Annihilation Road (Torpedo Ink 6)

“You really were raised in a prison? All of you? Every member of Torpedo Ink? Is that why you’re all so close? I can see it when you’re together.”

“It was a kind of prison. It was supposed to be a school. At the time, there was a man by the name of Sorbacov who backed a certain candidate for the presidency. Each of us had parents or grandparents, someone raising us, who were opposed to that man. Sorbacov was very powerful and he had access to a branch of the military that was secretive. He commanded those soldiers to murder the parents of his opponents and take the children to be trained as assets for the country.”

He felt her shock. It was like a terrible wave that raced through her body, nearly buckling her. She turned in his arms to look at him. Her blue eyes went dark with sorrow for him.

“That’s the most horrific thing I’ve ever heard, Savage. They murdered your parents?”

“They did. They took my older sisters, Reaper and me to their school to be trained. My sisters died there.”

He didn’t tell her they were raped and beaten to death. Or that they had been thrown down the stairs into the basement to die slowly in front of their traumatized baby brothers, who had also been raped and beaten. She didn’t need to hear that shit. She was too compassionate as it was. She felt every damn thing anyone told her.

“We were all in the same boat, so to speak. Czar was our savior. He was determined we were going to learn to stay human beings. We didn’t have adults to teach us all the rules of polite society, but we made up our code of honor and we stick to it.”

Savage distanced himself from the story, telling it as if it had happened to someone else. He wasn’t going to open that door, not when Seychelle was around him. He couldn’t take a chance that she would hear the screams and see blood trickling like little intriguing beacons. Rivulets, tiny streaks of red on perfect canvas. Or how those screams were quieted. How the red streaks were tamed over time and the patterns turned into something else, something beautiful and pleasurable but equally as monstrous.

If he asked her to stay with him, to love him and be a partner to him, he would have to disclose everything to her. She would have to know the worst of him. It wouldn’t be a play dungeon for her. Her life would be the same horrific cycle as his. She was shivering in his arms right now. He was rocking her and holding her tight, comforting her because she had seen evil, but the one doing the comforting was the devil.

He wanted her so bad, the taste of wild strawberry and honey mixed with the salt of her tears was in his mouth. On his tongue. Down his throat. The memory of his handprints on the perfection of her sweet ass was burned into his mind. That shade of dark purplish red he’d brought out on her skin. She colored so easily. His cock was a fuckin’ steel rod, the monster roaring with demands just having the image in his head. Lust pounded through his bloodstream, a violent, hot wave, the red ribbon banding strong and brutal. She was the one. The only. She was his. He was hers. Soul to soul. He knew it. What did a monster have in common with an angel?

“You were all children.”

“Most of us were toddlers when we were taken. We learned our lessons fast.” His phone was already vibrating. Going crazy with Code’s information. “Look at this man. He’s so damn good. All of what? Five minutes max? Under five? He’s got their location in Oregon, address and phone number. We can call them, baby. Talk to them. Sound them out, see if they really are good people. Absinthe, one of my brothers, he can hear the truth. No one can get past him.”

“Sahara sounded as if they were very loving parents. She was very close to them at one time, but little by little that went away. She moved here to be with Brandon, but then he took her phone away and gave her a different cell. He could see her text messages, and anyone she called. He didn’t want her calling unless he was there. He timed her calls. Eventually, when her mother started asking too many questions, mostly because Sahara would say alarming things now and then, Brandon persuaded her to block her parents. They can’t get through to her by phone or email or any type of social media. They sent the cops to do a wellness checkup, and she told them she’d had a fight with her parents and didn’t want to talk to them.”