Page 17 of Desecrated Saints
I return Five’s shy smile. “I wasn’t going to leave you there after everything that happened. Seven either.”
“Where is he?”
“Sleeping,” Sadie answers.
Five presses a kiss to Two’s shaking hand to try to calm her. The guys relax enough to take seats around the room, all nursing their beers despite it being barely lunchtime. Alcohol is needed for this conversation, even if Kade is glaring at Phoenix for drinking.
“Do you both have names?” I finally ask.
Two tilts her head at the sound of my voice, giving me a direct view of her scarred eye sockets. “Not that I can remember. I was one of Augustus’s first projects.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard her speak.
I’m surprised by the vitriol in her voice.
“It took him a while to figure out what worked,” she continues. “He put me in the tub first and electrified the water. Then sensory overload, just like you. I used to listen to you scream at night from my cell. I’m guessing you learned to follow orders like I did.”
All of the oxygen seems to leave the room.
I fight to clear my throat. “Something like that.”
“Sensory overload?” Kade frowns.
“Using waves of noise to torture compliance out of you,” Two supplies. “No rest or sleep. You just lay there and let your ears bleed. There’s no running from it.”
The heat of all their gazes has sweat beading on my forehead.
“We’ve seen pictures of the tubs,” Hudson hedges.
Two swallows. “Electricity was his favourite, after freezing, sub-zero water. There was another patient, but I can’t remember his name. He lost several toes from being submerged for too long.”
“Seven told me that Three, Four, and Six are dead,” I manage to whisper.
Kade writes that down in his notebook, his gaze wary behind his glasses. This is just the tip of the nightmare iceberg. I don’t want them to know what happened in the dark. Pictures are one thing, the truth is another.
Fishing for a change in topic, I glance at Five. “What about you? Got a name?”
“I remember,” she answers reluctantly.
Releasing Two’s hand, she wraps her arms around herself for comfort.
“My name is Lucia. I was a model patient at first. Anything to keep him happy and avoid the punishment if I didn’t follow orders. When I first met Two, I was broken. Alone in the dark. She gave me hope.”
Two smiles at Lucia’s words, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to pull her in close. When their fingers interlink, I realise what Jefferson meant by his words in the basement. They rebelled by simply living the only way they knew how.
“Can’t get distracted by pleasures of the flesh without any eyes,” I vocalise the threat Jefferson levelled me with months ago.
Lucia snorts. “Jefferson rolled that bullshit out to you too?”
Ignoring the looks the guys all throw at me, I reach out and take Two’s hand, careful not to startle her. Lucia watches me closely, still on full alert. I get it now. Two’s her girl to worry about.
“You should know, I removed Jefferson’s eyes before I cut his throat,” I inform them. “He screamed and begged for death in the end. He won’t hurt anyone ever again. I made sure of it.”
“A-fucking-men to that,” Two declares.
Hudson grins at me, the sadistic fuck. The memory of jamming my blade into Jefferson’s eye sockets offers me some satisfaction. I would’ve preferred to skin his sorry ass alive and stretch it out over several hours, cutting his body away piece by piece.
A girl can dream, right?