The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (23 page)

“No!” I shook my head and tried to push to my feet, but the heel of my shoe caught on my dress and I collapsed to the ground.

He turned away from me and for a moment I thought he was going to leave. Just leave me there. And for the barest moment I had hope. But then it was all squashed when he grabbed the large trashcan and shoved it against the door handle.

“How could you do this to me, Faye baby?” He was on his knees now, before me. His eyes were pleading, deceptive, swirling with the hate.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You did. You took
my
baby.” It was the first time I said the words out loud since they took him. My little boy, that I had spoken about him.

“He was my baby too, Faye. I didn’t want to give him up, but your mother made me. She made us. She did this to us.” His eyes were glassy, as if it killed him to think about it. To think about the loss of the baby he had put inside me.

“You didn’t care about that baby. You didn’t care about me.” I wouldn’t be fooled by his lies. I knew him better than anyone else. He was the man who had fucked me even though I was dying from the butchered abortion. The man that came inside me while my mother begged him to stop.

“You’re killing her!”

“I’ve always loved you, Faye baby. But you ran away from me.”

“I had no other choice.” The tears poured down my face. “You didn’t give me any other choice.”

“I was going to take care of you forever. I was going to give you another baby.”

“But I couldn’t have babies anymore after that. You took that from me!” I shouted. It was the first time I had ever raised my voice at him. I had always been too afraid, too terrified. But what was there to be afraid of now? I had nothing.
Nothing.
There was nothing else he could take from me. He took my childhood, my innocence. My belief in love. My child. My future children. Everything.

“You made me take it from you!” he roared just before he slammed his fist into the side of my face. Pain exploded in my head as I slumped back against the wall. “You made me do those things. You made me hurt you! I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to hurt you. You’re the only person I’ve ever fucking loved, Faye.”

I blinked against the pain, but his fist slammed into me again, sending me sprawling sideways.

“No!”

“Shut up!”

“No!” I shouted, the coppery flavor of blood coating my mouth. I twisted trying to move away from him, but then I heard the sound of his zipper. And that’s when things changed. I had been here all my life in this place. This dark hollowed out prison where only the two of us, Taylor and I, Lover and Stranger, existed. I realized that I wouldn’t win. I could
never
win when it came to Taylor. He had always prevailed, but that was because I let him. I let myself get lost in the darkness, in him. I let myself believe that I was broken. And maybe I was, but it was only because I had let him break me. It wasn’t the other way around.

“I hate you!” I screamed in his face, spitting blood on his flawless skin.

“Fuck you.” I saw his fist coming this time, but my head was still spinning and I couldn’t avoid it. I heard the crack of my cheekbone before the pain came. The sound seemed to echo in my head. And then it was there. The all-encompassing pain, it overwhelmed me until I laid limp against the wall. The world swimming in red before my eyes.

“Why do you make me do this to you, Faye baby?” Taylor’s face came into view. The face I used to love. The face that belonged to the man who had hurt me over and over until there was no end. Wetness dripped on my face, it mingled with my blood. His tears. “Why do you make me hurt you? All I want to do is love you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” He moved me while he talked, rearranging my legs roughly, spreading them apart, tearing my dress for better access. He pushed down his pants.

“You don’t love me.” My words were garbled and thick.

“Yes, I do. It’s why I brought you this.” He shook a little plastic baggie in front of my face, the white powder dancing around inside.

I didn’t want it. I didn’t want Taylor to fuck me, either. But I knew it was going to happen. He shook the powder onto his hand, between his thumb and forefinger. I watched as he brought it to my nose. But my nose was all snotty and I couldn’t inhale it. I tried to. I didn’t want it. Not really. But I
needed
it.

“Take it!”

But I couldn’t. My nose wouldn’t work right and my head was spinning.

“Fucking
take
it.” He shoved his hand against my nose, his thumb hitting my broken cheek.

I moaned in pain and he took the opportunity to dump the coke in my mouth. The taste made me gag, mixed with my coppery blood.

“You’re mine.” He forced my jaw closed with his hand, making me swallow. “Always.”

And then he was pushing himself inside me. The feeling was familiar and foreign all at once. But for the first time in my life I didn’t stay quiet while he fucked me, so others wouldn’t hear. It wouldn’t be like that time in the dressing room, where I didn’t want it, but I was too afraid to tell him no.

I screamed as he moved roughly inside me. I screamed for Rhett, for Sarah, for my mother who would never hear my cries again. I screamed for my baby boy. For all the things I would never have. I screamed for him. For Taylor. For all the ways he had broken me, for all the tiny pieces of him I couldn’t put back together. I screamed for the good times, for the bad. I screamed until fists pummeled my face. Until the only noise I could make was a pathetic whimpering moan.

