Page 181 of Kiss the Villain

Someone make itstop.

My vision blurs and I stagger, falling against my car, still digging and probing and scratching at the skin, over and over.

And fucking over again.

Why can’t I get him the fuck out?

“What a weird little cunt.”

Declan’s voice is close now—behind me, I think—but I don’t give a fuck.

I want the blood gone.

I want the pain to stop?—

“Right, boy.” Something pricks the back of my neck. “You’re coming with us.”

I think I hear other heavy footsteps and voices, and my eyes are closing, my fingers still twitching in my arm, in the blood.

The blood that I can’t remove him from.

Because I’m drifting.

Into the pitch-black void.

I wake up in water.

No. Water was thrown over my face, reeling me from sleep. Drug-induced sleep.

Because the inside of my mouth is dry and tastes funny, like sandpaper and detergent.

I’m in a metal chair, my hands bound behind my back and my legs strapped to the chair’s legs. My arm wounds are messily bandaged, probably so I don’t bleed out.

A mixture of humidity and the rancid body odor of the two buff men standing in front of me fills my nostrils but fails to disgust me.

I think I’m losing my sense of feeling. Maybe it left my veins with all the blood.

It’s better this way. I need my ability to shut down now.

The room looks like a basement, with stone walls, low lights, and a metal door.

Typical torture chamber shit, I suppose. I’ve never been in one because my grandfather made sure I wasn’t caught. Maybe I should have been.

If I had been, I wouldn’t feel so…insignificant.

Like a goddamn speck of dust.

A toy that you throw away and it bounces back just to be kicked and used, then thrown away again.

Andagain.

I’m being punched now. I don’t feel it.

Sure, my body is rattling against the chair, my hair is pulled until I feel it ripping, and my stomach and chest are kicked. The chair topples over, and I fall on the floor, hitting my head.

Yes, it hurts physically. It does. My pain receptors are working overtime, my nerves shocked from the assault.

But inside? It doesn’t hurt.

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