“We were never friends,” Xavier insists with spite. “Silas probably told you that to make you feel better about your brother’s captivity at my community. At most we were colleagues, and not particularly amicable ones at that.”

  My mind immediately turns to thoughts of the profession that Silas chose after the U.S. Army Rangers rejected him toward the end of his training program. “You were a mercenary?”

  Xavier nods and takes a long drink of his whiskey, almost finishing off the glass. “The man who coordinated our jobs had a pool of us at his disposal. Some were chosen for their specific skillsets and strengths. Others were chosen because they were just that damned good. I was in that second category. I owned that fucking category until Silas came along. His fury at the whole fucking world made him unstoppable. I just wanted the money, but he was out for blood. How could I compete with that shit?”

  “Maybe he was just better than you,” I suggest bluntly before realizing the magnitude of the insult I’ve just inadvertently tossed at him.

  With a dismissive wave of his hand, Xavier responds, “It doesn’t matter. The point is that he stole the equivalent of an empire away from me. Look at what he built with the wealth he accumulated in the years that he was first pick for the jobs that should have been mine.”

  “You built your community,” I argue.

  “That’s what everyone thought, but I only happened upon it at the right time. I fortified it with high walls and took it as my own. Everyone loved me for giving them food and a safe place to live. Everyone was happy—”

  Xavier’s story suddenly stops. He takes a moment to throw back his glass to finish off the whiskey. When he drops the empty glass to the table’s surface and finds my gaze, there’s a somber look to his expression.

  “I lied before,” he says solemnly. “The people in my community were slaughtered right in front of my eyes by the invaders from the west. In the course of ten minutes, I lost everything that I built up after the downfall of society. I barely escaped with my life and the lives of some of my men.”

  The sadness in Xavier’s expression suddenly deteriorates into an enraged, determined look.

  “You must understand now why I’m here,” he continues. “Twice in my life I’ve been in the perfect position of strength and power only to have it all ripped away from me, and I refuse to let that happen again. It’s my turn to be on the other side: to be selfish and take away from those who are sitting on top of the fucking world.”

  Xavier stands up from his chair and circles the table, grabbing me by both shoulders before I can make any attempt to move away. He pulls me up to a sitting position on the table and inserts his body between my legs.

  I’m acutely aware of just how vulnerable I am like this with my bare pussy spread open to him under this yellow sundress.

  “What are you doing?” I cry out with worry.

  He considers me carefully. “If I tried to fuck you right now, what would you do?”

  I struggle against his hold, but don’t respond, my current physical resistance providing all the answer he needs.

  He reaffirms his grip to keep me exactly in place and continues, “If I radioed one of my men to jam a rifle barrel into Silas’ skull, and then I tried to fuck you, what would you do?”

  My resistance to his hold immediately stops at the thought of just how easily Xavier could give the order to end Silas’ life.

  “What would you do?” Xavier presses angrily.

  “You know exactly what I’d fucking do,” I spit out in disgust, causing Xavier’s irritated expression to transform into a look of complete satisfaction.

  “Power,” he growls from deep within his chest. “I have this ultimate power over each of you, and it feels fucking amazing.”

  I expect him to press his body closer to me so I can feel his excitement in the hard-on undoubtedly formed beneath his jeans, but he lets go of me and steps away instead, allowing me to close my legs.

  Xavier paces the patio in front of me, seeming overwhelmed with delight in this drunken moment of realization at his success. The more he paces, though, the more his look of elation dissipates. Eventually his movements come to a stop while he appears lost in thought.

  He audibly growls in frustration, then turns to me with a troubled expression. “There’s something Silas has that I can’t as easily take away.”

  He steps toward me, forcing his way in to reinsert his body between my legs despite my attempt to protest. When he reaches his hand toward my upper chest, I expect him to grab my breast and feel me all over again, but his palm comes to rest on my skin above the location of my heart instead.

  “Silas has your loyalty and devotion,” Xavier explains. “You share love with him that I can’t as easily steal away.”

  The scowl I’ve been wearing for most of the afternoon makes a firm reappearance on my face as I retort in a low voice, “I could never love you. I’ll never devote myself to you the way I devote myself to Silas. You and I will never share what Silas and I share, and that’s the power I have over you. That’s something you’ll never take away from me.”

  The slap comes hard and swift across my face, aggravating the already-bruised area of my cheekbone where Xavier hit me yesterday. When I dare to look at him again, every bit of the drunken joy he showed moments before is gone and replaced with fiery rage instead.

  “That’s enough talk for today,” he decides definitively before yanking me by the arm off of my seat on top of the wrought-iron table.

  I struggle to keep up while Xavier drags me over to the back door of the house. We barge into the kitchen to find one of Xavier’s men hovering around the stove. He’s sipping from a spoon of what looks like homemade vegetable soup simmering in a large pot. I only catch a glimpse of the signature meal that Jake has prepared before I’m pulled across the kitchen directly through the doorway into the hall.

