Page 9 of Brutal Empire

So, yes, you could say I was a dumb fuck. My head was so far up my ass I couldn’t see the light of day.

She didn’t smile, but her top lip curled a bit. She was like a shark who could smell fear.

“Do you value your life?” She cocked her head as she asked me this.

I stayed quiet because this was not going to get us anywhere.

“I don’t think you do. You are asking too many questions around here, making people nervous…” Something made her still for a second, but it was brief. She then began to walk my way. “Bastian Kingsley. heir to the Kingsley empire, tycoon royalty…” She stopped talking and circled my chair. How could someone so short and pretty be intimidating? “Once engaged to Katia Von Ives.”

She knew what that name did to me. She said it on purpose, and her tone raised a few octaves, allowing me to make out her accent. It was faint, like she was trying to mask it, but it was there.

I was about to taunt her back. Maybe say how I had not been to Russia in a while, when the wall she had been staring at turned out not to be a wall. It came alive with light—it had been a two-way mirror all along.

She held on to my face and forced me to watch ahead. It took me a second, but I saw it. There were cameras around the room, and one lone man was standing. He was wearing all black. He had on a long trench coat, but the creepiest shit was the beaked leather mask on his face. My heart accelerated, and fear as I had never felt before began to spread through me.

I could already tell this would be another new experience to which I would have to become desensitized.

“The bed, Bastian,” the woman commanded.

Fuck.

I heard the loud clank the chair made as I tried to move. I had forgotten that I was tied to it. All I could think about was running to save Katia.

She was alive.

She looked nothing like she had before she went missing. She was skin and bones and a broken soul.

I was about to speak, but the woman put her hand over my mouth.

“Watching her die is the only way you will learn,” the pale bitch said as a voice could be heard from the other side of the wall.

“Showtime.”

FOUR

Location: Sweden

As soon as Daphne left,the lights turned off. It was me and the darkness once more, but this time, I was less afraid than before. Was I going to continue to feel sorry for myself? To feel like a fraud. Or was I willing to do something about it?

What is the point of saying we’d changed if, at every moment that it gets hard, we revert to our old ways? That was not who I wanted to be anymore.

Daphne was like me. She was just like me, and I found comfort in that. If she could survive and carry those demons imprinted on us, so could I.

I wasn’t weak anymore.

I pulled and twisted the ropes so that I could loosen them. The burning in my wrists was no longer hurtful; instead, I let the sting fuel my pain. It mixed with the inferno that had awakened within me.

I did not have to let a tragedy dictate the rest of my life. I was still here—still breathing, heart still beating, and I was going to make it so it stayed that way.

With each burn from the rope,hispresence was dwindling. All his taunts added gasoline to my fire. I was not going to let him win.

I was not broken.

Are you sure, pet?

I would never be helpless again.

I no longer wanted to be weak.

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