Chapter 303

“Pictures, videos … of you. That scum kept a catalogue of both on every girl he ever …” Alexi cannot formulate the words, so repulsed by what he knows went on in Rick’s world and I shudder at the memories, slapped with what I was not expecting him to say.

I was wrong. It is as bad. Maybe worse.

My blood runs cold, much like finding out he had my journals and my eyes fly to his, gluing to them in wide-eyed horror. Fear, that he didn’t just know of the existence of those things, but he watched them or looked in the folders and piles of disgusting media I knew Rick kept. It’s one thing to read about those vile acts and another entirely to see it visually.

I feel sick to my stomach, instantly paling and hit with a dizzy spell that has me clutching the table edge to steady myself.

Why would he tell me this? I was stupid to ask, to push.

I remember well, the hysteria and mess every time that man laid hands on me. He loved nothing more than to document how brutally he used his victims and most of those pictures show me bloody and broken. Various states of delusion as my brain tried to detach from the horrendous acts befalling me and save me mentally. Sometimes I would float on the ceiling, looking down on my lifeless body and watch him ravage me until I bled. It’s a miracle my body is not more twisted and scarred and dysfunctional than it is.

Rick liked to document his perversions on film, in stills, and motion, for some sort of satisfying ego boost. He was a sick fuck who kept a filing cabinet of girls’ names and folders and thousands of pictures he would make us help develop and store for him. That was how twisted he was. He did it to us, filmed it and then made us help him turn them into viewable items for his collection.

I don’t doubt there were hundreds of me, tied up, naked and broken in all kinds of disgusting poses with marks of his torture and debauchery on me. He would film his ‘adventures’, his newest ‘kinks’ with his little girls and save them for self-pleasure when he was alone, or to sell to his ring of perverted clients who got off on seeing kids ruined. Sometimes he would make me kneel in front of him and blow him off while he watched them on a screen the size of his wall. A projector, reliving the things he would do to us. I was not the only child he defiled. I was one of many of the poor unfortunate souls who strayed into his path. Stories like mine, with mothers who were wasted junkies and only saw children as a tool for getting high.

“Please tell me you didn’t keep those too?” My hands and voice shake, barely audible as I try to get it out, shock giving way to a full-blown panic attack as I gasp for air and force myself to stay calm. Alexi shakes his head.

His rage as intense as my pain as he too relives what he saw, and I know he must have seen enough to react this way. Maybe he didn’t watch them all or flick through every image, but he saw more than he wanted to. That would change any decent human’s opinion of the girls in that room of memories. That would leave a mark, even on someone like Alexi.

He may be a monster on many levels, but he is not a paedophile or a violent abuser of women. The things Rick kept; they would scar anyone who saw them. I lived it, and yet the images I was forced to help file still traumatised me. I cannot even imagine what Alexi must think as I sit and die all over again, knowing that he knows things no one else could know about me. Things I never even wrote down.

“Everything I found in that place connected to you, I burned. I wiped you out of that hellhole; every trace as though you were never there, and then I wiped him off the face of the earth for putting you there. I intended to just kill him until that point, but those pictures, those films … I’m not a nice person when I don’t have reason to be and seeing even a tiny amount of what he did, Cam, I made him wish he was never born, and then some. I’m not sorry I made his last days hell. It was nothing compared to what he did.” Alexi looks fiercely dangerous for a moment, that cold tone that used to send the fear of God into me, yet now, sat here, it brings me comfort. That sadistic look and dangerous manner, they are all that’s keeping me from crumbling on the floor and sobbing my heart out.

A tear rolls down my cheek involuntarily. Knowing he saw more than I ever put in my journals. The abuse, being used, there was so much that I could have filled a dozen more books with, had I written about every time in detail. Alexi knows everything there is to know about what set me on the path to who I am now. It’s horrifying.

“That’s why you changed when I came back, isn’t it? You and Mico, you both treated me differently.” I stare at my fingers, brain engaging as it all clicks into place and now, I see all the little hints from the past few weeks. They both treated me like I was more fragile, more broken than they ever did before. Kid gloves and attention to the things they knew were real scars. It’s why Alexi wouldn’t stand behind me without apology. He knew it was all real and he was trying to make amends. He didn’t just read what could be a story from an over dramatic girl. He saw with his own eyes. It would affect you so much more than a book would.

He saw why I used to freak out, in the videos when Rick would stand behind me, and most of the time, he would gag me to shut me up because panic attacks were not something I could control. He liked it. The fear, the hysteria he brought out in me. Sometimes I would vomit and choke because the gag wouldn’t let me expel it properly. He liked that too. It’s why he kept doing it from behind, tying me down, holding me in place by any means and savouring the terror he was inflicting. It was another level to his perversions that got him off.

