SWNOVELS His Queen: Chapter 17
Red. It’s a beautiful color. The whole world is bathed in red. We all have an obsession with it. It’s a part of us. It runs through us. It’s the color of life. The color of blood.
My blood.
It’s my blood I’m staring at; it reminds me that I’m still alive. There’s something soothing about the shade as I watch it stain the fibers of the mattress, flowing from a grotesque cut at the top of my thigh. I don’t feel the pain—the burn, the sting—I don’t feel anything. It’s just…cold.
“There’s always a solution for a dry pussy, right, birdie?” They laugh. It’s more like evil cackling, Nunzio and his guard—the man who has held me down three times. Three times he helped Nunzio rape me. Three times he stood by watching while I screamed until my throat bled. Three times, I fought with everything I had in me to make him stop. Three times I failed.
Nunzio grabs my chin and forces my face upward, but I refuse to look the devil in his eyes. “I bet you liked it as much as I did, didn’t you? Having your blood coat my cock so it’s nice and slick when I sink into this tight little body of yours.”
A tear slowly rolls down my cheek; it’s a piece of my soul escaping purgatory that’s infected my insides.
“Aaaw, my sweet birdie,” he coos before licking at the tear, his serpent tongue scraping my flesh. “It’s okay,” he says, brushing his thumb along my bottom lip. “Just make sure your pussy is all wet and ready for me the next time I come in here. Then I won’t need to cut you.” He turns my face to the side, his gaze burning my cheek. “She looks like him, doesn’t she? Her brother.”
“Which one?”
“God, you’re an idiot. You know that?”
Nunzio lets go of me, and I slide down the wall until I’m on my side, my face against the rough fabric of the mattress.
“Jesus, I think I finally broke her,” I hear him say. “That’s too bad. She had so much potential. I was sure she’d hold out much longer than this.” He kicks at my feet and then spits on my face. “Fucking disappointment. Come on, let’s go,” he says to his guard. “And don’t look so miserable. Maybe next time I’ll give you a turn with her. We just have to make sure she has enough fight left in her for the hunting.”
“Fuck you,” I whisper, and he stills, turning to look at me, a big, disgusting smirk stretching along his face.
“There she is,” he taunts. “Looks like I didn’t break you after all. You going to continue fighting me, birdie?”
I lick my dry, chapped lips. “Until my last breath.”
“That’s what I want to hear.” His face is lit with dark delight, his eyes beaming with renewed excitement. “On second thought,” he slams his hand in his guard’s chest, “you won’t get a chance with her next time. You can have my birdie once she finally breaks. But while she fights—” he makes a big show by lapping his tongue all along his mouth “—she’s mine…and just mine.”
I glance at his guard, who’s clearly more like Nunzio’s fucking lapdog. The way he glowers at Nunzio, then shifts his focus to me—he’s hungry. He wants his own piece of flesh to choke on.
“Rest, birdie,” Nunzio says. “You’re going to need it.”
There’s a loud click, and it’s instant darkness around me. Or maybe I closed my eyes. I’m not sure. But even in the dark, I still feel his touch. It’s like it’s branded into my skin, and all I can do is lie there until sleep claims me—until I pass out.
I bring my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, my teeth clattering from the cold. There’s no sense of time in the dark, no way of knowing how long I’ve been here.
Three times.
Three times he raped me.
Three times he made me scream my throat raw.
He’s not even here, and I can still feel him inside me. He’s nowhere close, and I can still hear his vile grunts, feel his slimy touch on my ice-cold skin. He’s everywhere.
My eyes start to burn, and I close them. I think they’re closed. It’s hard to know when it makes no difference whether your eyes are open or closed. It stays dark.
It’s always dark.
“Open your eyes, Mirabella?”
“Marco.” I breathe out his name. “Where’s Momma?”
“She’s not here.”
“Where is she? I need Momma.” I pinch my eyes closed hard. “Momma!” I cry out into the endless shadow. “Momma, where are you?”
“She left you, remember?”
“No.” I shake my head. “You’re wrong. She wouldn’t leave me.”
“Oh, but she did.” His voice sounds…cruel. I don’t like it.
“She left you all alone in this world. It’s her fault you’re here, you know?”
“No. No, it’s not.”
“It’s her fault he’s hurting you.”
My belly suddenly aches, and it burns between my legs like…like when I’d pee, and Momma would tell me I need to drink more water.
More water. Less soda.
Tears pool in the crevices of my pinched eyes, a chill constantly wafting around me, stinging my skin.
