Page 30 of Judgment Day

I’d called beforehand on the drive from the palace. Just as I’d asked, Winston was out cold. He was curled up on his bed in a fetal position, his knees against his chest, with his wrists zip-tied to his ankles. And he was naked. There were three objects on the nightstand next to his bed, and a chair had been placed close enough for us to get intimate.

His back still bore the red stripes from earlier. Some of them had begun to scab over where the skin had broken. Winston was in great shape for a man who was almost fifty. He was handsome in a classic way. Too bad he was rotten on the inside.

I wasn’t one for mindless scrolling or playing digital games. I didn’t have social media for that very reason. But right now I was wishing I had something to pass the time—something that didn’t involve staring at Winston’s naked ass for hours.

I thought about Sadie and how she became what she was. I thought about what she’d said about Lyric. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought myself at least one hundred times. I was her monster. I lived with that weight every goddamn day. It was why I let her go. Because despite what Sadie thought, I was nothing like those other men, men like Winston Radcliffe. It was why I stayed away from Lyric, why I left her alone in an empty manor every day. I couldn’t stomach the thought of being her captor. I thought that maybe if I showed Lyric mercy, the universe would do the same for Sadie.

I was wrong.

Fuck the universe.

Winston stirred awake before I got too lost in my thoughts.

“Have a nice nap?” I asked him when he looked over at me.

Panic flared in his eyes. Utter fear painted his masculine features. He tugged on the zip ties, but the harder he fought them, the more they dug into his skin. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”

He must have been talking about his back.

“You’ve been here one month. I have twelve years ofdamageto do.”

“You’re fucked in the head, you know that?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe.” I spoke to him the way a teacher would to a pupil or a mother to a child, carefully articulated. “I’m going to ask you a question and what happens next will depend on your answer. Understand?”

He sneered—a bold move for a man who was beaten earlier and bound now. “I don’t owe you shit.”

I reached over onto the nightstand and grabbed the first item, holding it up so that he could see. The green glass of the full beer bottle—with the ridged metal cap still on—was cool to the touch, like they’d recently taken it out of the cooler. “This probably wouldn’t be bad going in.” I looked at the sharp edges of the cap and winced. “Probably be a bitch coming out, though.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Oh, but I would.

I set the bottle back on the stand, then picked up the cucumber lying next to it. “I don’t personally see the appeal, but I hear these are great if you’re in a pinch.” I stroked the outside and lifted a brow. “It has ridges.”

“Fuck you.”

I held up the jar of Vaseline I had in my lap, waved it in the air, then set it on the floor next to my feet. “That’s one strike. Keep talking.” I wanted to kill him. I was going to, eventually. But today, I had to settle for ass torture.

His body visibly trembled.Good.

I placed the cucumber back down, then picked up a heavy black flashlight, the kind cops used. “In case you get any bright ideas.” Then I smirked at my own joke as I set it back down.

His breath was getting heavier now. Sweat beaded on his brow.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, carefully pulling them over my hands one at a time. “Here’s where we get serious.” I leaned in, resting my elbows on my knees and stopping inches from his face. “Where is my son?”

Silence.

I grabbed the cucumber, then held his nose closed until his mouth was forced open. I shoved it down his throat until he sputtered and gagged. “It goes in your ass next.”

“He’s at a country house in Knoydart.” His voice shook, his words quick and frantic, so unlike the arrogant king he believed he was. “Just past a little white church with a red roof. There’s a three-rail fence around the property with a metal gate at the end of a gravel drive.”

Knoydart was an isolated peninsula only accessible by boat. There were no roads. It was small and quaint, with a total of (maybe) one hundred residents in the whole town. My father used to go whale watching there.

I smacked Winston’s cheek—the one on his face—twice and smiled. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Then I stood up, ran my hand over his ass cheek, spreading him open good and wide, and shoved the cucumber in his tight hole.

He clenched and flopped and thrashed on the bed. “What the fuck, Van Doren?! I answered your question.”

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