Page 133 of Sin Like the Devil

I’m in the swimming pool.

My rapid look around revealed the zip ties securing my wrists to the bottom rung of the pool’s steps. I’m surrounded by discarded furniture and rainwater that pours from the broken windows and ceiling.

Rapidly rising rainwater.

It’s fucking flooding.

That twisted, vindictive man couldn’t just kill me. Oh, no. That would’ve been too easy for the bitch who supposedly threatens his precious family, right? Instead, he’s left me to slowly drown as the pool floods.

Hysteria quickly sets in. It’s human instinct. Inescapable. I scream myself raw and contort my body at every available angle to escape bondage. Muscles burn and protest, but I don’t stop.

Nothing breaks the layers of zip ties fastened around my wrists to form an unbreakable plastic chain. He’s done his homework. I’m completely immobile.

“Fuck you, Nox!” I yell to the emptiness.

Part of me wishes he’d respond. Even to laugh or bait me. Revel in his victory. Anything but the lonely silence he’s condemned me to die in. The lack of humanity is cold, even for Lennox.

By the time my voice gives out, the water has risen a few inches, now up to my thighs. Each flash of lightning reveals its progress. The storm shows no signs of letting up and halting the flood.

Working my wrists back and forth, I’m taken back to that night. The excitement and anticipation I felt as Xander sprawled me out, pinned me down and fastened each limb to his bed frame. All with that predatory gleam in his eye.

It sounds fucked up beyond words. I can admit that in the safety of my own thoughts. But that night, I found a sense of freedom that I’d never had before.

All the money in the world can’t buy the ecstasy of handing your autonomy to someone else. Someone who will leverage it to torture you in the most exquisite way. The pleasure he found through hurting me only intensified the satisfaction.

I shove Xander from my thoughts as I battle against the layers of zip ties. My skin splits and bleeds, but I can’t stop crying. Not when the freezing cold water is slowly creeping up to my waist.

“Please!” I wheeze uselessly. “Someone help me!”

Rumble. Crash.

All I have is God moving furniture and the ghosts of everyone who has damned me to die like this. Even if I didn’t supply the pills swimming in Raine’s system right now, I might as well have.

It didn’t stop me from doing exactly that to so many others and with the same outcome. Harrowdean’s list of victims is lengthy. I’ve contributed my fair share. Perhaps this is what I deserve. I shouldn’t be allowed to go home when they never will.

Villains don’t get happy endings for a reason.

How would the good guys cope if they did?

The tears come thick and fast. Tears for Raine. Rae. Everyone I’ve hurt in order to survive. The other version of Ripley who walked into Priory Lane, deluded enough to think it was her chance to get better. She died like so many others.

Wrists throbbing with each rivulet of blood flowing down my arms, I give up and hang here. Dead weight. Defeated. Powerful Ripley, reduced to a sobbing wreck in an abandoned pool. Without a single soul to miss her.

No one will find me in time.

Not when there’s nothing to miss.

Water tickles my ribcage. The shivering has stopped. I’m numb now. Slowly sinking into the abyss. I won’t even fight it, there’s no point. Maybe Lennox was right. Raine deserves a better friend than me.

He will be better off without me.

Everyone will.

Letting my head loll, I listen to the violent slam of the torrential rain. It becomes rhythmic. Trance-like. Lulling me into a state of detached calm as my body is engulfed by water, inch by inch.

It feels like an eternity has passed when the crunch of broken glass rouses me. Water laps at my clavicles and forearms as I peer around sightlessly, wondering if I’ve finally lost it. I’m probably hearing ghosts now.

Lightning flashes again, illuminating the outline of someone at the pool’s edge. I blink through my crusted, swollen eyes, trying to discern if I’m imagining things in my desperation.

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