Page 61 of Emperor of Lust

As I pass the elevators, though, I notice one of the doors is open.

I stop cold, my pulse spiking when I see her.

Hana is huddled on the floor in the back corner of the elevator, staring into space with her knees drawn up to her chest, an iPad lying beside her.

“Hana…” I growl quietly, moving closer. The moment I step inside her head jerks up, eyes wide and frantic.

“Don’t touch me!” she screams, her voice choked. She thrashes as if she’s somewhere else entirely, lost in a nightmare, an invisible phantom attacking her.

“Hana!” I bark, more firmly this time. I grab her arms, shaking her. “It’sme.”

Her breathing becomes less ragged. Her eyes search mine, flickering with recognition. She looks down at the iPad, all the color draining from her face before she glances back up at me.

“Damian…”

White-hot fury cascadesthrough me as I hit the pause button and then rewind the fucking video back to the beginning.

I’m sitting alone on the couch in the living room area of the suite, cloaked in hatred and rage. Hana is back in the bedroom where I carried her from the elevator: no longer fighting phantoms, but wrapped tightly in a duvet with the shades down.

She never told me I could watch this filth. Then again, she never told me Icouldn’t.So I did, because clearly this was what had her huddled and fighting ghosts in that elevator.

I’ve been angry before. I’ve felt rage, and hate, and fury.

But right now, the blackness inside me is at a whole new level.

I hit play once again, feeling my stomach drop and my blood turn to ice-cold razors. On the screen, a young Hana is screaming and thrashing as a smug motherfucker pins her on a bed. He’s binding her wrists to the bedposts, snickering in a waythat makes me want to smash the fucking iPad as he paws at her breasts through her dress.

“Gonna finally get my dick wet!” he crows gleefully as Hana sobs and cries, begging for him to stop.

Off camera, two other boys join in, encouraging the little fuck. Hana screams again, over and over, before a t-shirt gets tossed to the asshole on screen. He laughs as he catches it and stuffs it into Hana’s mouth.

“You bitches better be ready to pay up after this!” he yells, securing Hana’s ankles to the bed posts as he moves behind her.

“Bro, this issocheating!” one of the fucks off camera laughs.

The shithead assaulting her snickers. “Just playing to win, bro!”

I’ve already watched the next part with pure hatred in my veins—where the motherfucker gets behind her, shoving her dress up and trying to stick his dick into her. Except from his frustrated expression, and the way he’s jerking his dick, and the jeers from his buddies, it’s clear he’s having…issues.

The little piece of shit can’t get it up.

Hana’s still screaming and crying as he tries again. Finally, he backs away with a sneer on his face, tucking a shrimpy little dick back into his pants before he kicks the side of the bed.

“Guess my dick is racist,” he spits, which makes his buddies crack up.

There’s one more shot of her terrorized, broken face before the video goes dark. Then it switches to some pathetic all-American glamor shot of the motherfucker who was just trying to rape her, with a banner saying “Harvard” behind him.

Then it cuts to a black screen with the message: “I know what you did, Hana. And you’re going to pay for it.”

When I’m done watching again, the violent, thundering urge to hunt and destroy is overtaking every logical thought in my mind. This isn’t anger. It’s colder, sharper—rage so intense it sears.

I shut the iPad off, breathing deep.

“I was eighteen.”

Her voice is barely audible, and I turn to see her standing there, wrapped in the duvet, her face pale but filled with quiet strength.

“His name was Josh Donahue. He was my boyfriend back when I was still at school in England. He was American, and his family was rich, powerful, and influential—his dad was a US senator and his mom was a fuckingjudge, for God’s sake.”

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