Page 32 of Brutal Empire

We were both so fucked-up that we could feed off each other’s energy and have enough hate and self-loathing to last us a lifetime, but in the end, only one of us was going to be left standing.

“What’s the condition?” she asked.

“You’re not allowed to hate me.”

FOURTEEN

I couldn’t sleep.

Moans and grunts could be heard all around us. The whole night, they didn’t die down. If anything, it got worse as drunk men got rowdy and gave in to their lust. Neither Bastian nor I slept anywhere near the bed. Instead, we were on opposite sides of the wall, each of us in a corner, trying to rest.

* * *

“You’re not allowedto hate me.”

That wasn’t going to be an issue. Bastian Kingsley had done nothing to deserve my loathing. On the other hand, Xander Yates had everything to do with my state of mind.

The more that time went on, the more I despised him.

Here I was, broken and scarred, while he looked perfectly poised and fucked his little playthings anytime he wanted. I cried and begged him for mercy until my voice was raw. I tried to pierce his perfect, untarnished skin, and all he did was laugh at me. The one time I bit his skin, he smiled like a demon who had just brokered a deal on a soul, then slapped me until I passed out.

Life was a real bitch.

“Move,” the man next to me yelled.

I whimpered. It would have been easier to walk if they had not thrown a cover over my face. My ears still popped when I swallowed saliva. The last few days had been a nightmare that I didn’t seem to wake from. After I was taken from Justin’s house, I woke up in a room full of other girls. They were in the same state as I had been, all of us with eyes that now knew fear, tears that refused to stop, and a heart that was one beat away from dying.

Honestly, that would have been a mercy.

I was one of the last ones to go. I watched one by one as the girls who were with me disappeared. I saw different guards come and go each time they took one of the girls, and once gone, they never came back. I shook with fear as they came from me. I didn’t remember how to stand on my two feet. Not like it mattered; they dragged me away. It was like I wasn’t even human in their eyes. They took me to a room where there were two other men. One was acting as a guard, and the other one was next to an examination table. Then they instructed me to take off my clothing. It wasn’t like you could have said no. They had guns, and maybe I could have refused and found out what they would do with that bullet, but self-preservation told me that before I saw death, what would happen to me would be worse. Once naked and exposed, they made you lie back on the table, where the man, whom I imagined was a doctor of sorts, proceeded to insert two fingers inside you.

I hissed.

It burned, and the gel he used was cold.

Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes, but I refused to cry out loud. My face still stung from where I had been slapped. I didn’t need them to do it again.

“She’s pure,” he told one of the men who was waiting for me.

That was the only reason they gave me clothing. A pair of white silk panties and a white, long-sleeve dress. After that, they threw me back into a cell—except this time, I was alone.

It wasn’t like the cries stopped. And I quickly figured that the girls who weren’t virgins didn’t have the small luxury as I did now. Different men brought me food and something to drink.

My sense of time was disoriented because I couldn’t remember much more. There had to be elevation because my ears popped only when I was near mountains or on a plane.

Both answers terrified me.

There were no mountains in Chicago.

My breathing began to hitch. How long was I out for? A few hours’ car ride would take me to another state. Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio. These were all possibilities, but then a plane ride…

I wanted to throw up.

The only thing that rose was bile, but I swallowed it down.

A plane ride would take me across the United States.

My arm stung from where the man was gripping me. We stopped, and I noticed we had to be inside a building. The air had stopped blowing on my bare legs.

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