Page 99 of Pretty Pink Poison
A way for him to redeem what he thought he needed to.
He didn’t, but I still loved that he wanted to.
The blood on the walls seemed real, smelled real, and made me think they’d dragged him through here just to add a bit of ambience for me.
I smiled the whole way through at all the décor that had been added, at the fact they’d put up a damn fun house within hours while I’d sat in my room, staring out the window as I watched them. They’d practically locked me in there anyway and told me to wait and let them work.
Was it sadistic and corrupt that I smiled the whole time and allowed it? Probably, but I didn’t care.
I turned the last corner in the fun house, and there in the middle of a mirrored room was a man, arms and legs zip tied to a chair, his face so bloodied that it looked like one of the masked men I’d encountered over the years. The smell of burning flesh was present too, and I could only guess what part of him they’d burned. I saw the outline of an iron at his crotch though, and it brought me a warped kind of giddiness.
“You,” Ivan whispered through his cracked mouth. His eyes were almost swollen shut, his lip bleeding, and his cheeks cut up from whatever blunt force he’d had to endure. His nails weregone too, dripping from the tips of them as they hung loosely at his side. “She’s why I’ve been tortured?”
His question wasn’t even directed at me. Bane eyed him in disgust. “Why else?”
“That… you’ll… my father will kill you all. He’ll rip apart your whole—”
“You think I care? I’d start a world war for her and burn it all to the ground.” It looked like Ivan was going to try to continue but Bane held up a hand, “Don’t talk or I’ll sew your lips shut.”
I tsked at Bane. “He can talk if he wants. I’d love to hear what he has to say.”
“What did you tell them?” Ivan asked, trying to see me through the one eye he could open.
I glanced at my pink manicure and sighed. “Not really sure I remember exactly what I said… kind of like how I don’t really remember our whole night together, Ivan.”
“You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?”
I eyed Bane when he took a step because I wanted my moment with this man, just me and him. Bane froze and nodded at me even though I saw how his muscles coiled.
“Fine, Pink. He’s yours to do what you want with. But I’d slash him here.” He pointed at Ivan’s stomach. “Here.” He motioned at Ivan’s thigh. “And here.” He waved at his face like I could choose. “He’ll bleed out enough that he may die, or maybe he’ll live and we’ll get to bleed him out every year for what he’s done to you.”
God, I loved his plans and structure in his violence—the math to the madness. It wasn’t random. It was precise, ritualized. He took cruelty and made it into order. The sight of him, so wound up and so exact in his ruthlessness, made something low and hot move through me. I’d wanted my monster, and he gave it to me, delivering pain to this man like a symphony of devastation.
I loved the devil in him probably even more than I loved how he cared for me.
Ivan didn’t. He scoffed and then spit blood from his mouth before he grumbled, “You better thnk real hard about what you do to me, Bianca.”
“Oh, I’m not Bianca.” I smiled and then skipped up to him, literally skipped, and when I was just inches from his face, I grabbed a fistful of his matted blond hair and yanked him up to look directly at me. “But Iama real piece of work now that all my friends call me Pink. And I think it’s partially because you raped the hell out of me and made me think I wasn’t worthy of love from the one person I cared about. You tookyearsfrom him and me. Do you know how mad that makes me?”
“Who?Him? Bane Black?” He shook his head in disgust. “Is that why you wanted the mask? I couldn’t believe Angela had been right about that. It was only supposed to be a little fun, Bianca. I thought you—”
I jammed the knife into his cheek, slicing through it so that his mouth was exposed and his scream curdled through the mirrors of the funhouse.
I thought it would make me a bit sick, but the rush of power did the opposite. My skin tingled, my heart sped up, my blood surged through me in delight.
I accepted that I was twisted and that I loved it right then. I glanced at Bane and smiled. “I don’t especially like a man blaming a woman and telling her whathethought, as if our feelings aren’t valid. Make note of that and make note of the fact that his sister, Angela, needs to be paid a visit.”
“Noted.” Bane nodded and rocked back on heels.
“Please.” Ivan’s begging was garbled by the blood and the hanging flesh from his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I lived with the guilt and I felt—”
I stabbed into his thigh then, hopefully hitting the artery that would make him bleed out. “I don’t like men acting like the victim either after they made us into survivors.”
“Also noted.” Bane responded again. “Can a man tell you you’re beautiful, though? Absolutely flawless when you’re vicious and merciless like you should always be, Pink.”
“If he intends to continue telling me it for the rest of my life.” I smirked at him, hinting at the very thing I would need after this, and then I turned back to Ivan.
Poor Ivan seemed to be in shock that I’d stabbed him, but his true colors came out then. “You bitch! You stupid, psychotic bitch. Youwantedit. You wanted me to—"
