Wreck Me (Corrupt Legacy Series #2)

Monsters like them thrive on the weakness of others. If I want to survive, I have to play the submissive they want me to be. While every fiber in me revolts, I have played this role all my life. Survival comes before mending my ego. It’s not hard to cry and beg them for mercy. When the pain stops and they finally release me, I stumble on my feet, dropping on my knees.

Two masked men grip my elbows, dragging me through a long corridor. My relief is short-lived when they open a door, and I freeze. In the middle, there’s a glass lined steel water tank. My pulse spikes in my neck, thundering in my ears. This can’t be good. Dragging me up the ladder, one of them opens the lid. The water reaches the top and my feet root to the spot. There’s no way I can survive this. With the bit of energy I have left, I struggle to free myself, but to no avail.

With a hard push, they shove me inside the tank, closing me in. Water boxes me in while my arms and feet kick into action, trying to push myself up but there’s not even an inch left of space to suck in some air. I try to hold my breath as long as I can, fighting my instinct to inhale. But I can’t for long. Fatigue quickly shuts off my survival instinct. My body caves and takes a gulp of air, the weight on my lungs becoming excruciating. My muscles become lax, the bottom of the tank dragging me down. I’m going to die, but the strangest thing happens like I am at peace with that knowledge. I smile, thinking I loved and I was loved. Dane reaching out his hand to me while I try to grab it is the last image I have before blackness tugs at my consciousness while he drifts further away.

There’s no pain, no more struggle as I slip somewhere else, but not for long. I am ripped violently from that peaceful place by someone pressing down on my chest. I expel all the water, coughing so hard my ribcage might crack as I drag a long breath into my lungs.

I am half awake, half dead when I come to my senses.

Almost killing me to bring me back. Truly cruel.

In here, there is no notion of time. It could have been minutes or days. I question my sanity as I go from physical torture to mental—on repeat. But the most painful part is watching videos of all the ways they could kill Dane. These two are truly imaginative, from burning him alive to burying him alive. I get to see at least ten short horror movies, all ending with Dane’s death. Inside, I crumble. On the outside, I try my best not to show what these images do to me: kill me more efficiently than any of their torment. I swear to myself I will make them pay, and that anchors me.

Felix and Caleb step inside my white cell that tears at my sanity with its sterile ambience.

I put on my damn mask. “Morning, Uncle Felix, Uncle Caleb.”

“I told you we’d break her,” Caleb says.

I grit my teeth but remember that I can’t show anything.

“Never had a doubt,” Felix smirks, and then asks, “Ready for the last test?”

“I just want to prove my loyalty.” I force a smile while I plot their demise in my head.

“Dutiful. Obedient. Well behaved. Not an ordinary whore. If you were mine, I would have whipped you raw,” Felix says, nostrils flaring.

“I’m sorry for disappointing you,” I say, swallowing the bile and the desire to spit in his face.

Once again, they bring me to the torture room. Two men strap me to the chair, and the screen on the opposite wall turns on. I see Dane and my chest twists. I miss him so much. Longing fills every crevice in me.

“You became a whore for him, and whores are marked.”

Wait. What the fuck is he talking about now? I was so engrossed in the images, only now I realize Felix walking toward me with a prod glowing at the tip.

A searing pain surges through me as a charcoal-like smell of burned skin hits my nostrils, turning my stomach. Battling the bout of nausea, I look at the spot where the heat pulses and radiates from. I see an angry-looking small “D” stamped on the inside of my wrist. It could be possible that I am losing my mind, but I barely bite back the burst of laughter. I’d wear the first letter of his name proudly. This is no punishment for me—it’s a badge of honor.

“Maybe that will teach you to cover yourself from now on. Was he worth it?”

I have to play this right. You can do this. Give Felix what he wants so you can leave this fucking place and plot his painful and slow death.

I inhale deeply. “No.” A lie.

“I’m still disappointed in you for spreading your legs for him. I expected you to have better taste in men. This all could have been avoided, but we had to purge that weakness out of you.”

I doubt that weakness could ever be purged out of me. Even now, after everything I’ve endured, my love for him will outlive the pain I went through for having broken the rules.

“Imagine if she would have carried that bastard’s child to full term,” Caleb says.

My heartbeats, my thoughts, everything in me comes to a screeching stop. While my brain tries to process the information, grief pierces my heart.

This can’t be? They didn’t do that. It’s a lie.

But I know better than that. In my head, I go through all the times Dane and I have been together, and we weren’t as careful as we should have been. No physical or mental torture comes close to finding out I was pregnant.

“We took care of that. There are consequences, and we can’t allow any indiscretions, Abigail. You should have remembered that,” Felix says.

They killed my baby.