“You remember, don’t you, Mira? The night she left you. The night she shoved you under that bed, telling you to keep as quiet as a mouse.”
“I kept my promise.”
“Of course you did. But what if you could have screamed for help?”
I swallow hard, jerking my head to the side, trying to get away even though I don’t see him.
“Maybe if you screamed, someone would have heard you.”
“No.”
“Maybe if you screamed, someone would have saved you.”
Shivers vibrate down my back.
“Maybe if you screamed, Momma and Poppa would still be alive.”
“Please.”
“Maybe if you screamed, I would still be alive!” His words slam against my chest, violent and brutal. I don’t know how to keep the tears back. I don’t want to cry, but he’s making it hard not to.
“Please, Marco. You’re scaring me.”
“You’re a coward.”
“No. Momma said I’m her brave little girl.”
“Brave?” he scoffs. “You call hiding under a bed being brave?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I want you to open your eyes.”
A sudden gust of wind slices against my skin like glass, catapulting me backward and slamming me against a wall. “Open your eyes, Mirabella.”
“I won’t. I can’t.”
“Open them.”
“Why? Why do you want me to open my eyes?”
“Because you need to know.”
My chest tightens. “Know what?”
“Open your eyes and find out.”
I’m clutching my stomach. It hurts, and I feel sick. It’s becoming harder to keep my eyes shut, but I can’t open them. I won’t break my promise.
“Open your eyes and see the truth.”
“I don’t want to,” I cry, tasting my tears.
“He’s going to hurt you again, Mirabella.”
Pain sears across my cheek, stars exploding and burning through the darkness. My ears ring, the metallic tang of blood coating the inside of my mouth.
“He’s hurting you! Open your fucking eyes!”
“No. No. No,” I whimper, my thoughts scattered within the throbbing ache in my head. “I don’t want to see.”
“Open them!” he screams, and a strong blast of wind lifts my feet off the ground. I’m being thrown through the air until air bursts from my mouth, and I’m slammed face-first into something hard. My teeth clatter. My bones break. The pain is excruciating, cutting through my skin as pressure slices through my scalp.
“Look,” Marco whispers, and I feel him touch my temple. “He made you bleed. You’re bleeding, Mirabella. Look. Your blood is on my hands. Or is it my blood that’s on your hands?”
“I don’t…I can’t. I’m tired, Marco.” My shoulders slump, the floor hard beneath my broken body. “Please stop.”
“Not until you open your eyes. Come on, little sister. He’s coming for you. Open your eyes and fight.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes! You! Can!” A sonic boom blasts from his words, his never-ending scream raging through me like a vicious cyclone, pressing me harder into the ground. It’s so loud and angry, it vibrates against my eardrums. I can’t think clearly with all the noise. They’re drowning me, making it hard to breathe.
“Stop!” I shout into the darkness, feeling a searing pain across my face. His hands are there, rough and smothering, choking me. “Marco,” I gasp. “Stop. You’re hurting me.”
“I won’t stop.” He tightens his grip. “Look at me!”
I can feel the life drain out of me, like Momma’s, when I watched her die, her blood spreading across the floor, coming closer. Closer. Reaching for me.
He’s killing me, too. Marco is killing me…like he killed her.
Anger rushes to the surface, and heat detonates in my veins. The fear is gone. The pain is gone. It’s just this all-consuming rage that’s turning the darkness red—a red fog suffocating the black.
The red haze.
Momma.
“Open your eyes!” Marco yells one last time before a scream tears from my chest and rips through my throat. And I finally open my eyes.
Reality slams into me like a mountain of cemented torments. I jerk awake, and I’m on the floor, sprawled on my side, disoriented. I blink a few times, unsure what the hell just happened. Adrenaline and fear are weaved through my system, and then I see it as I lift my hands in front of me. The blood. My fingers, my nails, my palms, they’re covered in it—thick, sticky, and running down my arms in rivulets of crimson. My stomach lurches, and nausea grips my insides as I stare in horror at my shaking hands. I can’t breathe. My chest is moving, and I’m gasping, but the air isn’t reaching my lungs. There’s a loud voice inside my head urging me to run, but as I press on my palms, I turn and look straight into empty eyes.
“Oh, my God!”
I leap to my feet and dart to the other side of the room, pressing my back against the wall as I stare at the dead body, blood oozing from his neck where a knife is lodged, a pool of red gathering around him.
Panic strikes as everything comes rushing back with a force that kicks my legs from under me, sending me to my ass.
I killed him.
I killed the guard.