Page 78 of Lacey's Fight

Or maybe she was a good enough actress that nobody had ever guessed. Either way, she didn’t want to ever pretend again. If she got out of this mess and back home, she was going to learn how to be her true self, the flirty, bubbly, sassy side that everyone knew as well as the more vulnerable one who battled insecurities on a near daily basis.

She was who she was, and she shouldn’t have to apologize for it or hide from it.

“How is my beauty this morning?”

“Cold, tired, sore, and grumpy,” she snapped. The words coming out of her mouth shocked her. Never before had she spoken to this man in this cavalier manner. As a child and a teen, she had been afraid of him, terrified he would kill her, or worse her sisters and leave her alone with him.

For a moment he froze, glared at her, then snapped, “I don’t like my woman having a smart mouth.”

“Good thing I’m not your woman then.” The very thought of the idea was enough to make her empty stomach churn.

“You will be. You’ll become my wife, the mother of my children, take care of us all, be everything they said I would never have.” There was a wistfulness in his tone she’d never heard before. Or maybe it was just that she’d been too young back then to think of the man as anything other than the one who tortured her daily, turning her into someone she didn’t want to be.

They’d never known what made The Master tick. What led him to become a monster who would abduct innocent babies and toddlers and mold them into killing machines.

“They?” she asked, trying to make it seem like she didn’t really care whether or not he gave her an answer.

“They tormented me, said I’d never be anything,” he snarled, although she suspected not at her but at these people who had caused him pain.

Almost absentmindedly, he came to the bed and began to untie her. Lacey would love nothing more than to fling herself at him and kill him right here and now, but unfortunately her limbs were heavy and lacking normal blood supply from so long being tied up.

If she attacked him now, she would fail.

Failure didn’t just mean her own potential death but the deaths of those little girls as well. They were so young, had their whole lives ahead of them, and she didn’t want them to wind up The Master’s pawns forever, or like the other girls who had thought ending their lives was better than enduring any more of The Master’s hell.

So instead, she listened.

Gathered evidence she could use against him later.

“They called me Merv the Perv but I don’t understand why.”

The Master looked truly perplexed while all Lacey could do was silently rejoice that they finally had a name for the man who had tortured them. Granted it was only a first name, but it was still miles better than they’d had before, which was absolutely nothing.

“I wasn’t a pervert,” Merv continued. “I’ve never even had a girlfriend. How can I be a pervert?”

If Merv didn’t see how raping little girls as young as ten made him a pervert, then there was no hope for the man. He was so delusional that he actually believed abducting her and her sisters and all the other girls he’d taken and forcing them through torture to learn to kill was no big deal.

“They said … they said … vile things about me,” Merv continued. His face had darkened, his navy eyes appearing almost black like he had been possessed. “They said I watched girls because I was too scared to touch them, too stupid to know what to do but they were wrong.”

Lacey’s stomach dropped.

She had a feeling she knew what Merv was going to say next.

Still, she asked quietly, “Why were they wrong?”

“Because she taught me everything.” Merv’s tone was triumpant, but all she saw was the horrors that he had likely endured as a child.

“Who taught you?”

“Mother did. It was her job you see.”

As despicable a person as she knew him to be, her heart cracked for the small, innocent boy he had once been. Lacey had no idea why he was telling her all of this now, maybe it was because he had decided she was going to be his wife, but whatever reason, she was glad for information she could use against him.

It might seem cruel since he was confessing the abuse he had suffered as a child, but this man was a monster not some innocent victim even if at one time he had been. This was war, her life was at stake, those children’s as well, and in war you didn’t spend time feeling sorry for your enemy, you just used anything you could to make sure you survived.

Swallowing down the bile burning her throat, Lacey asked, “What about your dad? What did he think of his wife teaching you?”

Merv had already untied her legs—although they rested heavily against the filthy mattress as painful pins and needles ravished them—and had moved on to her wrists, but at her question he viciously clamped his hand around her left wrist, almost crushing the bones. “Don’t you mention him again,” he hissed. “He was no father, no husband. He left us. Just walked away and abandoned us. Wasn’t there to teach me all the things a father is supposed to teach his son, but my mother taught me. When he left it was my job to take over as head of the house. To provide, to guide, to pleasure the woman. I did that. I always did that. I took care of you, and your ungrateful sisters. I fed you, clothed you, and put a roof over your head. The others never cared, they never showed their appreciation, but you did.”

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