Page 207 of Deep Cover

12

Annie

Vincent would never own me. But he was determined to hurt me.

"Maybe you think you know Cole St. Martin." He was circling me.

I was on the floor again, my hands tied behind me. He'd wrestled me down there by himself, not even calling for security, though I sensed them no further away than the other side of the door.

"You don't know him." He was stripping off his clothes, the expensive as fuck linen shirt, the tie, the trousers made for him by some tailor who deserved every cent he got just for touching Vincent, and for making him look halfway good. Vincent Geddes was muscled, but nothing like Cole. He was medium height and medium build and he would never be anything like Cole St. Martin.

He knew it, too. That was part of what this little pissing contest was about. It was appalling to think how much of my pain was tied up in the ego of a man who wasn't enough for himself.

He'd grabbed my ankles after he got me to the floor and when I started to kick, he slugged me once in the solar plexus, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. Panicked, I started to gasp. Suddenly my hands tied behind me was the most terrifying thing ever. Panic made the loss of air worse. Being constrained made it worse, despite knowing that having my hands free would do little to force the breathing again. I was so scared I hardly noticed him threading the plastic ties through one of the rings on the floor. Now my ankles were bound.

The instant he finished, he used the cord on the shift to drag my waist up, bowing my back in the middle, so my head and feet hung down and the center of my body arched. Exactly right. Exactly what he was supposed to do.

Air flowed back into my lungs and the panic rushed out on a flight of tears I couldn't have stopped if I had to in order to save my own life.

He gave me a couple minutes and then he sat down behind me, my head resting in his lap, the last thing in the world I wanted. He cut away the clothing I was wearing.

When I looked down to see what he was using, I froze. It wasn't just a knife. It was a straight razor, formed so it came to a point at the end, doubly deadly. Having just got my breath back, it was all I could do to not hold it.

His hand moved near my face and my eyes clenched shut, my face trying to hide. All at once I could see again the cuts on Kie's cheeks. They stood out like a blinding neon beacon of inescapable pain. If he did that to me, even if I got free of him, I'd never have another moment of not being marked. Never another anonymous instant in a crowd.

I'd never look in the mirror again without reliving this nightmare.

Vincent was oblivious. It didn't even feel like he was aware of me, not as some living, breathing human being. He was somewhere else. Somewhere the thing in his arms existed for him to do with what he would.

Slow tears started to course down my face. I think it's in The Witches of Eastwick, the movie, not the book, where one of the witches – Cher, maybe, or Susan Sarandon, or even Michelle Pfeiffer – says she's not afraid of growing old or dying, but it's the pain that scares her. She doesn't understand why there has to be pain.

I'm not sure if that's the point where Jack Nicholson – aka, The Devil – says, "Yeah, well, we don't deal the deck down here, we just play the percentages. Have another cherry." He then feeds the witches cherries and for every one they eat, their nemesis in town vomits up a cherry stone.

My mind was wandering.

To why there has to be pain.

To why there have to be people who inflict it, and why I can't deal my own deck.

The knife dug in. Just far enough to dimple the flesh on the inner curl of my hip. Just a dip, no more than I might get if I tried to force a staple out of a document and it jabbed my finger. A little point of pressure. No blood. Not yet.

My breathing was frantic. Uneven and harsh. Vincent didn't notice. Vincent was in his own little world, his eyes distant. Did I want him to concentrate on me or not? I wanted him to be aware of a live person here.

But not the fact that she had yet to scream.

The point of the knife slid up my body. Up over my ribs. A long white scratch followed it, nothing worse than running a fingernail over dry skin. But up. Up and up. Until he was running the blade directly under my right breast.

I couldn't still my breathing. Each breath started coming and going with great whooping drags of air. It made my ribcage rise and fall too dramatically. I was going to end up digging the knife into myself.

"Shh." Vincent said. "Shh, shh, you can't do anything anyway. Calm down."

I couldn't. I wanted to struggle but there was no way with my hands behind me and my ankles bound in hard plastic. My breath started to catch.

"Stop it." He said, coming back into himself, just a little. There was more of him present behind his eyes. "Stop it."

And the knife dug in. Just enough. Just enough to send white hot pain and a line of blood that rolled down and splashed onto the floor.

He watched it, impassive, then met my eyes. To me, his face was upside down. "See?" he asked.

The knife traveled up. The tip of it traced around and around my nipple. Around. And then.

It dug in. Just a little. A nick, nothing more. A tiny divot of flesh. No bigger than what a kitten might do while playing. No more than a mosquito bite.

I screamed. I screamed over and over until my throat was raw and Vincent sat over me and laughed, the bloody knife in his hand and a look on his face that said he'd won.

That said this was being recorded.

That said Cole was going to see this.

I wanted to scream at Cole and demand to know where he was. He had so much at his disposal, so many resources, why was I still here? Why hadn't he come to get me? Where was he?

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