But then it was over. Taylor’s weight gone. Someone was towering over me. Angry hateful voices. But it didn’t matter. I let the thick heavy blanket of pain wash over me…and take me far away.

NINE

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. My father wasn’t on top of Faye. He wasn’t pummeling her beautiful face with his fists. He wasn’t fucking her on the bathroom floor.

He wasn’t.

He couldn’t be.

She moaned, her cries nothing but a gurgling sound.

“I love you, Faye baby. I love you,” Dad moaned as he thrust his hips.

And then everything clicked into place and I was moving, digging my hands into his jacket, jerking him away from her. His dick flopped out and then it was real.

He’s raping her.

“What the fuck?” I slammed his back into the wall.

“She’s mine, Rhett!” His eyes were wild. “You can’t have her! I won’t let you have her!” He fought me, trying to punch me in the face, but I dodged it.

“What do you mean, she’s yours?”

“She’s always been
mine
,” he hissed.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because she’s mine!” He started laughing then, it was this hideous chuckle I’d never heard before. “It doesn’t matter how much you want her, or how many times you have her. She will always be mine, Rhett!” He shoved at my shoulders and I stumbled back before righting myself. “I had her first. Before anyone else. She’s mine!” He cackled again.

I glanced down at Faye. She was unconscious, blood streaming down her face and out of her mouth. Her dress was hiked up, angry red marks on her thighs from where they had been forced open. And it hit me.

The look on Faye’s face when I left her alone with Dad in the hospital room. She’d looked panicked but it didn’t make sense. She wasn’t going to be alone in there. He would be there with her. I’d thought it was because of the drugs, that’s what I had accepted, but that didn’t fully make sense either. Why would she try to kill herself again? Why had she tried to in the first place?

“Some things just aren’t meant to be, Rhett.”
Her words from that day in doctor’s office, just after I first found her and she told me she couldn’t have kids. I couldn’t understand it. How she’d had her uterus removed and I hadn’t known about it. I had just been there, at the house and she had been fine that summer.

But it all made sense now. “You raped her, when she was just a teenager.” I nearly choked on the words as they came off my tongue.

“It was never rape. She loves
me
! She’s always loved me! Since she was nine years old she’s been mine! Mine!”

“No.” I shook my head back and forth. “You didn’t. You didn’t!” I shouted. The images ran through my head. Images of Faye as a little girl. An innocent little girl.

“She loves me! She’s always loved me until you came home that summer.” Dad was breathing hard. “I don’t know what you did to her, but you changed her love.” He clenched his bloody fists. Her blood. “But I had to punish her.”

“I was fifteen for a whole year after that.”
Her response when I asked her about how it could have happened, how I didn’t know.

“You fucking monster.” I lunged at him with everything I had, slamming him into the wall. His head bounced off the plaster and I swung my fist, catching him in the cheek. All I could see was Faye in the bedroom that day before she tried to kill herself. The look on her face when I said she was a prostitute. He’d been about to fuck her then, give her the drugs and the fuck her. But she didn’t know what he would do once he found out the truth about where she’d been. I’d never told him. Not until that day. The fear on her face hadn’t made sense to me. But it did now. “You were supposed to protect her! She was a child!”

I saw her running toward me as a little girl, her arms open, her face smiling, happy. I saw her sitting before me, a fifteen year old girl begging me to make love to her. It hadn’t made sense, why would she seek that from me? But now it did. It fucking did. My fist seemed to move of it’s own accord slamming into my father over and over until arms were pulling me back, voices surrounding me. Until all I could think about was Faye and the fact that she wasn’t covered up. That she was bloody and broken on the floor, her legs open, her most intimate parts bare to the world.

I jerked away from them and fell to my knees crawling to her. Her face was purple now, her cheeks swelling, blood leaking from her lips and her eyebrow. I jerked her torn dress down covering her. The voices were behind me, loud and chattering. Someone was shouting. Someone tried to pull me away, but I wouldn’t let them.

I pulled Faye into my arms.

Weren’t we just here?

But now I understood. I knew why she was here. Why she laid on the bathroom floor, her beautiful dress torn, her body violated and broken. It was because I was too stupid to see the truth. It had been there before me all along. How had I missed it? The looks he gave her? The protective way he acted toward her, her whole life?

“She needs to be with me. With the person who loves her.”

He’d said those words just before I found her in his bathroom, dying.

“Fuck!” I shouted, holding her protectively against me.

I had thought it was because he loved her, like a father should. But not like this. Never like this.

But I had been wrong and we were here. In the bathroom, on the floor. Faye broken, bloody. The truth finally visible before my eyes. I rubbed my hand against my face, smearing blood, my father’s blood.

This isn’t real.

But it was. And there was nothing I could do to change it.

She’s not alone

In the darkness.

She searches
 

But he’s heartless.

ONE