it out from underneath the collar of my button-down and toss it to the floor to join the duvet. Then I undo my cufflinks and roll up my sleeves.

You’re gonna pay for disobeying, Bunny.

I crawl onto the bed and place my hands on her hips, moving her onto her back. Her head stays tilted to the side with her arms up by her head. She’s out. Being drugged and an alcoholic will do that to you.

Placing my hands in the waistband of her black thong, I pull it down her legs and toss them behind me onto the floor as well. Then I place my right hand by her head and lean over her. My left hand skirts up her inner thigh to cup her pussy. She moans softly.

“Avery …”

I smile. “Dreaming of me, Bunny?”

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