* * *
Darko
I never intended to comfort her, but I don’t have the heart to push her away. She is clinging to me desperately, miserably. She is an innocent in all of this. Maybe she’s the only innocent. Her father’s death was on his own head. He was warned. He knew the risks. He had even participated in similar discussions and plans before. She doesn’t know that and there would be no point telling her that the man she worshipped was just as much a monster as those who killed him.
“You have to let me go,” she whispers. “I have to report this to the police. I have to organize an autopsy. I have to…”
“He’s been cremated. There’s nothing to autopsy.”
“No, he wasn’t, he…”
“He was cremated yesterday, after I took you.”
“What!? You desecrated his body? How dare you!”
* * *
Chloe
I pull free of his arms and I lash out with teeth and fists and feet. I don’t know how to fight, I know I can’t really hurt him, but there is no way I will let this lie. I am going to avenge my father, first against Darko, then against every single one of those who conspired in his death.
“I told you not to try that,” he growls, catching my wrists and hauling me across the room to his bed. He throws me down and pins me in place and then his hand falls over and over, finding my bare ass and thighs with harsh slaps.
He has no right to do this. This is cruel. He is punishing me for hating him, when hating him is all I can do.
“You can’t fight me,” he growls. “And you don’t need to. You may not believe this, but I am on your side.”
“No, you’re not! You’re part of the people who hurt me and my family!”
“That’s also true.” He stops slapping me, but he keeps me pinned. “Life is complex, Chloe. Sometimes the bad guys are also good guys.”
“You’re a fucking asshole, and I’m never going to forgive you, not ever.”
I start to sob again, hating my powerlessness.
He keeps me there on the bed, stops me from hitting him even though I desperately want to. He makes me feel the searing heat from his palm playing over my skin with slap after slap. Maybe I deserve them, but I don’t care if I do. Misery doesn’t encourage introspection.
“You’re going to grieve for a very long time,” he says, his voice taking on that accent that he so often hides. “Maybe forever. But your father would have wanted you to survive, and that’s what I intend to ensure.”
“Put me back in the cage.”
“What?”
“Put me back,” I sniff. “I want to be alone. I’d rather be locked up than anywhere near you.”
“You don’t give me orders,” he says. “You’re coming with me and you’re going to have something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t care.”
He gets up and pulls me up with him. We descend from the walled bedroom to the floor that I am sure a developer would love to call the ‘entertainment level’ if you let them. A massive kitchen full of stainless steel appliances produces breakfast for me: one cup of peppermint tea and one piece of buttered toast I have no intention of eating.
It is served by Darko on a small glass-enclosed patio. I sit curled on the chair, my knees drawn up and closed to protect the part of myself that has already been filled by him several times. I wonder if he has come in me, just a little. I wonder if some drop of his seed has managed to find its way inside me, sparked some new ill-fated life.
There is no damn way I am keeping it if I am. This man has done nothing to earn the title of father. He is a perverse monster who believes if he just keeps me here long enough, and hurts me in the right ways, I will fall into some kind of Stockholm syndrome and give him what he wants. He’s wrong.
I pull my eyes away from him and look out at the world beyond. The sea is stormy, the sky full of rolling heavy gray clouds boiling over the waters that extend from here to forever.
“I’m in hell,” I mumble to myself, the warmth of the cup of tea heating my hand. Otherwise, I am cold. He is keeping me naked and every breeze running through this sterile concept of a house produces fresh batches of goosebumps on my skin.
He sits opposite me and eats his toast, drinks his tea. He says nothing. I don’t detect any pity or care in his expression. It’s like eating with a totally disinterested stranger in the world’s worst café.
It’s so different when he takes me. There’s heat and fire, there’s what feels like passion. But in the moments between, there is nothing. He is shut off to me, sitting there still shirtless, as scarred on the outside as I feel I am on the inside.