Page 104 of Hunted By Valentine

“Why?” My voice is a croak, a frog in a desert. I clear my throat, and the motion sets off a chain reaction of hurt. I bite down on it. “Why am I still alive?” I expected John to kill me right away. Hell, I counted on it.

He steps closer. The flickering light casts his shadow large against the walls. “You thought I’d kill you?” He sounds amused. “Did Michael teach you nothing, Ruby? You haven’t earned death. My brother hiring the Hunter to kill you was meant to be a mercy, one you clearly didn’t want.”

I cry out as he runs a finger down my chest, through the mark burned into my skin. It’s cold, clinical. He has the hands of a mortician, the touch of someone who sees bodies as objects.

“Regardless of this mark, you’re mine now.”

My stomach knots. “W-what does that mean?” I stammer.

He shrugs. “Whatever I want it to mean. First, I’m going to have my fun, and then…” He smirks. “… then I’ll sell you at the auction in a couple of days.”

The auction? Oh shit, he means… swallowing suddenly becomes hard as the meaning sinks in.

“Ahh, there it is,” John coos. “God, you look beautiful when you’re terrified, Ruby.” He moves close enough he can lick the tears trailing down my cheeks.

I shudder as I do my best to pull away, but there’s nowhere for me to go. So all I end up doing is making the chains above me rattle. “Fuck you,” I hiss, trying to infuse bravado I don’t feel into my tone.

With a cruel smirk, he winks. “Tempting.” That’s all he says as he begins to circle me.

After circling me twice, he strikes. The first lash is a lightning bolt, white-hot and blinding. My body arches, then sags. I bite my lip until I taste metal, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a scream.

“Look at you trying so hard not to scream for me,” he chuckles coldly.

Another lash.

“But I’ll make you scream, Ruby. One way or another. I’m not my soft brother, so the faster you sing for me, the better it’ll be for you.”

“I said, fuck you.” My voice is ragged, broken from the effort of holding my screams and cries back.

I can feel the sting of the whip slicing through the air, landing against my skin. I choke back a scream, fighting to stay still, to hold on to whatever strength I can gather. But his voice—calm, controlled, with that twisted edge of delight—picks up again, drilling into my mind as effectively as the pain.

“You really want my cock that badly?” he asks.

A sob lodges in my throat. “N-never.”

He laughs—a deep belly laugh as he comes back to stand in front of me. “I’m curious,” he says, tilting his head to the side. “What did you think would happen? You knew you’d become mine when Michael died. You signed the damn contract.”

Refusing to answer him, I clamp my mouth shut.

“Got nothing to say? That’s okay, I’ll talk and you can listen. I knew the moment you poisoned my brother—”

“How?” I whisper, unable to stop the question from slipping out.

Both Michael and John have stated this to me before, but they never told me the specifics.

“I knew you’d be wondering how I knew,” John murmurs, and there’s a sickening thrill in his words, a pride in his twisted game. “How I knew Michael was dead.”

My stomach knots. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of my fear. He can have my curiosity—but not anything else.

“Tech can be quite useful,” he says, almost conversationally. “Michael had a little something under his skin. A chip, an injectable nano-device that lets me track vital signs—heart rate, brain activity, breathing. If there’s a sudden drop, an interruption…” He shrugs as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I get an alert.”

He pauses, watching my face, savoring every flicker of reaction he can catch.

The chains bite into my wrists, and I shift my weight, trying to find a position that hurts less. There’s no point in struggling; I’m too weak to break free, and the exertion would only tear my skin more. I need to conserve what little strength I have.

“I was already waiting just outside, watching through the cameras Michael had installed and hidden all over the house. But you knew they were there. So I have to ask, did you put on a show for me?”

He’s right, I did know about the cameras. But I didn’t know John had access, just like I didn’t know he was waiting outside. Not like knowing would have changed anything. I’d still have killed Michael since he knew about Valentine’s identity, which John apparently also knows.

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