Page 86 of Lacey's Fight

Then he would bring her right back down here.

He’d repeat the process until she told him what he wanted to know.

Only she wouldn’t ever tell him.

Eventually, he would figure it out, when he actually took the time to clean up the mess she’d made in the kitchen, he’d realize that the keys to the car were missing and she hadn’t just hidden the girls somewhere but actually given them a way to escape. At least she prayed they were now well and truly on their way to someplace safe. So long as Miranda believed in herself, she could drive the car well enough to find a road, and then a house.

But The Master was lazy.

That and he was a sadist who enjoyed inflicting pain.

Instead of cleaning up the kitchen himself, he would leave it in a mess until he tortured her into telling him what he wanted to know and then make her do it.

All things considered, down here wasn’t so bad.

Better than being up there with Merv.

Up there he wouldn’t just torture her physically, he’d torture her sexually as well.

After England, all of those feelings and emotions were too raw. She’d rather not have to go through that again. If she had to she’d deal, but she would much rather be down here by herself, even in the stifling, breath-stealing heat.

“You can come out, Lacey, all you have to do is tell me where they’re hiding,” Merv’s voice echoed through the room. It was rigged with a PA system so he could talk to her—probably watch her too—without having to come into the room with her.

He wouldn’t lower himself to suffer the conditions he inflicted on his victims.

Besides this little underground oven he’d made, there was also a cold room that served the same purpose as this one, only the opposite. Then there was the torture room that held a mixture of whips and canes, ropes for binding, knives, and blades.

“Lacey,” Merv snapped. “I’m glad that you are already taking your role as mother to those two beautiful children so seriously, but I want to know where they are.”

She was sure he did.

Because she was sure there was a camera in here somewhere—no way could he deprive himself of an opportunity to watch them suffer—she smirked.

A growl rumbled through the PA system making her laugh.

Just because she didn’t have all the power here didn’t mean she didn’t wield just a little.

The shock collar might make it difficult for her to fight him physically, but all she needed was to get her hands on a knife or other sharp blade and she could throw it, sever his carotid artery just like she had done to Amelia Kutcher in the saferoom in England. For now, he might be being cautious, not letting her near anything he knew she could use against him, but in time he would grow complacent.

Or if she was lucky this whole ordeal would be over soon. If the girls found help then someone would come for her. This time The Master wasn’t going to slip away.

“Lacey,” The Master roared this time, his anger coming through. It was never far away, hovering just beneath the surface, all it took was one tiny slip up and it would erupt with all the force of a volcano.

How many times had she been abused for a mistake most adults wouldn’t have even noticed, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t have issued a punishment?

“You can keep asking but it’s not going to change my answer … which is nothing. I won’t tell you where they are.” And she wouldn’t. She could take any punishment he dished out, and every minute, every hour she bought gave the girls a better chance at getting away.

After making them a quick breakfast, she’d sent the girls and the keys on their way then proceeded to trash the kitchen to cover the fact that the keys were gone. Lacey knew The Master well, and she knew he would never clean up a mess, it was her and her sisters’ job to wait on him, likely because his mother had taught him that was the woman’s job. That distraction meant he still had no idea she knew where he would likely hide the car and that the girls had taken it and fled.

There was always the chance she was wrong about where the car would be, but she didn’t think so. The Master was nothing if not a creature of habit.

Another angry howl echoed through the speakers, and she laughed again.

It felt so good to hold something over the man who had tormented her for most of the first eighteen years of her life. Merv thought that his brainwashing had given him four completely compliant slaves, but he was wrong. The fact that he’d given them an inbuilt support system in each other meant they had clung to one another instead of binding themselves to him as he had likely hoped.

“Tell me where they’re hiding right now or I turn the temperature up,” Merv threatened.

“Turn it up. Turn it all the way up if you want to. Turn it up so high that you roast me alive, I don’t care. I’m not going to be your wife, I’m not going to give you children, I’m not going to be mother to some little girls you kidnapped, and I’m not fulfilling whatever sick plan of revenge you wanted me to. Simple as that. Deal with it. Kill me or don’t but stop being so delusional as to think I want you or ever did.”

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