Page 14 of Brutal Knight

And without.

I wish I could enjoy my life, but time has taught me that there’s always something around the corner. There’s always a worse punishment, a worse experience. There’s always something about to happen.

I can’t celebrate Dmitri’s death because I know there’s just another one like him waiting to control me. Whether they’re bad or worse is still up in the air. I just have to live through it and find out.

I want to block it out. I want to just take a pill and be numb to it all—to the panic I feel when I think about being alone, the fear when I try to imagine what the next man might be like. I know that man right now is Connor, but how long will he put up with me? I betrayed his family.

I try not to think about the need as I shower. I’m not sure how long Connor will give me, so I work fast, washing my hair as quickly as I can. The water feels amazing when it warms up. But I can’t relax, can’t let myself really enjoy this.

I know Connor is still out there, somewhere. He might come in at any moment.

I finish as quickly as I can and stare at the towels on the rack. I don’t know if I want to step outside in one, but my clothes are soaking wet and still pink with blood.

Victor’s blood.

I shudder, my entire body convulsing at the memory. Just another reason I’m itching for a fix, desperate to forget the feeling of his weight and the things he did to me.

I’ve heard people call it running. You take drugs and you run away from your problems. But that’s not true. I can’t run away from myself. I can’t run from my body, from what was done to me. The scars are there to remind me if I ever try.

It’s not about running. It’s about making it through life. I just need to survive breathing for another few seconds, survive the onslaught of memories when I see something that reminds me of the pain. I wish I could take something right now and float above it all.

Instead, I wrap up in a towel and listen at the door. I don’t hear anything, but for all I know, Connor is waiting.

It doesn’t matter, though. I don’t have much of a choice. If he’s going to do something, I’d rather not still be covered in the blood of the last man that tried to hurt me.

I step out of the bathroom and find an empty bedroom. It looks nice, or as nice as I assume it could. It’s nothing like Dmitri’s place. It looks like a real home. Dmitri’s house was all black and steel, rigid lines and uncomfortable furniture.

This is different.

Most of the furniture is dark wood, cherry-brown and glossy. The bed has deep blue sheets and more pillows than I’ve ever seen on one bed. The mirror on the wall by the bathroom looks antique, well-kept and framed with ornate bronze details. Even the pictures on the walls are faded landscapes, grainy photos that look like they were taken with an old camera.

It feels historic, somehow. Like a place that was lived in. A place for a family.

I don’t know much about the O’Reilly family. I know enough about them, about their names and relationships. But I don’t know what they believe, what their moral code is—if they have one. All I know is what I’ve seen.

Connor doesn’t seem like a monster, but monsters never do.

I realize there are clothes on the bed when I step closer. I don’t know where the hell he got them, but I guess it’s from women he’s had in his bed.

I almost want to refuse them, but I know what my own clothes look like. I don’t have much of a choice, and I’m not about to stay in bloody clothes or a towel for the sake of pride.

One thing I’m good at now is surviving. I’m willing to do what I need to do to make it another minute, another day. It used to be that I survived because I had hope. I’m not sure why I’m trying so hard anymore. It’s not like I can feel anything.

But there’s nothing else to do. I stare at the clothes on the bed and try to imagine that things are going to look up, but it doesn’t work. All I can see are clothes and the reality that I’m stuck here now.

So, I start to change.

I count scars as I go. It’s almost a coping habit at this point. I used to do it every night. I can identify all of my scars, all the days and years they’re from. They’re hard to see most of the time, hidden by clothes or too pale to recognize at first sight.

A lot of the marks are from Dmitri. Some are from my father and his friends.

There’s one near my stomach from when I was in high school. It’s a fuzzy memory of something being thrown at me, laughter, someone tilting my chin to get me to look at them. I shiver and pull on the jeans left for me.

A scar on my upper left arm is from Dmitri. He had a hot pan and he held it by me, kept threatening me with it. In the end, that one was an accident. He’d meant to scare me, not touch me. But once it burned me, he probably enjoyed the scream too much.

There’s a thin line across my right breast. It was from where a knife was dragged, when Dmitri was holding me down. It was the only time I ever saw excitement or desire in his eyes, and it was awful. He pulled it out when he was already inside me, and I went numb. I thought he was finally going to kill me.

He didn’t. He just gave me another scar, another memory that I can’t escape.

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