“Joseph…”
He struck her again. “Stop fucking talking!” She cried harder and he groaned in disgust. “You have no right to cry you stupid bitch! You caused this! So yes, Arianna. I’ll keep your bastard son; and despite his fucking crap genetics, I’ll raise him to be like me…JUST like me.”
She looked up at him suddenly, terror written across her face letting him know that he’d struck a nerve with that comment.
“Oh? You don’t like that, do you? Can’t handle knowing that your precious little boy will be raised by a man you so obviously despise.” Another wicked chuckle, this one low in tone, rumbling deep in his chest. He smiled down at her, triumph written across his expression.
Arianna stilled. “What are you doing, Joseph?” Her eyes looked up at him, one swelling at the side from where she’d been hit. “Please, I have to tell you something…”
Lunging forward he grabbed her by the arms and lifted her from the chair with such force that the chair fell to the side, hitting the ground with a thick crack against the stone.
Forcing her up against Emory’s chest, Joseph wrapped his hands around her throat, squeezed so tightly that her face instantly turned red and he could see the blood vessels break across her skin. In desperation to breath, her hands clawed at his, but he was too far buried within his rage to care that her fingernails tore at his skin. His eyes locked to hers and a smile peeked out from beneath the bored expression. Her eyes started to go out of focus, the lack of oxygen sending her deep into an oblivious tunnel. But he wouldn’t kill her. No. That would be far too easy.
When she finally went limp in his hands, Emory’s arms came up under hers to support her weight. Joseph released her neck, stood back admiring the marks left by the grip of his fingers. His eyes lifting to Emory’s, he said, “She’s all yours.”
Joseph chuckled. “I’m sure she won’t mind whatever you wish to do with her. She has a thing for guards.”
A smile slid across Emory’s face and he dragged Arianna’s body from the room, disappearing down a long corridor while Joseph stood by his desk and watched her be delivered to her fate. He was empowered again, rediscovered pride settling within his body and mind for finally having conquered the one thing in his life that had betrayed him the most.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Arianna woke up slowly. Her arms burned where they felt like they were being pulled from her shoulders and her wrists felt like the skin had been ripped from the bone. Her head swiveled on her neck, and the room blinked in and out of focus while she struggled to wake up.
The tops of her feet brushed across the floor, but she placed them both down firmly, pushing up on her weak legs to decrease the pressure to her arms. The metal of the chains above her rattled with her movement and when she was finally able to fully open her eyes the room came into view.
With a quick glance it looked like the spare bedroom she’d decorated; but closer inspection revealed the filth on the floors, dried blood ground into the grout between the stone tiles. A fetid smell permeated the walls and air and the bed stood in the center, disheveled with stained blankets. She fought not to get sick, her already sensitive stomach contesting the putrid scent.
She was alone in the room and she quickly surmised that she was chained to a wall, left hanging by whoever had placed her there and left alone to wake up. She remembered Joseph choking her, and that his guard, Emory, held her while she lost consciousness. The chilled air against her skin told her that someone had removed her clothes and she trembled at the thought of what was to be done to her.
Arianna didn’t know who’d be walking through the door of the room. She couldn’t believe it, but she actually prayed it would be Joseph. She couldn’t stand the thought that Emory would be allowed to touch her. Her prayers weren’t realized, however, and within the hour, Emory entered from the hall.
“Oh, good. You’ve woken up. We can get this started finally.” Emory’s voice had the tone of a man diseased.
Arianna’s body grew cold, sweat breaking out on her skin from fear of being left alone with Joseph’s guard. “What are you doing? Where’s Joseph?”
Emory snickered, his laugh as disgusting as his voice. “He doesn’t want you anymore, told me I get to play with you now. Aren’t you excited?”
Approaching her, one hand came up to rub along her stomach and breasts, while the other moved between her legs. Her body retched and she attempted to move away from him despite the chains that bound her to the wall.
“Oh, yes. This will be so sweet. I’ve been wanting to fuck you for years, Arianna.” He chuckled. “I just didn’t want to take the chance of ending up like your boyfriend. I knew Joseph would eventually grow tired of you.”
“Emory, you need to stop. I’m pregnant…it’s Joseph’s child. You have to go get him so that I can tell him.” Arianna begged with everything she had. She hated lowering herself to the sick man that stood before her, but she had not choice if she was going to save her life.
Sadly, Arianna didn’t care if she lived or died, but when she remembered the two boys she’d left in the music room, she knew she had to fight – for them. Her heart felt like it broke into slivers at the thought that Aaron and Xander would have no one if something were to happen to her. She couldn’t stand it, the thought of never hugging them again, playing music with them or watching them play.
“Oh, God, Emory, PLEASE go get Joseph…he needs to know!” Her voice creaked out around the pain Emory’s touch was inflicting on her body. She begged and screamed for him to stop, but his hands, his mouth and his teeth explored every inch of her skin, forced sensations through her that made her want to die where she stood. “Please….”
