Darkest Descent

21. 21

21

Alice

“Daddy Samuels is an old man now,” Hunter said, still swinging from the ceiling, his eyes wicked as he looked from me to Asher, relishing in our reactions to his news. He was saying… our dad was his? What the fuck. I’d stepped away, the shock of his words battling with the urge to scoff at them. “But he was a young man when he had me. Too young. Too stupid and cold. No one to stop him.”

I grasped Asher’s hand in my own, the knife I was going to use discarded at our feet as I sought his comfort. Neither of us could move, only listen. Decide whether we believed. Despite the lack of proof beyond his bitter word, I found myself wanting to hear more. Hunter could be related to us. We had the same hair color, a similar curve of our brow. His demeanor was like that of our uncle, who was much younger than Dad and still full of life. They worked together, and watching Dad come to terms with Uncle Ryan taking over the family business had shown him in a new light. Both of them. I could see Ryan in the way Hunter moved, the way he provoked.

It was something that had never occurred to me, so I’d never looked for it. But, fuck, I recognized the truth in his words. I had to swallow down the bile as my world threatened to crumble to even deeper ruin.

If he hadn’t already destroyed me down to the marrow of my bones, I think I would have reacted outwardly. Cried. Denied it. Anything. But instead, I just listened. Calmed my tingling, wrung out mind and body.

Asher nodded to Hunter, encouraging him to continue. Hunter smirked, but it dropped, like the memories he was diving into hurt too much. He couldn’t keep up his cockiness anymore. He’d managed it through swinging naked from the ceiling, but not anymore.

“I was five when you two were born and he told me he didn’t want me anymore. Five when he locked me in a fucking shed in the garden of his mansion and ten when he moved me into the basement of one of his dodgy warehouses. I had school there, TV, food, a nanny who cared for me. I even had tutors, a witch of a woman that would take me to doctor’s appointments and playdates. He didn’t want to raise a pussy. A pathetic, weak man, he’d say. There was something in me he didn’t like. He was always frustrated.” Hunter paused for a moment, his brow furrowed as he dug through his brain. It was clear he hadn’t planned to spill all this to us. It wasn’t some grand villain speech or big reveal meant to twist us up. He looked sad.

“It wasn’t until I was eighteen that he raped me for the first time,” Hunter muttered, and my heart squeezed. No. Fuck no. “I had that going for me, at least. He wasn’t a pedophile. I’d been beaten, sure. Starved for insubordination, yes. He murdered the nanny who I thought of as my mother. He killed her because I cried when he hit me, so she’d failed. Starvation was his favorite, sensory deprivation. All the things I’ve done to you? Guess where I got the ideas from?”

Nausea roiled up my throat, and I ached to reach for Hunter, to pull him down and stroke his fucking hair, soothe him and apologize. But no. Just because he’d had those things done to him, didn’t make it right to spread the fucking wealth. My body was ravaged, my mind destroyed. We didn’t deserve that just because of our dad. Or what he was trying to make us believe of our dad. Our family.

“I escaped when I was twenty-two. You two were seventeen. And I watched you, followed you, saw your happy life on the outside and knew it was fucking fake.” Hunter’s voice rose with the anger in his tone. “There’s no fucking way you were as well-adjusted as you seemed with a father like that. And I fucking know your mother is a worthless piece of shit. She had full knowledge of where I was, who I was. When daddy dearest went on work trips, who do you think fed me?” He glared at us, relishing in our shocked faces . “ Did he ever touch you? Beat you?”

I shook my head, appalled at his words, at his accusations. He spoke with such a bitter rawness, it was hard not to believe him. But I knew my parents. Dad had always been consistent in his vacancy, not good to us, cold and distant, strict to a fault. But his hands had never caused me physical harm. And Mom? She was the same, flippant, used us to roll out at parties and sent us on our way again when she was through. But they weren’t criminals. Why the hell would they want to keep a boy captive for twenty-two years? How could I have been so unaware? I was about to open my mouth and tell Hunter he was a fucking liar.

Then Asher fell to his knees with a heart-wrenching sob.

“Ash?” I murmured, heart bottoming out, lowering myself beside him on pure instinct. His face was twisted up in anguish, tears gathered along his bottom lashes. “Ash?”

Hunter scoffed. “He has a thing for his boys, then. Did he never tell you that you had a big brother? I guess not. As far as I can work out, my mother was a trafficked woman he fucked, then killed once I’d been ripped from her womb. He told me once I was to be his prodigy, his slave. That he didn’t have a choice, had to do it. But twins are so much better. What does he want with one when he can have two?”

“Ash?” I muttered again, ignoring Hunter’s vitriol to focus on my twin. My heart shattered, the cracks filling in with pain and confusion. “Asher.”

Hunter’s gaze snagged with mine when I looked up at him, about to beg the tied up asshole for help. But he carried on. “He raped me almost daily. Until I managed to keep a needle he used to pierce through my testicles hidden under my foot. He’d been distracted that day, I don’t know why, but he didn’t count them back in properly.” Hunter laughed, a bitter, cold sound. “Isn’t it funny that I made the same mistake? That you got free the same way?”

“You did it to me because he did it to you?” I asked, standing and taking a step towards him, battling between the urge to cause him more pain or wallow with him in my arms. Again, I saw family features. It was like looking at one of those old seeing eye puzzles, things were jumping out at me that I hadn’t noticed before. His jaw curved like my dad’s. His eyes were a similar shade. He tilted his head like Uncle Ryan.

