Page 53 of A Light in the Darkness
The spot on the ground catches my attention as I stand, so I run the flat of my foot over it, feeling for any sort of interruption in the texture. There’s none, and when I move my toes over it slowly, it shrinks in size.
It’s a reflection, nothing more, but that means that there is light. And light means hope, so I spin, twisting the chains over my head to try and see behind me. But there’s only darkness there, uninterrupted and vast. I can’t see where it ends, can’t tell how big the basement is. I can’t remember from looking at the house whether there appeared to be windows at ground level, but if there are any, they’re covered completely.
I look up instead, squinting through the darkness for anything. When I find it, another quick burst of hope explodes inside my chest, but I can’t make out what it is. Not an escape route, not sunlight, but maybe the flashing of a security camera, recording this whole wicked show. My stomach clenches at the thought of not just what he could do to me, but what he could do with thefilm, of who could see it. If I die down here, will he release it? Will the people in my life see me in my final moments?
A current is threatening to rip me into the downwards spiral, so I fight it off, feeling through the darkness for my shoe. Once I get it, I kick it behind me, so when my clumsy fingers close around it, I can tear out the laces. It’s a shot in the dark, quite literally, and if I miss, I run the risk of losing my only weapon… not that I think I can do much with a single, dirty shoelace, but I suppose there’s a reason they take them from you in prison.
My first attempt to throw the shoe results in it smacking me in my own head, so I move forward, letting the chain tighten around my neck to get more leverage for my arms. The second attempt ends with my shoe falling to the ground without making any kind of noise alerting me of a connection, so I try again.
I’m on the twelfth try, with my second shoe since the first one ended up somewhere out of my range of motion, when I hear the first clunk of whatever I hit, and the second clunk of it landing right next to me. Inspired by my accuracy last time, I try again, getting a grip on the toe with one hand and bending over as far as I can to maximize the distance.
I don’t hear the sound of it hitting this time, because it’s immediately eclipsed by the loud, mechanical chirping that seems to come from whatever I just hit. An alarm of some sort. It beeps like some kind of countdown, and then all of a sudden, a shrill screaming sound comes from it, making it clear that the previous noise was just a prelude to this.
A smoke detector.
The thought flashes through my mind half a second before the sprinklers turn on. And then the whole room lights up with a strobing red light that cuts through the drops of water raining down on me.
Chapter thirty-two
Remy
I’m going to be sick. No one is saying the quiet part out loud, and even though we may be able to find her, it may not matter. I’ve raked my hands against my scalp so many times I actually ripped out a small chunk of hair, and I can’t make my foot stop tapping.
Wes pulls his hand away from his head and sits up, looking fit to kill me. “Fucking stop it.” He growls. “You won’t be any use to her if you’re too busy having a psychotic break.”
He’s right, and that pisses me off. I don’t dare admit as much to him, but I don’t have to, because he knows. “I thought you knew better than to go and catch feelings, Boudreaux. They turn you into a pathetic bitch, even more than you already were.”
“Coming from you,” I sneer.
He cocks an eyebrow, watching me imperiously. “Which means what?”
“Yourwife?” I almost choke on my laughter. “You couldn’t have the original, so you had to go and get yourself a replica? You sure you didn’t clone her with daddy’s money?”
“Cute, Rem, but no. What I told you back there was the sad, sick truth. Call it fate, call it shit luck, call it divine karma, I don’t care. The truth is their mother was one of our father’s whores, and eventually, she wasn’t useful to them anymore. She was killed so they could sell her babies. Some rich fuck bought Violet, and she had a good life right up until they repossessed her.”
There’s a lot of things I want to demand he elaborate on, but the only word that comes from my mouth is, “Repossessed?”
“Mm,” he nods, leaning forward to roll his shoulders. “You’ve heard of repo men.”
It’s not a question.
I have, of course. In a business like ours, there are several classes of men.
Collectors, fixers, figureheads, enforcers, masters, and repo men. When someone owes a debt, it’s the repo men that come to collect. “You can—repossess a person?”
“Of course you can.” He sneers. “Haven’t you ever read the fine print on any of the girls you bought?” When I say nothing, he laughs. “Why would you? You never planned to keep them.” He rolls his eyes to show me exactly what he thinks of me. “You have to pay in full, of course, when you make a purchase. It’s the same for the children as it is if you’re just getting a slave. The difference is, the risk is higher with children, so the system is different. You have to keep paying your dues, year after year, or you get foreclosed upon and we take back what we lent to you.”
“I’ve never paid—”
“You’re the son of a Grand Vizier. Of course you’ve never paid dues.” He shakes his head and leans forward, pouring one of the glasses between us full of whiskey. When he hands it out to me, I shake my head, so he drains it instead and then puts it down in favor of the bottle.
“I don’t understand.” I tell him truthfully. “What do you mean, Grand Vizier?”
“Christ, Remington, your ignorance is astounding. What have you actually done with your life? Has your head just been up your sister’s ass so far you never realized what was going on around you?”
I don’t like the way he talks about my sister, but I want the information he’s giving me, so I ignore that. “I neverwanteda place in this world.”
“You never had a choice.” He laughs. “Neither did I.” I don’t know if he means for me to sympathize with him, but I don’t. “Myfather’s empire… he didn’t build it alone, no matter how much he tries to claim he did. The Brotherhood was born hundreds of years ago, when trading slaves was far more acceptable. It was a gathering of the elite, where they could go to trade off the whore they’d impregnated before their wives found out… a place to meet others of similar…tastes.”