Emory laughed, the heat of his breath moving over her skin before he stood up to look her in the eye. Reaching for his belt, Emory licked his lips. “I won’t be telling Joseph anything except for how good it felt to fuck you as you died. Trust me, baby, after a few hours, you won’t be pregnant any longer. I intend to enjoy myself tonight.”
Arianna fought against the chains while screaming out for her husband. She was desperate for him to hear her, to come in the room so she could tell him why he couldn’t let Emory do this. But it was no use. After a few minutes, her throat became raw and she could barely squeak out a sound. Emory stood watching her silently, his eyes turning an impossible black he reached for his pants and unbuckled them to let them fall to the floor.
“You’re screwed, Arianna.” A evil laugh rumbled through his chest. “Literally.”
Grabbing her hips with his hands, he turned her so that her face was pressed against the wall. He lifted her towards him, shoving inside her so forcefully, that her nose bled from where it impacted with the wall. It didn’t take long for him to finish and start again, ripping apart the sensitive flesh of her core and her ass. She could feel blood trailing down her legs within minutes and she screamed for Joseph the entire time despite the pain in her throat.
When Emory had finished he stepped away from her. Taking his cock between his hands, he looked over the blood and laughed when he raised his red hand to show her the stain. “And to think…that’s just the beginning.”
Emory moved quickly across the room and opened a drawer of a dresser and started pulling out tools and instruments. Arianna’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened when she saw the knives, pliers, razors, and medical instruments he pulled from the drawer. She couldn’t help herself and she threw up, the vomit trailing over her body adding to the horrendous smell of the room.
Emory looked over and smiled to see that she’d gotten sick. Tsking he made his way back over to her and ran his finger through the mess, forcing it back between her lips. “You dropped something.”
She spit out instantly and he pulled his finger away laughing. “If you are trying to sicken me so I won’t touch you, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that, bitch.”
Her head fell against the wall, tears forcing themselves from her eyes and the flood of emotions thr
ough her body crippling her legs below her. Uselessly she swung on those chains, but she couldn’t find the strength to push herself back up. Her thoughts drifted to the past; memories of Connor, of laughing by the stream, the sunlight heating their skin in a place where they could escape their lives. She thought of the boys, of their laughter, their cries. She imagined both of them as they grew; heartbroken to know that she would never see them become adults. Absolute loss consumed her, but even with the intensity of that pain, it was easily shadowed by the pain of knowing her babies would be left to the will and instruction of a madman, that their lives would be drowned in the black pit that existed within Joseph’s Estate. She thought about the boys faces as she left the music room and she died inside knowing it was the last time they would see each other.
Life wasn’t fair. The fairy tales and stories she’d been told as a child were nothing more than fantasy, a dream that could never become true. There was no prince that arrived on a white horse, no frog that turned into the perfect man when kissed by the princess. No. Her life was anything but fair, an illusion of a future that she would never know, a light that was extinguished by the man she married so many years before. And now, she hung on a wall, given to a madman, a soulless bastard who reveled in pain, in blood, in death. She hated that he was the last person she would see, would know. So she closed her eyes, tried to go to a place where she could escape the room where she was trapped. She thought of her family, her old friends, but mostly she tried to see what awaited her when she died, wondered if Connor’s soul was washed clean of the murders he’d committed when he’d given up his life trying to save hers.
She heard Emory when he moved back to the dresser and she opened her eyes when he selected a small blade. She didn’t want to see what was coming, she wanted to stay in the place of beauty and light she’d just imagined. But she couldn’t look away. Sliding back to where he took a position in front of Arianna, he smiled and held up the blade. “Do you know what I’m going to do with this?” In a singsong voice, he added, “I bet you don’t.”
Another sick laugh and he dragged the tip of the blade along her inner thigh, before resting it over the opening to her body.
Looking deep into her eyes, he pressed his forehead to hers. His rotten breath trailed over his face and she closed her eyes trying to hide the fear that she felt. He laughed.
“Ready for me bitch? We’re about to have a really fun time.”
Epilogue
Joseph stood proud looking at the fire that consumed his wife’s body. Over the years and many deaths in his house, he’d found it easier to burn the remains than bury them. He’d had a field cleared down to the sand and a space erected to hold the corpses while they were turned to dust.
His hands folded at his back, he looked upon a thing that should have brought him great satisfaction. But instead, his heart sank into an abyss as the last bit of humanity he’d had left him was ripped from his chest.
He had to admit the bitch had claws.
It was irritating against his thoughts, the fact that even in death, she’d bested him.
The evening that she’d been dragged away, he’d sat in his office, allowed a whore to suck him off while the bloodcurdling screams of his wife echoed through the halls. He didn’t know what Emory was doing to her and he didn’t care. He felt gratification in the sound, it was a pleasurable music – one that fed the violence his soul craved. By the time he’d bent the whore over his desk, he’d released himself three times. But it wasn’t the whore that excited him; it was the screams.
The morning hours approached, and she’d grown silent. He wondered if Emory had finally ended her life. Curiosity got the better of him and he ventured down the corridor to the room where she’d been taken. Opening the doors, he found her chained to the wall, stripped bare, blood dripping from almost every orifice of her body. He’d seen Emory’s work before and it never failed to impress him, just how demented his guard could be.