Dad never hurt me, not like that, and to be honest, I’d never have believed he was capable of something so despicable. From Asher’s reaction, the way he was falling into that silence he used to protect himself, the distraught expression on his face and the way Hunter’s jaw was firm, his one healthy eye pleading... I believed it. I fucking believed them.

“Ash, please tell me. Use some words. I need to hear it,” I begged, still looking at Hunter. My big brother. Fuck. He was. I could see it. Unbelievable.

Asher didn’t look up as he mumbled. “He started sexually abusing me on our eighteenth birthday, like it would be better than the day before. But before that, he was grooming me. I’m sure of it.” He loosed a long sigh. “Not just for… that. But for the company. For the things he wanted me to do with him. Not just for him.”

My mind became a war zone of moments, flashes of memories, and trying to reconcile the haughty man I grew up with, to the monster being described to me. I couldn’t fathom that I’d been so blind to it all.

“You saw me once,” Hunter said, looking right at me, burning me with what looked like hatred. “I must have been about fifteen. You snuck out and hid in the boot of his car, followed him into the warehouse where he had me strung up for his buddies to whip. A bottle warehouse that was a front for the horrors of the basement. Do you remember? The beaten up teenager who begged you for help? What did he say? What excuse did he have?”

My eyes widened, and I grew distant as it rushed back to me. That strange night when I was ten. I did remember him. He was a scrawny thing then. I could only recall flashes of pale limbs and a weak, pleading voice. When Dad realized I was there, after I’d not so subtly walked down the creaky steps, he told me he’d just found the boy there, that the police were on the way, ambulances to take him to the hospital and then return him to his loving family.

“We’d saved you,” I whispered. “He said we’d saved you in finding you there.”

Hunter threw his head back and laughed. “He kept me in that same room for another seven years until I took that needle and stabbed him in the hand with it. The distraction was all I needed. He was an older man by then. I beat him until he wasn’t moving and fucking ran. Did dirty work for dirtier men until I had enough money to survive. When you’ve been raised to be as emotionless as me, it’s not difficult to kill, to harm. Easy money.”

“I need proof.” My words came out of me with little thought. I didn’t need it, nor want it. I believed him.

“You don’t,” Asher said at last, raising his head from his hands and looking at me, a broken man. “He did it to me, too.” He winced. “N-not the needles, not the extreme torture, but the… he hurt me, Al.”

The image of him shattered the remaining piece of my heart, and tears flowed from my eyes at the sight of him so ruined. How did Dad get away with it? I lived with them, with him. We had family dinners, and he came to parent’s evening to listen to my grades. How?

“He’s bedridden, you know,” I told Hunter, my mind on fire with possibilities. Hunter nodded and smirked. It was a useless thing to say, but I was stuck in a loop. Rage at my father, shock at what I’d never known. I wasn’t na?ve, but this… how could I ever have known. Our mother was good to us, vacant with it, but not unkind. Dad wasn’t good. He was away a lot, and when he was home, he was demanding. But… And he’d… I needed to look at Asher and make him tell me everything.

But he suddenly stood, grabbing the knife from the floor and striding to Hunter. Before I could do or say anything, he cut the rope holding Hunter up, and his large body slumped to the ground, legs probably numb from the hours of misuse. Mine had been. Asher fell with him.

I could only watch as the two men spoke through gazes. Hunter’s one eye displayed so much anguish and rage, bubbling and boiling beneath its light brown surface. So like ours. Fuck .

It was as if a shroud lifted. Took everything out of my sails and had me slumping back against the wall, staring at the two men.

Asher touched Hunter’s face, his expression pained as he grappled with the same thoughts as me.

“Why do it?” I asked. “Why hurt us? Do… all those things.” My heart squeezed. “What good did that do for you? It’s not like Dad knows.” My words felt hollow coming out, dots connected in my brain even as I said them. Dad had watched. He knew.

Hunter’s gaze grew to the darkest I’d ever seen. “I’ve shown the crippled bastard everything.”

“Of course you have.” If it was possible to feel even more hurt, more betrayed, more scared and shocked – I did.

Hunter chuffed a laugh and gave his head a shake, leaning into Asher’s touch. They shared the misery of their father, while I only had the misery of my half-brother in how he’d copied his every torture. “Since that first night, he’s had pictures, videos. He knew I was stalking you because I made it abundantly clear. You want to hear what he said to me once? I can show you. I still have it recorded from when I video called him from outside your dorm.”

I didn’t want to know. Refused to know. “Tell me.”

“He said just take one. Take one and fuck off. ”

“You should have spoken to us, found us, you didn’t have to—” I stopped myself from shouting at the last moment, biting my tongue and taking a deep breath.

“He said it made no difference which. If I took you, then Asher was already half-trained. If I took Asher, then you’d make a good pet to sell.”

Asher reached for me, holding his hand out, stretching. It was no effort at all to cross the room and fall into his arms. He brought me comfort, love, and I let myself sink into it, even with Hunter right there.

But when I looked at him now, it wasn’t a tormentor I saw, it was a destroyed, damaged man. I needed to see all the evidence, hear everything. Not to prove it, but to let it take a grasp of me and destroy me, too.

The three of us, we were all individually broken, beaten, ruined. All taken to our baseline and built back up in destruction and despair.

And our father had no idea what was coming for him.