  “Hey,” I hear Jake call from the direction of the dining room. I hear frantic footsteps behind me and turn to find Jake within feet of me, being held back by the man we passed in the kitchen.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Xavier snaps at Jake before opening the door to the dark room. I hear Jake’s continued struggle the entire time it takes for Xavier to pull me into his firm grasp and throw me onto the floor of the cement room.

  I’m expecting the door to slam shut with Xavier’s fury and seal me away from the dwindling daylight, but Xavier only stands in the doorway watching me instead.

  “Tell me what Silas did to you,” he commands. “I know the monster that he truly is. I’m sure he would have locked you away in this room while he held you against your will. Tell me what happened to you in this room.”

  He takes one step forward, his face completely shadowed now by the backlight coming from the living room. His appearance brings back memories of this room that I’ve tried to forget. I can’t deny the familiar terror that washes over me at being strewn across the cement in the darkness with the devil lurking at the door.

  When I fail to respond to Xavier’s demand, he steps back out of the room and nods down the hall. After a jumbled rush of footsteps, Jake is suddenly thrown into my view of the doorway. Xavier secures him in a chokehold, increasingly restricting Jake’s ability to breathe with each passing second.

  “He strung me up in here for hours,” I scream out in a panic, causing Xavier to release some of the pressure against Jake’s neck, allowing him to suck in some oxygen. “He bound me by cuffs and chains to the floor and ceiling.”

  “What else?” Xavier presses, reaffirming his hold around Jake at the same time.

  I breathe steadily to calm my anxiety at having to recount the horrific memories of the time I spent in this room, details that have never been fully shared with Jake.

  “Silas left me in here naked and alone on the floor for days. I stopped eating and drinking. I almost died of dehydration.”

  Xavier shakes his head with overdramatic disappointment. “He treated you worse than a beaten, caged animal and pushed you to the point of suicide, and yet you love him.”

  “Everything he did had a purpose,” I shoot back defensively. “He saw something in me that he knew we shared. He just had to help me see it.”

  “Or maybe you’re both just fucking crazy,” Xavier snarls. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. Your lives together are over. The sooner you accept that and move on, the better it will be for everyone.”

  He lets go of his chokehold around Jake’s neck and pushes him roughly forward into the room. Jake stumbles, but manages to stay on his feet as he struggles to breathe again.

  “Look at how generous I’m being to you,” Xavier says as he steps out of the room. “I’m letting you keep your dress on. I’m not stringing you up in chains from the ceiling. I’m even allowing your brother to stay in here with you. You should be thanking me for the benevolence I’m showing you.”

  I laugh under my breath at his assertion that anything he’s done since he stepped foot in our house has been for my benefit.

  Xavier’s lips turn up in a mischievous grin as he looks at me. “Rest well. I’ll see you in the morning.” He begins to close the door then stops and whispers, “Maybe you’ll even see me tonight in your dreams.”

  He closes the door the rest of the way, locking us in with the darkness once more.

  Amidst the sound of Jake’s labored breathing, I hear his careful footsteps approaching me from across the cement and then feel his hand connect with my shoulder as he finds me. He sits down right next to me and throws an arm around my shoulder to pull me close to him. We both remain quiet while Jake’s breathing normalizes.

  “You never told me just how bad it was for you in here,” Jake finally says as he tightens his grip around me.

  “I don’t like to dwell on it,” I respond immediately before thinking through how else to explain why I never told Jake the full details of what Silas did to me. “It was in the past, and when you came back into my life after the worst of it was over, I just wanted to focus on the future.”

  Jake lets out an extended sigh. “You brought out the good in Silas. He might have been a monster before, but you’ve changed him these past two years. I never would have agreed to let you and Silas try to have a baby if I didn’t think he had the temperament for it.”

  My entire body tenses at Jake’s mention of the baby that Silas and I failed to create together, the hopes that are just as crushed as the bits of wooden cradle all over the driveway.

  Jake pulls me even tighter to him. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s fine,” I manage to say through the tightening of my throat. “It’s probably better that it never happened. Imagine if we had been successful when we first tried. We would have had a tiny baby in this house when Xavier showed up at our door. Imagine what he would have done—”

  I’m overcome by my emotions, and suddenly, I’m in tears, the droplets quietly expelled from the perpetual pools of pain inside me. Jake readjusts his position to embrace me in his arms completely, keeping me from spilling my sorrow all over this cement floor.

  “We can get through this,” he encourages. “You and Silas can still have a future together.”

  I grip Jake desperately, anchoring myself to him for the strength and support that I need right now. “We don’t even know where they are,” I whisper. “We don’t know what Xavier is doing to them. We might never see them again.”

  Jake rubs his hand in calming circles over my back. “We’ll see them again, and when we do, we have to show them our resilience so they don’t lose hope. We have to be strong for them.”

  His voice breaks on the last word, and as tough as my brother is trying to be for me in the moment, I know that he needs support just as much as I do.

  We don’t talk anymore; we just hold each other in silence amidst the darkness of this cement room, releasing all of our pain in the tears that we share together. We crumble apart momentarily in preparation for putting ourselves back together enough to face all of this again tomorrow.

  Xavier hasn’t taken everything from us yet; we still have tomorrow.

