Caged By Them (Descent Into Darkness 1)

I led Lizzy to the kitchen and made her sit at the table. The wax was still on her body and there were red marks where some of it had burned her flesh. She looked disheveled and I could see the destruction in her eyes when she started eating. Hours upon hours of orgasms—pleasure that turned into pain. Perhaps I would have liked to meet the man she made those promises too—he seemed like a wonderfully sadistic man—but he hid behind a screen—with a wife that didn’t like the things he did. He had probably never even had a girl succumb to the fantasies he described. That was too bad—they were wonderful thoughts and I savored the promises she made when she was setting him up—promises she never thought she would fulfill when the lust dripped across the screen.

“If you’re a good girl today—tonight you’re going to get to sleep in my bed.” I looked over at her with a casual glance.

She just nodded—god, she was beautiful when she did what she was supposed to do.

The words that were unsaid were as powerful as the ones that left my lips. She was going to sleep in my bed because I was going to have her—every bit of her. I was going to take her virginity and claim her body. It was a promise she made, and one that she would fulfill—there were numerous ones that promised her body to the men she blackmailed. It was too bad she wouldn’t be able to give her innocence away as many times as she promised she could. I would have to make the first one special—for me.

After breakfast was done, I put the ball gag on her and took her back to her cage and locked the door. She would be there for the entire day—until I was ready to use her again.

So beautiful—those red-rimmed eyes wondering what I have in store for her—yet bound to silence and unable to ask me what’s next.

I’ll be thinking about that moment all day.

A few hours later

“Did you forget that you had a job to come to today?” Mauro looked at me with a hint of anger in his eyes.

“No.” I tilted my head to the side. “Everything was put in place yesterday. There’s nothing for me to do at this point except wait for the fallout.”

“Well, we’ve got a problem.” He motioned for me to follow him into his office. “Josef Weber asked for a meeting.”

“A meeting?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “That’s a desperate play. I expected backlash before he came crawling to us on his knees.”

“I guess we hit him harder than we realized.” Mauro sat down and folded his arms across his chest. “And we haven’t even dug our nails into Los Angeles. Maybe we should pull back on that…”

“No.” I shook my head back and forth. “We keep hitting—until there’s nothing left but ashes—then we put a proposal on the table.”

“You want to buy Weber Acquisitions?” Mauro shrugged. “I guess that makes sense, but I doubt he’ll sell—even if he has nothing left but ashes.”

“It’s a power play. The same one we tried on us. We send a proposal, make some noise about it, and then all those sharks we were attracting will dig their teeth into him.” I chuckled under my breath.

I returned to my office and watched the screen as our soldiers started hitting Weber’s clients on the east and west coast at the same time. Stock prices were falling—things were going according to plan. It should have been a moment of victory, and it was, but I was distracted. My eyes kept drifting to the video on my phone—Lizzy in her cage. She had fallen asleep, undoubtedly exhausted from her night of agonizing bliss—preparing for what was coming when I returned home.

I looked at the picture on my desk—four Jacksons—all in a row. Only two of us were still standing. The job took our father from us early—stress and a weak heart was what the doctor said. I was pretty sure he didn’t have a heart, much less a weak one—maybe he did when our mother was still alive, but I ripped it from his chest when I came into the world. My attention focused on Wyatt. I thought about the number of times he had dealt with Josef Weber in Chicago—the times he asked for us to do more than wage an eternal war.

It’s too bad that I didn’t listen back then. We could have crushed that asshole at any point, but we let him get stronger—all because I was too busy living off my family name instead of embracing the job I was born to do.

I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the copy of the chat logs I kept on hand between Wyatt and Lizzy. Reading through them intensified the rage I felt towards the girl locked away at my house. I needed that rage—a reminder that she wasn’t innocent, even if no man had claimed her body. The chat logs with the other men didn’t inspire much anger—I truly didn’t give a fuck what she promised them. The log in my hand was the only one that could really send me over the edge—it kept me in touch with the reality of the retribution I craved.

No matter how much she suffers, it’ll never be enough.

I’m going to break her again and again—until she can’t be broken anymore. Then I’ll have her where she needs to be—the point where the only thing left to snap her soul is the truth about what happened to Wyatt. One final break—one final act of revenge—the last time she sees daylight without agonizing in what she’s done. Will I keep her when that time comes? Will she even have the strength to get up off her knees? She’s a fun toy, but once the last bit of light is gone from her eyes, it won’t be submission she craves—not anymore.

It will be all she knows.

Lizzy

I mentally prepared for Reynard’s return. I had accepted my fate the first time he said he would take my innocence—I knew that moment was coming before I signed my name on the contract. The delay was starting to become torture on its own because it toyed with my thoughts. I wished I would have never asked the question about Wyatt. I would have rather gotten it over with the night he said it was going to happen rather than let the anticipation build to the point it became dread. As the minutes passed and the moment drew closer again, dread was all I could feel—even if my body had started to cry out for Reynard’s touch.

When the door opens again, it will be the last time he looks down at a virgin.

I wasn’t sure if sex would change me. I always thought it would. Maybe that’s why I never gave in when the opportunities were in front of me. There was power in those moments—a sense of control I would never have with Reynard. I never imagined myself enjoying the things I talked about with the men I blackmailed, yet I was finding out that some of the things I agreed to were more than just illusions. The pain excited me—turned me on. The brutality of Reynard was becoming a craving—it was chaos that I couldn’t control, and I had never been able to let go before. Having the choice stripped away was turning me into something I never expected to become—a woman that needed to submit.

I heard a sound in the darkness and looked towards the door. It opened and Reynard walked in, flipping the light on as he entered. There was malice on his face—a look of anger that often faded when I was with him, but always seemed to be painted on like a fresh coat of disappointed when he returned. He put food in front of the cage, cleaned things up while I ate, and when I finished eating, he grabbed me by the hair. He didn’t want me on my knees, so I stood as he pulled. I was learning what he wanted without a command—my body was already becoming his and it hadn’t even been taken yet—not fully.

“I’m going to clean you up before you join me in bed.” He looked down at my thighs. “You’re still covered

in your own filth.”