When he looked over Arianna’s limp body, her arms stretched above her head and her legs hanging lifelessly on the floor, he felt nothing. No pain, no remorse, none of the emotions he’d assumed he’d feel through the years if she’d died. Breathing a sigh of relief, he stepped into the room.
He approached her slowly - couldn’t stop looking over what she’d become. Reaching out he went to move the hair from her face, and when she coughed, when blood sputtered from her mouth to the floor, he jumped back, surprised to find that she was still alive.
“How was it, beautiful? Did he treat you as well as the other guard?”
Her one eye looked up at him, the white surrounding the blue made red with broken blood vessels. Her other eye was missing. She spit out more blood from her mouth, and struggled for air. He expected tears, expected her to beg for him to release her, but when she smiled around the multiple cuts in her lips, his eyes narrowed.
“You should have listened to me, Joseph.” Her voice was barely a whisper. She’d been held in that position for too long and had been beaten so thoroughly, it was cutting off her ability to breath. But even still, while slowly suffocating, she somehow found the determination and strength to state her final insult, a statement meant to mock her husband.
“Aaron…I don’t know who fathered him. You’re correct about that. But I did give you what you wanted, you would have been a father if…” She coughed again, red dribble escaping across her lips to slide down her chin. She breathed heavily, a loud wheeze present and the recognizable sound of fluid bubbling in her lungs.
“I’m pregnant, Joseph…. your child.” She laughed, the sound was disturbing coming from a person in her condition. “All this time, all these years; the one thing you’ve always wanted…destroyed by your insanity.”
His spine straightened and his muscles tightened over his tendons and bones, when he accused, “You’re lying…”
“I’m not. I’ve known for a week, I was going to tell you, tried to tell you before…” Forcing herself to look up at him, she weakly said, “Do you remember that day in your office, the one when you told me that some of the best things are the one we must wait for?” She choked on a laugh. “For how much time it’s taken, this child would’ve been special like you said…a gift given to you when you least expected it. And you destroyed it before it was ever given life.” Her head dropped and her face looked to the floor when she added, “So much intelligence…so little common sense.” Another curt laugh before her drowning cough. Her head fell, her strength giving out as her body weakened to a point of death. A rattle sounded in her chest and he grabbed her face, forcing her to look at him.
“Tell me your lying, Arianna, tell me…”
But it was too late. Her one eye still open, Joseph could tell that the light had left her. His fingers searched for a pulse, and finding none he let her body fall back against the wall.
Now he stood watching her body turn to dust. He hadn’t wanted to believe her, had attempted to convince himself that she’d lied. Warring emotions raced violently through his mind, the idea that he could - that he had finally succeeded in fathering a child and the nagging belief she’d left with him that he’d destroyed his own immortality.
His mind fought violently against him. It couldn’t be true, he tried to force the thought from his head, but it refused to release him. He’d never know, never be given the chance. And the nagging doubt and denial of truth was the last push over the precipice from genius to madness, the last nail in the coffin for Joseph’s sanity.
He heard Emory’s footsteps come up behind him. Twisted satisfaction written across the face of his guard when he finally took a position at Joseph’s side. They stood silently watching the flames dance into the night sky. Normally there would be many men standing around the pyre, but on this night, it was a secret release of the life he’d known before The Estate had started, a silent disposal of the last person who dared betray him.
“What will you do with the boys? Have you decided to dispose of them as well?”
/> Irritation brushed across Joseph’s mind. But he made promises to the parents of those children, had taken from them the thing that had always been denied to him. “No. They’ll remain here.”
“What are our instructions when it comes to them?”
Joseph sighed loudly, annoyed to be disturbed so quickly after Arianna’s death. “I want them educated, trained. I believe both of them have the potential to be assets to The Estate. Aaron is still my son, Emory. Never forget that.”
“But, his father was…”
“I don’t want to fucking hear about that again. As far as this network knows, as far as the child knows, I am his father. I can raise him to be like me, to take over this network when I die. His life will still be a reminder of mine and that is all that concerns me. Perhaps I’ll get one of the whores pregnant. If that happens, then Aaron may meet with an unfortunate accident.”
Joseph turned to his guard. “Do as I instruct, Emory, without question.”
Emory nodded his head and turned to walk back to the building.
Left alone, Joseph returned his focus to the flames. His eyes followed the black smoke that billowed out and covered the light cast by the full moon above him. When the flames had finally extinguished, when there was nothing left of the woman who’d torn him apart from the inside out, he stepped away.
He turned, walked slowly to the mansion lit brightly against the night sky. Joseph had gained what he needed, but it was still a stain, a small spot of imperfection that he would work diligently to cover up. He was certain that one day, Aaron would be nothing more than a mirror image of the man that raised him. He’d be a charismatic man that would be able to command a room just by his presence, he’d make Joseph proud and still remind the men of the network that Joseph had achieved it all.
Approaching the building, Joseph placed his hand on the door handle of the west entrance and pushed forward into his kingdom – it was a place that every man feared, a force so strong that it was respected by the authorities and criminals alike. And it was his. He ruled it.