Page 244 of I Will Break You
“When did return?” I murmur into the dark.
“Just now,” he slurs. “I have so much to tell you.”
I try twisting around in his embrace, but his arms are like an iron vise. “Hey, Xero?”
When he answers with a snore, I wriggle in his grip. “Let go of me. I need to go to the bathroom.”
He squeezes tighter.
“Now I know you’re awake.” I kick backward, but he doesn’t even flinch. “Xero. This isn’t funny.”
It’s probably a test in case I get captured by a maniac who likes to hug. I reach backward between our bodies, trying to find his balls, but he’s so tightly spooned against my back that all I can grab is his hip.
“Just when I’m beginning to fall in love, you turn into an asshole,” I say and elbow him in the ribs.
He doesn’t respond. This isn’t like Xero at all. He usually sleeps with one eye open and would never ignore any talk about love. I glance around the room, my gaze falling on the skeleton standing in the corner, and I grimace at the reminder of getting fucked by its thigh bone.
It takes a little gentle wriggling and a lot of holding my breath, but eventually, I slip free from Xero’s hold. After taking a quick shower in the adjoining bathroom and getting dressed, I walk to the kitchenette and make some toast with bread that isn’t frozen.
Fancy.
My pussy still throbs from last night, and my throat is still a little hoarse from those multiple orgasms. After coming inside me, Xero made me climax over and over, even after I cried. The only reason he stopped was because our time in the screen room was up.
By then, my vision was too clouded by tears to appreciate all the reflections, and I was no longer interested in watching what he did with his fingers and tongue. Now, I regret closing my eyes because that had been really hot.
I return to the bedroom and glance around, looking for the hard drive he extracted. When I can’t find it, I get Xero to mumble that he left it in his study. Gulping at the reminder of the creepy crime board, I leave the bedroom and head toward the cordoned-off section at the end of the crawlspace.
Stepping inside, I avoid looking at the images in the center of the wall and fix my gaze on the hard drive on his desk. Next to it is a manilla envelope with the same psychopathic writing that I received the day of Xero’s execution. All thoughts of watching last night’s festivities evaporate at the prospect of unlocking another clue to my past.
With trembling fingers, I rip the envelope open and extract a letter that simply says:
The only handsome prince you deserve.
Beneath the scrawled note is a carefully written URL. I sit at Xero’s desk, fire up one of his laptops, and type the address into the browser. The short link redirects to a video, and I press play.
I recognize it immediately as the same clip Mom played the day she washed her hands of me and announced she would sell the house. I’m running through the graveyard being chased by a dark figure.
What I don’t understand is how someone shot such clear footage without Xero even noticing. That night, I was hallucinating all kinds of crap, so seeing a man holding a cameraor phone would have just been part of the grand delusion. But there’s no way Xero would miss a peeping Tom and his device.
It’s strange how I was eager to watch one video of us having sex, while the other one makes me cringe. But that’s because the graveyard scene was recorded by someone who knows my past and still wants me dead.
I fast forward, not wanting to watch myself through the eyes of a voyeur. When I reach the part where Xero presses something into my face that makes me go limp, I pause the video and open his desk drawer, remembering that’s where he left a bottle of chloroform.
It’s still there. I pull it out, only for another bottle to roll forward. Its label says: SOMNOCHLORATE: HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. I crack open its lid, sniff something sweeter than acetone, and immediately feel dizzy. My muscles weaken, and I pull back.
Replacing the lid, I slump forward in my seat, the edges of my vision going dark. That was… potent.
It takes several minutes of staring into the void to regain my senses and even longer to remember why I’m sitting at Xero’s desk, staring at bottles of chemicals.
I turn my attention back to the laptop screen, where I’m lying naked in the dirt with Xero kneeling over me like a ghoul. This is probably where he carries me off to the old rectory for a long soak. Since I missed that part due to being unconscious, I let the video continue.
Drawing back, Xero pulls my legs apart and inspects my pussy. My clit pulses, and I shift uncomfortably in my seat. Am I about to watch some somnophilia? He sticks a gloved finger into me and then holds it up to the light, only it’s too bright to be the moon.
The camera draws closer to my prone form and the lights get brighter, and Xero rises off me and stands to the side. It’s mostly his legs that are visible in the shot, but I see him sweep his arm as if beckoning someone to come closer.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
A man scuttles into the shot. I’ve never seen him before, and he’s dressed in layers of worn clothes torn in multiple places. I canbarely make out his features through his thick stubble and scraggly black hair, but when he sticks his hand between my legs, I shoot out of my seat.