Page 128 of Ruining Vanessa

Slayer grins at that, and I can see that like Damien, he’s aroused by the whole scenario. He passes Damien the key to the cuffs.

Paul’s eyes are wide and he’s trembling and sweating. “Boss, please, I didn’t even take that much, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, I…”

As soon as one of his hands is free, though, he gets up and makes a dash for it. I hear Damien sigh right before he unholsters his gun and shoots Paul in the leg.

The gunshot is loud, reverberating through my bones, and any attempts to keep calm fly out the window.

My sobbing is nothing compared to Paul’s screaming or Traci’s wails.

Damien grabs a collapsed Paul by the collar and drags him back to the center of the room. Blood smears the floor.

“Was that worth it, Paul?” Giulio asks, sounding wildly amused. “Now you’ve got a hole in your leg and you’re still going to lose a finger.”

My legs can’t support me anymore. I start to crumple to the floor, the hammer slipping from my fingers and hitting the floor with a dull thud. Giulio’s strong arms keep me upright, and I whimper.

Damien takes one of Paul’s hands and holds it flat against the floor. He reholsters his gun while Paul flops around, smearing blood all over. Then Damien picks up the drill again and turns it on.

The sound is drowned out under Paul’s screaming and sobbing.

“Just fucking tell him what he wants to know!” Paul shouts, looking directly at me. “Just fucking tell him!”

Slayer has Traci in a harsh grip, the pliers already around one of her front top teeth. She’s crying and struggling against him, but he’s so much larger than her that she can’t do much more than Paul can.

I squeeze my eyes closed, sobbing so hard I can’t even understand my own words, “I don’t know what he wants to know! Giulio! Please stop!”

“I’m sure you do,” Giulio sing-songs in my ear. “But I’ll ask again after round one. I’ve really been blue-balling poor Slayer lately. When’s the last time we really tortured somebody? Even Brad got off lightly.”

“Months,” Slayer says. “Entirely too long. You should let me take Paul to the cabin and work him over properly. He’s been a real pain in my ass lately.”

Traci lets out a muffled sound, not quite a scream, but I don’t dare look to see what’s going on.

“Please, please, Giulio—” Whatever else Paul was about to say, it’s lost in another round of anguished screaming as Damien takes the drill to one of his fingers.

The whirr. The squelch. The knowledge that blood has to be going everywhere, that Damien has to be coated with it.

I want to vomit.

Don’t look.

But when Traci makes another sound, it’s a high-pitched scream, so pained and miserable that I know Slayer’s made good on his role to take one of her teeth.

I can barely handle going to the dentist when they’re gentle, and the mere idea of having one of my teeth pulled out with a pair of pliers by a psychopath like Slayer—who I had just started thinking of in a kinder light!—has me gagging all over again. The smell of blood in the air is so much, too much, and I will myself not to throw up.

The screams die down into sobbing and heaving. The drill shuts off.

I still don’t dare look.

“That was just one tooth! Traci, if you can’t handle that, how’re you going to handle it when we take the rest?” Giulio mocks. “You’ve got another 30 of them, and since Vanessa’s just not interested in telling us why the fuck she’s tripping down stairs…”

But I have. I’ve told him over and over, and I don’t know what I’m missing. I sob, trying to think of what I haven’t said, and I just start babbling the whole story all over again.

“P-please, I told you. I… I went upstairs. Traci cornered me. She… She wanted me to frame Paul… She threatened… She jabbed my chest; I was just trying to… trying to evade…”

Fuck, I can’t stay up, but Giulio just won’t let me fall. I want to curl up on the floor and just make all of this go away, but I can’t. All of this is my fault, because there’s something I’m leaving out, and I don’t even know what it is.

“There we go,” Giulio says, turning me around in his arms. He kisses my lips, gentle despite how cruel he’s being. “Was that so hard?”

I look at him through tear-stained eyes. “What?”

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