I existed in blackness.
Nothing else entered apart from the metallic rust of blood and flashes of madness.
Q left me again.
Somehow, I transported back to the room where I shot Blonde Hummingbird, only this time, strapped down and tied up tight was White Man. He leered and cursed, telling me I wasn’t good enough. That I ought to kill myself because that’s all I was worth.
The vacancy inside swirled like a crazy hurricane, rattling at the walls of my tower, tearing away my chains, smashing bricks to dust.
The guilt I’d been running from sucked me deep and I was sure my heart would stop. I was a murderer, a torturer, I deserved to die paralyzing regret.
But fate had given me a chance to right the wrongs I’d done. I had the puppeteer in front of me. Hatred and fury slithered like reptiles in my blood, and all I wanted was revenge. To make him pay.
The wash of emotions I’d been hiding from crippled me. Dumping me into a pit of grief and insanity.
White Man represented all the evil in the world and I wanted to take and take and take until there was no more. I wanted to extract every last thread of life until he existed no longer.
By killing him, I would gain redemption. I might finally be able to live with the guilt.
He didn’t move as I hit him. He just sneered. My muscles ached from delivering abuse. With every strike another brick crashed free from my tower. With every lash, cracked and fissured my guilt, allowing me to breathe.
Parallel images of the past kept me company as I hit him over and over and over. I saw myself—emaciated, drugged out of my mind, scratching and breaking…delivering their wrath on innocent women.
I sobbed and hit harder as my apparition shot Blonde Hummingbird. I doubled over with agony as I watched a replay of myself swallowing the gun, pulling the trigger to end my life.
Never again. I’m strong enough to survive. I don’t need a tower to exist. I didn’t do anything wrong!
The thought was a comet, blazing with truth.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
It was all them. I did the best I could to survive.
The knowledge that they’d made me doubt, that they’d filled me so full of sin, gave me a new lease of energy. I struck harder and harder until I couldn’t recognise White Man from all the cuts and blood.
Every time I drew blood, I rested easier, knowing this man would never do to others what he did to me.
When he passed out, I thought I’d killed him. I wanted him dead, but I had to be sure. Checking for life, I cursed when his pulse thrummed beneath my fingertips. I knew what I had to do.
I would wake him, look straight into his eyes, then I would stab him in the heart.
This was my duty, my honour, my destiny.
I taught him the lessons he taught me. Pain equalled power. Pain equalled pleasure.
As I stood above him with sharp scissors in my hands, ready to bury them deep into his chest, he looked up with such panic and love I paused too long.
He screamed.
It bounced around the cavern of blackness, tearing down the veil between me and the real world.
The vision disintegrated, catapulting me from dark to bright. The dungeon switched to become a decadent room with gold and red accents—it seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place why.
I blinked, unable to understand. Where the hell am I?
My body ached, shoulders trembled with holding my arms ready to strike. My hands were cramped and slippery with blood.
Then my heart stopped.
Q lay on the bed in front of me, his nak*d body covered in blood, completely unrecognisable. He barely breathed, his face swollen, eyes muted, hidden by injury.
I dropped the scissors; they clattered downward, nicking the top of my bare foot before bouncing to the carpet. Air lodged deep in my lungs and I couldn’t breathe.
An earthquake began in my limbs, and the angry, righteous tears I’d shed were replaced with horror. “Q—Oh, my God.” I reached out with shuddering hands to touch his cooling chest. His beautiful sparrow tattoo hung in tatters with wounds and blood. His beautiful c*ck hung useless and bloody between his legs.
“What have I done!”
Then I was flying.
My front collided with the front of the bed before I was jerked back and pressed deep into the carpet. Someone wrenched my arms behind my back, pinning my cheek to the floor. “Don’t move,” a livid man’s voice ordered.
The man sat on my back, holding me in place. He changed position to look toward the bed. He sucked in a rattling breath. “Fuck, Q. What the fuck.”
A woman’s high-pitched scream made my shaking worse. I gave up crying and turned to sobbing. I did this. I hurt Q so much he looked ready to die. How did this happen? Why did he let me go so far?
“Merde. Q. Oh, my god. Oh, my god,” Suzette cried.
The man got off me, discarding me as if I was nothing. He jumped to his feet, rushing to the bedside.
I fumbled to sit up. I needed to know Q was still alive. That there was a way to fix this.
Franco’s emerald eyes flashed back to me, glittering with ferocity. “You did this?” He shook his head, fingers scrambling at the bindings around Q’s bleeding ankles. “How could you?”
My lungs lodged in my throat; I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t justify what I’d done or even remember how it happened. All I knew was I no longer existed in a lifeless void. I now lived in an eternity of self-regret and pain. I’d been given closure and revenge on White Man and what happened in Rio, but I would take that agony all over again if it meant Q wasn’t lying lifeless and ruined by my hand.
“Q! Please, Q.” I scrambled to my feet, wringing my hands as Franco undid Q’s wrists and gently brought his hands to rest by his sides. Q winced and groaned as Suzette rushed forward with one of the discarded sheets, placing it over him.
