Page 32 of Red Dreams

I swallow hard, my stomach churning at the thought of what Cassie might be doing to elicit such horrible screams. But I force myself to take a deep breath, to think past the terror that threatens to overwhelm me.

“If we try anything, we’ll just make it worse.” My voice shakes despite my effort to keep it steady. “For both of us.”

Kaden's hand tightens on the doorknob, the tendons in his forearm standing out in sharp relief. For a moment, I think he might wrench the door open anyway, consequences be damned. But then he exhales in a harsh sound that seems to billow around the room.

I close the distance, my bare feet soundless on the plush carpeting. I reach up, wrapping my hands around his neck. Kaden’s skin is hot to the touch, as if fury is burning him from the inside out.

I press my face against his chest, bared within the V of his robe, trying to ground us both. Movement catches my eye. The scattered photos on the bed shift as the sheets settle from my frazzled exit, and one slides free and drifts to the ground.

It's not Cassie and Kaden. The girl in this photo is a stranger, maybe in her twenties, with long dark hair and terrified eyes. She's bound to a gold-embellished antique chair, and tears stream down her face. Behind her stands a man I don't recognize, his expression haunted as he watches whatever's happening outside the frame.

My hands fall from Kaden's neck. “There are more.”

He turns, following my gaze to where other photos have spilled across the sheets. We stride to the foot of the bed as one, studying the other photos we missed when we were so focused on ourselves and Cassie.

Sifting through, I find ones showing different girls with different older men—fathers forced to witness their daughters' suffering. Some photos are clearly recent, others aged and worn. All of them document the same sick game Cassie's playing with us now, though she’s never within the frame.

“She's been planning this,” I whisper, the realization hitting me like a wave of salty, fish-scented water. “All this time, she's been collecting daughters. Testing them.”

Kaden's hands clench at his sides as he stares at the evidence of Cassie's obsession. “Not testing. Conditioning.”

Oh God. I want to throw up. “Conditioning for what?”

12

LAYLA

Kaden picks up one of the older photos.

A man in a business suit stares at the camera, his expression a mix of despair and resignation. In his hand is a pair of pliers, poised over the delicate fingers of a young woman bound to a chair. Her face is a mask of white terror.

Another photo shows the same man, his features twisted in anguish as he closes the pliers over the girl's index finger. Her mouth is open in a silent scream, and in the background, I can see another girl, bound and gagged, her eyes wide with horror. That one has blond hair, like him. Striking green eyes, like him.

His daughter is watching him torture another girl.

I grab a bunch of photos, then rifle through them with shaking hands. The early shots show fathers forced to watch as their daughters are subjected to unspeakable torments—burned, beaten, cut. Their faces are studies in helpless agony, the kind of pain that goes beyond the physical.

A chilling pattern emerges the deeper I delve. The same fathers appear again and again, but their roles begin to shift. No longer just helpless victims … they become active participants in the torture.

One sequence shows a father, his face gaunt and haunted, holding a glowing branding iron. In the next photo, he's pressing it against the bare skin of a sobbing girl, his own daughter visible in the background, her face a mix of relief and revulsion.

Another series depicts a man wielding a whip, his hands shaking as he brings it down across the back of a screaming young woman. The progression is sickening. By the final photo, his face is an impassive mask, the whip striking with cruel precision.

Photo after photo tells the same story: Fathers forced to make impossible choices, to inflict pain on others in order to spare their own daughters from worse torments.

I look at Kaden, unable to prevent the horror from leeching the blood from my face. Cassie's not just collecting daughters—she's breaking their fathers, reshaping them into ghouls of her own creation.

“She's turning them into weapons,” I say. “The fathers. She's conditioning them to do anything, hurt anyone, to keep their daughters safe.”

A muscle ticks in his cheek. “Once she breaks them, she owns them. They'll be loyal to her, to the Syndicate, because she holds their daughters' lives in her hands.”

The scream comes again, muffled by the walls but no less agonizing. I flinch, the photos fluttering from my fingers.

“The men she constantly has with her,” I breathe, the realization hitting me like a punch to the gut. “Do you think...?”

Kaden's eyes meet mine, a maelstrom of rage and anguish swirling in their depths. “Morelli gave her these men as playthings, and given her brilliance, she turned them into her personal servants.”

I think back on Harris, the man who gave me the tattoo currently throbbing at my neck. All the men who came in herewere leering and throwing around threats but never acting on them.

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