Page 125 of Voracious

The only thing I can move is my head and I try to push forward but she smirks, the cunt, and drops her voice to the one that she always used when forcing me to learn.

“You’re thinking about it all wrong.”

She pushes out of her seat, and I pull my head back so it’s against the wall as she walks forward. Her hand comes up and she keeps the rest of her body out of reach of my head as she strokesmyhair.

“Think about how special you are?” she muses. “Think about how I went through all of that trouble foryou. I didn’t give you to the clients did I, no, you were my little girl?”

Ants. They’re all over my skin and I can’t move to get them off.

It weakens me and my voice turns childlike as I ask, “Why?”

She shrugs and shows her true evil as she continues adding more phantom ants to my skin with her hand stroking over my hair.

“Because you were the perfect person to replace what was taken from me. You could be trained. I did such a good job withyou, and you were nearly perfect. We’d already done it to your father, and he was supposed to be mine.”

Bile burns up the back of my throat and nose as I stupidly ask, “What were you going to do to him?”

I don’twantto know, but I can’t stop myself because maybe I didn’t save B, but I might have saved Vlad, then I’m not evil and there’s a reason for this. I just need to be a person, not a game or a power trip, something real that exists. I watch her as she continues stroking my hair and her other hand flattens on my chest as she shakes her head in anger.

“You look like a woman now.”

Her nostrils flare and she takes a deep breath before answering me.

“We already did it. Marlo couldn’t part with his money maker. You know how much people used to pay for the opportunity to tear down the devil? To be the one who broke him?”

She smiles as she reminisces and sighs, “But you were better than him, weren’t you? Because you broke him when we made him unbreakable.”

She wanted Vlad, but he doesn’t know who she is. I hope he tortures her for years and rips her head off to piss down her throat.

The ants don’t leave despite her taking a step back and she goes on one of her rants.

“That bastard, Marlo, was too egotistical to think that he could keepitunder his control. I told him to give me it when it was born. It’s ironic because I always said his ego would kill him and it did.”

My voice comes back at the way she’s talking about a child.

“He’s not an it. He’s a person.”

Her face sharpens, eyes hardening, and making me freeze as true evil perfumes the air.

“No. He was holes,” she snarls. “He was a means to make money, and he made the most. You wouldn’t know because you had to train the others, but he didn’tneedto be trained.” Everything becomes more sinister, her face twisting in glee as she bites out, “He. Just. Was.”

I might not like him, and he is an asshole, but he’s still a person and my anger boils over forcing a scream out of me full of murder.

“He’s my dad, you sick fucking cunt!”

She takes a step back as I try to fight the chains and remain fixed against the wall. I can’t reach her and spit in her direction. It hits her shoe and I keep talking to force the vomit away.

“He was a child. You don’t hurt children.”

She shakes her head and takes a step back without forcing me to lick her shoe, for once. Her tone becomes conversational as she repeats her sick fucking crimes with pride.

“I never hurt him. You watched the videos every night, you should know that after the training he enjoyed it, like you helped the others learn.”

She laughs and her face lights up.

“It’s poetic, no? Your daddy made you the teacher you were.”

Something inside of me dies, knowing she’s telling the truth.

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