Suzette never took her eyes off me, raining with sorrow and disbelief. “Why, Tess. Why? After everything he’s done for you.”
I rushed forward. I had to hold him. Tell him how sorry I was. But Franco shoved me back. “I think you’ve done more than enough, don’t you?”
“But… I have to f—fix this. I didn’t mean to. You have t—to believe me!” My body shook with wracking sobs—I’d never cried so hard. Not when I was raped or kidnapped or made to do such horrendous things. I cried as if my soul would explode from my body at any moment and leave me dead on the carpet.
Turned out I wouldn’t die from guilt, but from a broken heart.
Q groaned softly, licking his broken lips. “Le—let her be.”
Suzette cried harder while Franco spun to face him, ducking lower to hear. “I’ll call the doctor. We’ll get you help.” He ordered Suzette, “Go and get Dr. Peterson in here. Now.”
Suzette blanched white with shock, but she did as she was told, flying out of the room.
My heart stabbed with self-loathing and my legs wobbled as I darted past Franco to reach the bed. My eyes locked with Q’s and I wailed.
The last barrier unlocked inside, letting forth all the wrongness left inside me. I awoke from the final haze of vacancy, my tower tumbled to the ground in a clatter of rubble, and my mind swarmed with everything that I’d done.
“Q!” I threw myself on the bed, wincing at his cool skin, his sticky blood. Franco wrenched me off. “Get away.” Looping his arms around my chest, he hauled me backward, heading toward the exit.
“No! I need to stay. I need to fix this.” But his grip never yielded. I scrambled at the doorframe.
“Wait,” a thready voice demanded.
Franco froze; I trembled in his locked embrace. “Q. I’m so sorry. I don’t know. I don’t—”
Q sucked in a breath, hoisting himself up to rest on his elbows. Tracks of tears smudged the blood on his face. He smiled so sweetly, so full of unconditional love, I broke further in Franco’s arms.
“Bring her here,” Q ordered.
After a pause, Franco scooped me up and took me to Q. He placed me on the bed. I could barely see through my tears. I couldn’t breathe properly from crying so hard, but Q gingerly put his arm around me, holding me weakly against his beaten body. “I forgive you. I did it for you. Don’t cry.”
The unequivocal acceptance set a denotation in my stomach. It mushroom-clouded until it filled my chest, my throat, until it erupted in my brain. The sobs battered me harder, granting a perfect release.
Q pressed his lips against my forehead, murmuring, “Je t’aime, Tess. Je t’aime.” I love you.
Pain squeezed; I sucked in air, but I was suffocated by the overpowering need to purge.
I cried like I’d never cried before.
Burrowing deep into Q’s side, I let go of everything.
I drenched the bed and let my soul free.
I sobbed myself into nightmares.
*****
“You’re hereby sentenced to life in prison. You almost beat a man to death. Your lover. The one you’re supposed to protect and adore above all else. What do you have to say for your crimes?”
The magistrate with his big overzealous white wig glared down at me. I stood on a tiny podium with rolling waves of magma and lava licking at my ankles. It burned, and I knew I would suffer flames and incarnation for eternity.
“I have nothing to say. I did what you said. I deserve to be punished forever.”
The magistrate nodded, looking down his nose. “And forever you shall suffer. You will never love, never be happy. Your smiles will always be laced with sadness, your heart always layered with grief.”
I bowed my head, wanting to hurl myself into the lava. To end my misery, end my shitty life where I hurt so many. “Yes. Punish me. Make me suffer.”
“A thousand years in hell. Where you will rot in fire.” The gravel came down.
A black shadow swirled in like a nasty typhoon, snuffing out the waves of fire and stealing the heat of hell. “I’m the one she gave her life to. She’s mine, and I say she doesn’t deserve to be punished.”
I daren't lift my eyes to such a kind reprieve. Instead, I hunched into a ball, pressing my forehead to my knees.
“Tu es à moi.” You are mine. A firm hand landed on my shoulder. “Your life is mine, and I say I’m not ready to give you up.”
I raised my eyes to meet my saviour and cried hot ugly tears. Even though I almost killed him, Q stood before me in an immaculate black suit with a soft smile on his sculpted lips. No open wounds or oozing blood. He was utterly perfect.
He crouched beside me and cupped my cheek. “It’s over, Tess. It’s in the past. Our future is where we live now.” He kissed my lips, whispering, “Wake up, esclave. Wake up. Don’t leave me. Not after everything we’ve been through.
“Wake up.
“Wake—”
My eyes cracked open, gritty and sore. A brief sense of confusion crushed me before I connected with a pale jade gaze.
The moment I looked into Q’s wonderful dark and bright soul, I broke again. My mouth twisted in horror for what I’d done; my eyes were useless waterfalls.
I couldn’t do anything but cry and shake and repair my fractured soul.
We were in bed in the carousel room. I remembered now: the doctor working on Q. Stitching the lashes too deep to heal naturally, bandaging the ones that didn’t. Was it only yesterday that all of this happened?