Page 26 of Judgment Day

It was a good thing I didn’t spook.

But Sadie might. If Winston wasn’t lying—if Sadie knew about the girls—and I confronted her, she might run. And when she did, I may never get her back. I needed the truth, and the best path to truth was through trust.

The guard stopped me at the gate. “The queen isn’t taking visitors right now.”

I ran my gaze over him, slowly, contemplating as I measured him up. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not asking for permission.”

We locked gazes as seconds ticked by. Then I shifted the rental car into Drive and pressed the gas. The large iron gate opened seconds before I ran straight through it.

The palace walls seemed darker, the halls narrower, the ceiling lower. Everything felt ominous. A dark truth loomed in the shadows, whispered in my ear. Within minutes, I found Sadie in the library, curled up on a leather sofa with a book in her lap as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

I unrolled my sleeves, stained with spatters of Winston’s blood and fastened the cuffs.

She placed the book, facedown and open, on the arm of the couch. “I told you I don’t know where he is.”

I took a seat in the chair across from her. “That’s not why I’m here.”

Her eyes were full of doubt, lips in a thin line, and chin held high. “Why else would you be here?”

I need to hear the truth from your lips. I need you to tell me he’s lying.

I leaned back in the chair with my ankle propped on my knee. “You aren’t the only one with secrets.” I placed my hands in my lap. “I have them, too.”

Her sharp glare softened.

Slow. Steady. Careful.

“When I was in prison, there was this guard.” I hadn’t breathed a word of this since I’d used it to set myself free. The memories of it haunted my dreams, taunted me in the silence, tortured me in the darkness. I thought if I said it out loud, I’d give it new life, and I would rather have died than given it that kind of power. But this wasn’t about me or my demons.

I pushed aside my pride and continued, “He used to watch me shower. It was innocent enough at first, just some asshole staring at my dick. Then, he started showering with me.” My heartrate sped up. The air grew heavy. I looked over at Sadie to find her watching me intently, her lips parted, her body perfectly still. “He’d stroke his cock and stare at me, then command me to watch him come. Afterward, he’d make me clean it off the shower wall.” My fingers gripped the arm of the chair, and I averted my gaze to look at the walls of bookshelves, anywhere but at her. I couldn’t go through with it if I saw any sign of pity in her eyes.

There was a physical ache in my body as skeletons that had been buried deep in my soul clawed their way to the surface. But Sadie needed this. She needed my secrets in order to share her own.

“He started coming into my cell in the middle of the night. I’d wake up and find him sitting on my bed with his cock in his hand.” I tried not to remember the smell of his sweat or the sound of his skin rubbing skin. I shoved those things down as far as they would go. “And then I started waking up to his mouth on me. He’d get so mad when I couldn’t come that he’d send me down to the basement for a beating the next day.” I was talking mostly to myself now as I sank into the memory, vanished in the darkness.I gave it life.

“I needed a way out. My flesh was raw. My body was broken. My mind was—” I swallowed, not wanting to think about the shadows that had dragged me under. “There was only one thing he wanted, one thing that would pacify him. So I gave it to him.” I didn’t tell her it was her face I saw or the memory of her tight cunt that got me hard enough to fuck a man I hated. “The beatings went from twice a week to once. And then eventually to none at all.” I found her eyes. Her face was pale now. Her breath slow, as though she had to remind herself to breathe. “We do whatever it takes to survive.”

SIXTEEN

The room was silent.The air was still. I expected to feel free after unleashing the truth, but all I felt was vacant and numb.

I let go of the arm of the chair and regained my composure as I held Sadie’s stare. “Tell me how it started.”

I’d showed her the darkest parts of me, hoping she would show me the darkest parts of her. Even though they were forged in the same pain, the same hell, they were entirely separate. And it stung knowing that two souls who were destined for eternity were now strung miles and miles apart. It was worse than the beatings, worse than unwanted touches in the middle of the night, worse than watching her from a distance, waiting for the clock to tick so that we could be together.

She sat there, in the corner of the sofa. Her legs were curled underneath her, her dress flared over her knees, then draped across the smooth brown leather seat. She looked like a queen—a beautiful, haunted, broken queen. When she finally spoke, her voice was guarded but not defensive.

“After Winston found out I was pregnant, he said he couldn’t touch me. He said it was like you were still there, taunting him. So, he sent me away to have the baby, then afterwards, he sent me…there.”

I should have been relieved.He didn’t touch her.But a rawness twisted in my gut at thought of what she’d been through in that place.

“It was our secret. No one ever saw my face. I was just half a body exposed from the waist down on one side of a wooden wall.”A fucking glory hole.That explained why I never knew she was being used. No one knew.

She looked past me, over my shoulder as if watching her demons dance in front of her. I knew that look. I’d just done the same thing. “For three years, I let them use me, rape me…break me. And then one day, I found a way out. I asked Winston if I found a replacement, then he’d let me go.” She paused, keeping her expression careful. “He agreed.”

Three years.

Three years of torture. Three years of pain.

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