Page 89 of Cherry Auction

“No, don’t!” you scream, but he’s dragging you downstairs to his dungeon. He throws you on the floor while he grabs his cruelest whip and starts to put it in a bag. The cat-o’-nine-tails with rocks sewn into the tiny, beaded straps at the end. Then he picks up a giant neon green phallus. And a ball gag with a hole in it.

“Stop it,” you scream and run at him, leaping on his back and clawing at his eyes. He easily throws you to the floor.

His eyes are dark and evil as he stares down at you.

“Don’t,” you say, crab walking backwards to get away from him. “I didn’t mean to.”

“You are Daddy’s very,verybad girl,” he says with his dangerous, quiet voice as he stomps towards you. You get up to flee but he catches you by the back of your hair and jerks you backwards until your head slams the hardwood floor.

You only blink awake when he’s got the oxygen mask over your head, tube down your throat, the rest of your body constrained by rope.

“No,” you cry as much as you can with the breathing tube down your throat. It comes out an illegible, “Naaa.”

That’s when you hear thewhirof the machine that means— Oh god, oh god, oh god!

Within seconds, you’re choking without breath, spasming against the ropes constricting your body until suddenly oxygen floods back in right at the moment you’re about to pass out.

You float out and leaveherbehind to take the punishment, screaming as you watch from within the box.

THIRTY-SIX

BROOKE

I waillike an animal just punched through with a hunter’s bullet.

“Oh my God!” Moira yelps at my scream, jumping out from underneath him. My— My father. “Brooke. I’m so embarrassed,” she says, yanking down the skirt of her tight school-girl outfit.

I stare at my father, still in the van. He’s just lazily tucked himself into his pants as he grins back at me with a smug smile carved in his face.

He’s prepared all this. I can’t even begin to imagine how. But he meant for me to run out just now and catch him. Either that or he’s been fucking Moira ever since the shelterwhile he waited for me to wake back up, knowing he’d stage this moment at some point. All the while wielding me as a weapon against Domhnall.

I’d finally been a bad girl too many times.

He told me the next time I tried to run away, he’d make good on his promise to hurt Donny in a way he’d never recover from this time. I saw in his eyes he meant it.

So I waited. I waited until my father was off guard, sure he thought he’d finally broken me into his soulless puppet.

And then I ran one last time. I told myself I could warn Donny before my father got to him. If I planned carefully enough, surely I could outwit my father in this last game of chess. Just thisonce.

But he was one move ahead of me the whole time, wasn’t he? Like always, he let me think I was winning until calling checkmate when I least expected it.

Father found me when I was getting close to Domhnall’s, and he smashed my head in. Then, while I was blinking, woozy with blood loss, he got in my face and hypnotized me into forgetting, just like always. Except this time, he didn’t just tell me to forget the night before. He told me to forgeteverything.

To forget.

Completely.

Until he woke me with his mentalist’s signal just now in the club. It flipped the switch back toher.

I never let him know she exists inside me, bearing theworst of his sadistic punishments and taking over on the days when I just couldn’t get out of bed or keep on keeping on. He thought it was all his mentalism skills and I let him think so. She never even gave herself a name. She was just the one who bore the darkness. She was the one who obeyed when I couldn’t.

And now here she and I stand, staring at the devil who made us as he grins in triumph.

His favorite game always was to torture me and Domhnall with our love for one another. He can’t understand love, so he poisons it with his evil. The same as he does when he comes across any pure thing. The same as he did to mymother.

“Oh my god,” Moira repeats, covering her face from me. She still has no clue what’s actually unfolding. To her, my father is just the handyman from the shelter, elicit only because she’s fucking him outside the club and her brother’s set rules for her. “Please don’t tell Domhn.”

“It’s alright, Moira,” I say, still glaring my father down. “But go back inside now or I will tell on you. Domhnall’s worried. You know how he gets when he’s worried.”

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