Page 61 of The Last Time You Break Me

Love, Reggie.

I reread those words before my gaze once again fell onto the beautiful, white silk dress he had laid out for me. The breasts were cut out like a bralette, pinched under the bust as it slimmed down at the waist. It was long and simple with spaghetti straps and a long and seductive slit up the thigh. The back was low-cut and gathered at the curve of my ass as a thin layer of sensual lace crisscrossed at my lower back where my back dimples would smile.

Still half asleep, I dressed and held the note in my hand as I padded barefooted down the hallway, lulled by the sound of painful cries that carried in the air around me. I was engulfed, urged on by that wicked hand of depravity.

I reached the top of the steps that lead into the dungeon and stalled. I had never gotten this close before. Every time I tried, Reggie was there to pin me to the wall and whisper naughty, sinful things into my ear with lips covered in blood. I shivered at the old memories and took an apprehensive step forward. My palm itched, needing something I couldn’t place.

It was more forceful, more insistent as my heart thumped wildly in my chest. The pulse under my skin thundered and echoed within my ears that were tuned into the station of anguish. I crept down the stairs as if compelled to follow the harrowing torment that echoes from the bowels of this darkened hole.

The end of the stairs propelled you into an abyss. There was no light, nothing. But I didn’t need light to follow my senses. I turned left and stepped forward. After a few feet, the darkness turned into a low and gloom-filled, yellow-tinged light that showcased my way down a brick lane. I ran my hand over the cold brick walls and quivered as the coldness of them seeped intomy skin, I smiled at how refreshing that felt. On the right, old cages lined the way, built into the walls like cubby-hole prisons. They were full-sized, just risen off the ground. I peered inside one, it was empty. The floor was nothing but warped iron bars and under the risen cage was a floor that retracted. I smiled, my guess being that is where our prisoners would be forced to expel their bodily fluids.

I looked around and noticed the small thermostats opposite each cage that would burn an inferno if turned on.

“Burn the evidence, Daddy. It’s the only way to know we will always be safe.”

“My sweet girl, I’ll always protect you,” my father whispered into my hair as he tucked me into bed.

“No, Daddy. We protect each other. Open the ground and allow the flames of Hell to consume all of our bad deeds. That way, no one can tear us apart.”

I stood in awe,as I staredat the cages. He used my suggestion. I was only eight at the time. I knew even then what happened down here and even then, I welcomed it. The only thing I feared was misjudgment.

Evidence.

Losing my family.

The cries grew louder so I continued on my way, passing the rows of cells until I rounded a corner. The darkly lit dungeon cast shadows over the baleful space and I smirked at the malevolent and eldritch feel of the place.

Reggie stood there, head bowed and shoulders heaving as a man bred from the darkness. The air around him seemed to darken like he compelled the shadows and used them to blanket his frame, which consumed his complexion. A man lay on the ground, curled into a fetal position as a bloody steel chair sat behind him. A low-hanging light heated his skin as he clenched his already swollen shut eyes tightly.

He lured me to the dungeons.

The ones that had always been forbidden to me.

And the sight before me was utterly glorious.

“You got me a body?” I asked lowly. As not to disrupt the frightful air that swirled around us.

He turned, head still hung low as his eyes bore into the ground before he peered up at me slowly.

His eyes are completely black, savage, and brutal as they bore into mine and a chill skated down my spine and I smirked back at him.

“I got you an entire victim. Call it an early wedding present, love.”

My heart skipped a beat as my depraved smile widened. “For me? But I didn’t get you anything,” I pouted as I strolled over to him with a pep in my step.

“I got you, that’s all I need,” he said as he pulled me into him and kissed me deeply. “Lara,” he whispered as he pulled back to look me in the eye and the emotion there almost broke me. “This is Lucas.”

I stumbled back before I quickly recovered from the shock. I turned venomous eyes on the sniveling man and sneered like an animal in the wild. “Is that so?” I asked in a deadly tone.

He whimpered.

He actually fucking whimpered.

“Did this prick just fucking whimper?” I asked in a spit of disgust. “The man who shot me just fucking whimpered?” I lowered myself before him and kicked his head back so I could better see his beaten face. “What were the words you wrote so confidently?How does it feel? To know that I will take it all. That I was the one who killed her and my dad was the one who killed your wife?

“She fell like the blood on a rose, so fucking beautiful. Soon your world will turn blue.

“And every single one of you will suffer for what you have done to me.Doesn’t look like you’re a man of your word, Lucas. I don’t like men who don’t stand by their word.”Ipried open his mouth and dug my fingernails into his tongue. “Here’s a bit of advice though, never wound what you can’t kill.”

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