Page 44 of Enemy of the State

This hellhole isn’t an environment conducive to getting what I want.

I let her rest for more than a week after finding her falling apart on the floor of her cell. It was all I could do to hold back the resentment and anger I felt at myself for getting her to that point. The self-loathing and regret have chewed me up this week, and I’m still waiting to be spat back out. I’m a disgusting animal that deserves to be locked up along with the prisoners below my feet. I’m no better than Kazi.

But Louhi is.

She’s got a dark allure to her that reels you into her snare, trapping you there as you wait for her to feast on you. And, fuck, if I don’t want to get swallowed whole.

Bringing her in for a session today was too soon—for both of us. I shouldn’t have done it, even if her screams seemed to be drenched in sugar. I’m still fighting the erection she left me with, but I refuse to touch myself, no matter how much I want to. I want to bathe in the sound of her screams, letting them bubble around me, but I don’t want them this way, not anymore. I want them solely for me. I want them because shewantsto give them to me.

I only chose the whips today because I wanted to see if I could match the whip to the scar on her side, and I knew the second I trailed the snake whip up her torso that it was the culprit. She made a valiant attempt to hide her apprehension, but it still swam in her chocolatey gaze. It was that glimpse of tension that had me picking up the knout instead. I wanted so badly to reach into her mind and wrench the memories out, one by one, uncovering the source of her pain.

I’ll find my way back to Lou’s cell later with salve for her welts and gashes. I can’t let her suffer, even if I’m supposed to. Even if I enjoy inflicting pain when it comes to Lou, the guilt still edges in, clouding my head in a blanket of thick fog.

Lou isn’t a job for me anymore, despite the way I’ve beentreating her. Fuck, I don’t even think she belongs here. I don’t want to be breaking her hands, stuffing her in small iron boxes, nearly drowning her, or anything else. I want to be done. But you don’t tell the government you’re done. I’ve signed a binding contract and there’s no escaping until I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain. Too bad for me that won’t be for another three years. However, Lou only has a matter ofweeksuntil her months are up,notthat she knows that.

I’m still waiting for Major Thompson to show his damned face so I can talk to him about Lou. I’m growing restless and anxious to share my suspicions regarding Lou to Command.

What will they do with her? Will they transfer her away, or let her rot here?

I’m powerless to kill her, though I haven’t shared that with anyone. I’m past the point of being able to hold my Glock to her temple and pull the trigger or slice into her vein and watch her bleed out. Ican’t—won’t—watch her bright, beguiling light blink out of existence.

The sturdy metal door bangs against the wall as Jace appears, the rooftop access slamming shut behind him with a resoundingboom. He slumps into the chair beside me, slipping a cigarette free from the pack on the armrest. It’s a good thing he brought more of those when he came back from the mainland, because we’ve been flying through them lately as we try to puzzle out what the hell landed Lou here. We’re no closer to answers though, just sootier lungs.

“Just got word that Thompson will be here tomorrow afternoon.” Smoke billows from his mouth, briefly dancing with my own before a breeze whisks it out to sea.

Anxiety blooms in my chest. Thompson could either have my head—Jace’s, too—for not getting the answers they require, or he could hear me out, seeing things from my point of view.

The blue of the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see—then beyond that—as the waves crash against the rock face below us. It’sdifficult to imagine other islands and continents existing when you see the world from this vantage point. It’s isolating out here, cut off from the world, stuck in an inaccessible place that no one knows about. You truly are an exile here, even if you aren’t locked in a cell.

“Fucking finally,” I mutter.

“He’s going to be pissed she hasn’t broken.”

Silence falls between us like snow that I haven’t seen in years as I exhale a puff of smoke. Eventually, I admit, “I think she’s beginning to.”

He faces me, his mouth parting in surprise, transforming his round face into more of an oval. His dark eyebrows crease and his amber eyes appear murky with confusion. “What do you mean?”

“She’s not breaking forus. She’s breaking for herself.”And that’s far more dangerous than shattering for me, I add in my mind. A cold shiver runs down my spine as the revelation blooms to life with my breath.

“How do you know?”

“Her eyes told me. She’s hurting.” I don’t tell him about the way I found her in her cell. Something about seeing her broken on the floor felt far more intimate than anything we might have done alone together in the playpen, for my eyes only. It’s why I immediately deleted the footage of her breakdown.

He scrubs his free hand over his mouth a couple of times, grumbling, “Fuck, man, she can’t break like that right now. I don’t—” He falls silent, sucking on his cigarette for a moment. “If she breaks right now, she’s fucked. She’s not giving youanything, even in…private?”

Gazing out at the horizon, I shake my head before dragging my attention back to him. “I don’t think there’s a single thing anyone could do to that woman to get her to talk.” I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I dig the heel of my palms into my eye sockets. “I thought if maybe I changed things up, started fucking with her—literally—she might be caught off guard enough to give me something to work with. Well, that’s what I told myself, anyway.”

Deep down, I know that’s not why I stripped her bare, desperate to see what was underneath her tough exterior. Regardless of my motive, things have backfired epically; the beautiful woman with a steadfast resilience beneath her solid façade only enthralling me further.

His smile is conspiratorial, and I know what Jace is about to say before he ever opens his mouth, but I force myself to hear it anyway. “You like her.”

“So do you,” I argue, pinning him with a flat look.

He scoffs, but amusement dances in his gaze. “Yeah, I do, but not in the same way you do.”

Silence swims between us, as quiet, yet thick as a school of a thousand fish gliding through the ocean beyond us. Eventually, I murmur, “She needs a chance.”

He nods slowly, as if he’s thinking. “How do we play this?”

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