Page 86 of Vow of Vengeance
"He's fuckingdead, you moron!" Tony roars. "What don't you get about that?"
"Well, then entertain my delusion." I snap. "Answer me or I'll put a bullet through your left foot too."
Tony grunts a stream of profanity, slams his fist against the ground. "Fine! There's a motel!"
I bend down and grip him by the collar of his shirt, dragging him to his feet.
"Show me."
thirty-two
Soren
ItfeelslikeVintook a blade to my skin, cut through the arteries to let me bleed out, and scraped everything out of me.
I'm hollow, exhausted, broken.
I'm so fucking broken.
My life was a lie, and it's gone, but the damage isn't.
My husband let men pay to rape me. He drugged me night after night and let me think I was going insane, let me think I was ill and pretended to have no idea what could be causing the lapses in my memory, the unexplained bruises or the phantom pain. He gaslit me into thinking that something was wrong with me, got me on prescription medications for problems I didn't have, and all the while, he knew that everything going on with me was his own doing.
It's horrible all on its own, a type of sinister my brain can't even contend with. And that's saying nothing of the men he let do those things to me. Khan. Jimmy. My own friends... men I trusted, just like him.
I'm clearly an awful fucking judge of character.
My soul feels heavy, weighed down with the thought of hundreds of hands on me, holding me down, drowning me, choking me, suffocating me.
But then he orchestrated the murder of our own baby, let someone into our home with the intention of abusing me so badly that my body couldn't sustain the life inside of me. He says he didn't want Tony to go that far, and maybe he didn't. I'm certain he didn't plan for Tony to shoot him, either.
"You told me we could get past this." Vin says coldly. "Snap out of it, Soren. If I wanted a zombie, I'd have drugged you again, for old time’s sake."
I blink when he appears before me, a pair of scissors in one hand and a little red ball in the other. My brain feels too fuzzy to make sense of the items, of his presence, of the reality that I now know to be true.
When he grips my head in the same hand as the scissors and shoves the ball into my mouth, my body starts to come back to life, the numbness of his confession receding as survival instincts kick in.
I try to gnash my teeth together, to shake my head and wriggle away, but he gets it against my tongue and shoves in far enough that I choke. The realization doesn't hit me that it's a gag until I feel the leather strap against my cheek, and I work to shove it out of my mouth, but he's stronger. He secures it around my head, so tight that the band cuts into my cheeks as drool runs from my open mouth. I try to scream now that I've remembered I am still alive, that I want tostayalive, but it's muffled around the ball gag as Vin pats my cheek appreciatively.
"There you are, baby. I'll admit, I liked you passive and quiet." He cocks his head a bit, like he's reassessing his previous opinion of me. "But fuck if you don't make my cock harder like this than you ever did before."
His words add insult to injury, salt to the wound.
My husband never loved me. I know that now. And I was so fucking stupid to think that it was real all that time.
Tears stream down my cheeks as he steps away from me, but I don't take my eyes off him as he moves to the end of the bed and grips my foot, sliding the scissors between my skin and the leg of my pants.
He cuts through them quickly, letting the fabric fall away at the split seams so that I'm left on the bed, trembling in my panties as he shreds my shirt, too.
I'm careful when the blade is in my vicinity, but the minute the fabric falls away and leaves me in my bra, I strain against the straps he tied me down with, testing them, trying to break them, desperate to get away from him.
"You still have a nice body, even with the extra weight." He remarks, unbothered by my futile escape attempts.
He crosses to the dresser and picks up the cell phone before he walks a circle around me. "Smile for the camera, baby."
The light in my eyes makes me dizzy when he brings the phone close to my face, capturing every tear, the snot and drool and everything else. I want to yell at him to go to hell, but I'm not sure that's even what my tongue tries to say, because all that comes out of me is a long, unintelligible moan.
"That's it, sweetheart. My obedient little whore. You're going to help me make the best film yet."
