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Destroy Me: Chapter 7

Destroy Me: Chapter 7

1330 Views, Released on August 26, 2023

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“Well, isn’t this embarrassing. My son,

tied down like an animal.”

I’m half-convinced I’m having another

nightmare. I blink my eyes open slowly;
I stare up at the ceiling. I make no
sudden movements, but I can feel the
very real weight of restraints around
my left wrist and both ankles. My
injured arm is still bound and slung
across my chest. And though the pain
in my shoulder is present, it’s dulled to
a light hum. I feel stronger. Even my
head feels clearer, sharper somehow.
But then I taste the tang of something
sour and metal in my mouth and
wonder how long I’ve been in bed.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t find

out?” he asks, amused.

He moves closer to my bed, his

footsteps reverberating right through
me. “You have Delalieu whimpering
apologies for disturbing me, begging
my men to blame him for the
inconvenience of this unexpected visit.
No doubt you terrified the old man for
doing his job, when the truth is, I
would’ve found out even without his
alerts. This,” he says, “is not the kind of
mess you can conceal. You’re an idiot
for thinking otherwise.”

I feel a light tugging on my legs and

realize he’s undoing my restraints. The
brush of his skin against mine is
abrupt and unexpected, and it triggers
something deep and dark within me,
enough to make me physically ill. I
taste vomit at the back of my throat. It
takes all my self-control not to jerk
away from him.

“Sit up, son. You should be well

enough to function now. You were too
stupid to rest when you were
supposed to, and now you’ve
overcorrected. Three days you’ve been
unconscious, and I arrived twenty-
seven hours ago. Now get up. This is
ridiculous.”

I’m still staring at the ceiling. Hardly

breathing.

He changes tactics.

“You know,” he says carefully, “I’ve

actually heard an interesting story
about you.” He sits down on the edge
of my bed; the mattress creaks and
groans under his weight. “Would you
like to hear it?”

My left hand has begun to tremble. I

clench it fast against the bedsheets.

“Private 45B-76423. Fletcher, Seamus.”

He pauses. “Does that name sound
familiar?”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Imagine my surprise,” he says, “when I

heard that my son had finally done
something right. That he’d finally taken
initiative and dispensed with a
traitorous soldier who’d been stealing
from our storage compounds. I heard
you shot him right in the forehead.” A
laugh. “I congratulated myself—told
myself you’d finally come into your
own, that you’d finally learned how to
lead properly. I was almost proud.

“That’s why it came as an even greater

shock to me to hear Fletcher’s family
was still alive.” He claps his hands
together. “Shocking, of course, because
you, of all people, should know the
rules. Traitors come from a family of
traitors, and one betrayal means death
to them all.”

He rests his hand on my chest.

I’m building walls in my mind again.

White walls. Blocks of concrete. Empty
rooms and open space.

Nothing exists inside of me. Nothing

stays.

“It’s funny,” he continues, thoughtful

now, “because I told myself I’d wait to
discuss this with you. But
somehow, this moment seems so right,
doesn’t it?” I can hear him smile. “To
tell you just how tremendously . .
. disappointed I am. Though I can’t say
I’m surprised.” He sighs. “In a single
month you’ve lost two soldiers,
couldn’t contain a clinically insane girl,
upended an entire sector, and
encouraged rebellion among the
citizens. And somehow, I’m not
surprised at all.”

His hand shifts; lingers at my

collarbone.

White walls, I think.

Blocks of concrete.

Empty rooms. Open space.

Nothing exists inside of me. Nothing

stays.

“But what’s worse than all this,” he

says, “is not that you’ve managed to
humiliate me by disrupting the order
I’d finally managed to establish. It’s not
even that you somehow got yourself
shot in the process. But that you would
show sympathy to the family of
a traitor,” he says, laughing, his voice a
happy, cheerful thing. “This is
unforgivable.”

My eyes are open now, blinking up at

the fluorescent lights above my head,
focused on the white of the bulbs
blurring my vision. I will not move. I
will not speak.

His hand closes around my throat.

The movement is so rough and violent

I’m almost relieved. Some part of me
always hopes he’ll go through with it;
that maybe this time he’ll actually let
me die. But he never does. It never
lasts.

Torture is not torture when there’s any

hope of relief.

He lets go all too soon and gets exactly

what he wants. I jerk upward, coughing
and wheezing and finally making a
sound that acknowledges his existence
in this room. My whole body is shaking
now, my muscles in shock from the
assault and from remaining still for so
long. My skin is cold sweat; my breaths
are labored and painful.

“You’re very lucky,” he says, his words

too soft. He’s up now, no longer inches
from my face. “So lucky I was here to
make things right. So lucky I had time
to correct the mistake.”

I freeze.

The room spins.

“I was able to track down his wife,” he

says. “Fletcher’s wife and their three
children. I hear they sent their
regards.” A pause. “Well, this was
before I had them killed, so I suppose
it doesn’t really matter now, but my
men told me they said hello. It seems
she remembered you,” he says,
laughing softly. “The wife. She said you
went to visit them before all this . . .
unpleasantness occurred. You were
always visiting the compounds, she
said. Asking after the civilians.”

I whisper the only two words I can

manage.

“Get out.”

“This is my boy!” he says, waving a

hand in my direction. “A meek,
pathetic fool. Some days I’m so
disgusted by you I don’t know whether
to shoot you myself. And then I realize
you’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?
To be able to blame me for your
downfall? And I think no, best to let
him die of his own stupidity.”

I stare blankly ahead, fingers flexing

against the mattress.

“Now tell me,” he says, “what

happened to your arm? Delalieu
seemed as clueless as the others.”

I say nothing.

“Too ashamed to admit you were shot

by one of your own soldiers, then?”

I close my eyes.

“And what about the girl?” he asks.

“How did she escape? Ran off with one
of your men, didn’t she?”

I grip the bedsheet so hard my fist

starts shaking.

“Tell me,” he says, leaning into my ear.

“How would you deal with a traitor like
that? Are you going to go visit his
family, too? Make nice with his wife?”

And I don’t mean to say it out loud, but

I can’t stop myself in time. “I’m going
to kill him.”

He laughs out loud so suddenly it’s

almost a howl. He claps a hand on my
head and musses my hair with the
same fingers he just closed around my
throat. “Much better,” he says. “So
much better. Now get up. We have work
to do.”

And I think yes, I wouldn’t mind doing

the kind of work that would remove
Adam Kent from this world.

A traitor like him does not deserve to

live.

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