  13

  It has been, strangely, a relief to have had a few days that were mostly carbon copies of each other, despite the horrible things that have happened each of those days. The mornings have all been the same as the first morning that we woke up under Xavier’s control: I’m dragged out of the dark room to stroke Xavier’s disgusting cock upstairs while Jake is forced to make breakfast for us and the men in the kitchen. The rest of each day has been just as consistent: I keep Xavier company and provide him something nice to look at and touch while Jake is busy preparing meals and cleaning the house.

  I’ve come to accept my task of pleasuring of Xavier for what it really is: a necessary primal act that is just a means to survival. In some ways, I think it’s better that we do this each morning. Satisfying Xavier’s needs up front helps keep his mind off of his sexual desires during the long hours that I spend with him each day.

  When the door to the dark room opens this morning, it’s not Xavier there to greet me. One of his men walks in and yanks me roughly from the floor and propels me through the doorway. He slams the door shut and locks it, leaving Jake yelling and beating against the door from inside.

  “What are you doing?” I ask worriedly as I try to keep up with him, struggling to keep up with the speed with which I’m being dragged down the hall.

  “Just shut up and keep walking,” he replies angrily, pulling me around the corner at the entryway now.

  We make it all the way down the hall and inside the spare bedroom that belongs to Joseph and Jake. That’s when I start to panic.

  “No. No! You can’t do this.”

  “Calm the fuck down,” he says with annoyance before pointing to the open bathroom door inside the room. “Get in there.”

  I reluctantly walk the remaining distance to the doorway and step inside the lit bathroom. My breath catches at the sight of Xavier standing naked just outside of the glass shower in the opposite corner. His erection is thick and pointing toward me. He looks absolutely fucking ravenous, and I’ve just been thrown at him like a piece of enticing meat.

  “Slip off your dress,” Xavier demands. “Let me see you.”

  It’s horrifying to think that I’d rather be upstairs fulfilling Xavier’s needs like I have been the past few days than be in this bathroom with him right now.

  I know I need to serve my purpose, though, so I slip a finger under each strap of the latest dress that Xavier has forced me to wear, sliding them down my arms until the garment falls to the floor. When my naked body is exposed to him, he motions to me with his hand to come to him.

  My feet shuffle me across the floor despite my instinct to stay far away. When I’m within Xavier’s reach, he grabs the sides of my face and pulls me to him to kiss me all over my mouth, face, and neck. His kisses find my breast and nipple, their touch causing waves of heat to pulse between my legs.

  I’m suddenly up against the wall with Xavier grinding himself against my leg. He groans as if frustrated that he’s not getting exactly what he needs, and soon I’m pulled off of the wall and thrown into the shower.

  I collide with the grey stone tiling that lines the interior of the shower and brace myself against it. Xavier steps in after me and closes the glass door behind him, trapping us both inside.

  “I’m feeling more greedy than usual,” he notes to explain why we’re here. His malevolent eyes light up with excitement underneath the messy strands of light-brown hair that drape down over his forehead. “Get on your knees.”

  “What are we doing?” I ask with trepidation, though I know exactly where this is going already.

  “You’re going to place your warm mouth on my cock,” he responds casually. “You’re going to enclose your lips around it and massage my shaft with your tongue. You’ll take me all the way to the back of your throat until you gag. You’ll do it all over and over again until I come inside your mouth, and then you’ll swallow every last bit of what I give you.”

  He steps toward me, making me cower back against the wall even though I have nowhere to go inside this shower.

  I glance down at his bulging cock, then meet his gaze again and whisper, “I don’t know if I can.”

  He laughs at my truthful comment. “That would be unfortunate. This thing between us—where you give me what I need and I spare your loved ones from more pain and suffering in return—it only works if you’re willing to give me anything I want, including fucking amazing blowjobs.”

  My breathing quickens rapidly, bringing me to the verge of panic, but I know that I need to calm myself down. I need to get this over with.

  As I’m reluctantly dropping down to my knees on the grey stone tiling, I taunt in a low voice, “Silas never forced me to suck his cock; I only ever did it willingly.”

  Xavier’s fingers grab my jaw on each side and yank it down, opening my mouth enough for him to plunge his erection inside it.

  My body responds immediately to the unexpected intrusion as I gag and cough. I try desperately to pull away, but Xavier’s hand holds me firmly in place behind my head.

  “Do as I asked,” he commands before plunging himself even deeper.

  I recover more quickly from the gagging this time, fully accepting now that I need to do this for him, no matter how much the act of it sickens me.

  My lips encircle his shaft, and I take him in willingly this time, sucking on him with the full force of my mouth at the same time that my tongue moves along the bottom of his shaft. He moans above me each time I take him fully into my mouth again.

  As pleasured as he sounds, he eventually lets out a frustrated groan and says, “You can do better than this. Put as much effort into it for me as you would for Silas.”

  At first I dread thoughts of Silas while I have this fucker’s cock inside my mouth, but I quickly realize that those thoughts are exactly what I need to get through this. It’s easy enough to imagine that I have my mouth on Silas instead of Xavier, so I go with that mental image and step up my efforts to bring this to conclusion.