“One of the reasons. The other was facing the fact that no matter what I did, or how much I pushed you away … I was in love with you. That you did nothing to warrant how I treated you. And I treated you in a way I’m not proud of. I went too far. Blinded by a belief you only wanted to use me and hating the fact you were outmanoeuvring me so effortlessly. I was powerless when it came to you and I took it out on you in the worst ways.”

Worse than even he could have imagined. He didn’t know though. I can forgive him for not knowing any of this until it was too late. I see that now. He had no comprehension of the damage.

Alexi is watching me closely; I can feel those eyes boring into the top of my skull and yet I cannot bring myself to look back at him. My heart is aching, and my body is yearning. I feel exposed and naked—ashamed. I feel like he has ripped the rug out from under me and I’m sitting here with nothing else to hide from him.

You can’t change what is done though, and the only way forward is to let it go. I’m not there anymore and what he saw is a long done and dusted ordeal from years ago. What Alexi did should be shelved with it all as something to forget. I’m not there, we’re not there anymore and much like the shock of his having my journals, the shock of knowing this will pass too. The pain of his cruelty will follow. I can’t undo it and crying over it will fix nothing.

Alexi killed the son of a bitch and destroyed all that tied me to him. In doing so he redeemed himself a little. He did me a favour and exactly what he set out to do. He removed a monster from my shadows and burned all the nightmares that held me to him. I’m just reeling with the shock of it and if I breathe, I can move on, it’s not the worst. I’m no angel, some of what I endured was karma.

It is what it is, and I have to accept my part of the blame in everything and forget it.

“I have done plenty in my lifetime to warrant the treatment. Sophie will testify to that.” I mumble it quietly, knowing I’m no innocent, and maybe I didn’t deserve Alexi’s punishments, but I have done things that warranted far harsher repercussions. I’m not a good person either. Maybe Alexi was my Karma, and now my sins are balanced I can finally move on in life.

“You and me both. Faced with my equal, it’s no wonder I couldn’t look beyond to find any trust. I measured you by my standard and assumed you were doing to me what I intended to do to anyone I had use for.”

“More alike than we care to admit. Both guilty of things we should never be proud of.”

There’s silence between us as we both ponder that statement and the heaviness of the truth weighs upon us. We are two people cut from the same cloth. I understand him sometimes because I know what world he exists in and what it expects of him to continue to dominate it; he knows why I did all that I did. Born of necessity and given no choice but to survive. He sees everything that happened in a new light since my past was laid out in front of him. That’s what changed how he treated me. He re-evaluated everything and took away the manipulation and deceit, the lies and games, and realised he was playing a one-sided war with a girl who just wanted to find safety in the darkness. I guess I couldn’t really find a man who would understand more than he does.

Alexi moves the candle on the table, turns it and fidgets with the saucer I stuck it on, looking for a way to change the subject.

“I know you hate that I know things about your past, but you would never have told me any other way. I’m glad I got to see them. That I learned about you. Even though it upsets you, I would never have really understood if I hadn’t read them. I needed to know you, Cam, needed to understand you. It changed everything in my head and brought us to this moment.” Alexi is still tense and poised but his words soften and the way he looks at me only adds another layer of shame. Lifting my chin to glance his way and see only a gentleness that wasn’t a familiar sight on that face before last night but one I’m fast becoming accustomed to.

“Instead of a gold-digging whore, you now see some broken abused kid who should abhor sex and men, right? Someone to protect. Feel sorry for. A victim to treat like fragile glass?” It comes out accusingly, that need to hide my vulnerability with anger, a verbal outlet, to lash out when I’m being exposed, but he gets up and comes around the table instead of reacting. He reaches for me and pulls me with him, up to my feet, backs us up so he has room to get back to his space and pulls me onto his lap once more, in one easy fluid movement I don’t have the energy to resist. This time on the floor and cradles me as close as he can get me in the hollow of where he has his legs pulled in, so my butt sits snugly on the rug between them.

“No, I don’t. I see a strong survivor and fighter. A courageous woman, someone I underestimated and misunderstood. If anything, it’s made me fall harder for you because I realised that despite all you have lived through, with mistrust and fear of men, you tried to let me get close to you. That I didn’t just reject a love confession, I destroyed something special and rare. You’re exceptional and worth a hundred of any other women I ever met.”

I shake my head, disagreeing with the sentiment. Stirred by the words but disconnected to their validity.

“I’m nobody. I did what I needed to survive and that’s all, nothing any other girl like me wouldn’t have done in the same position. I’m not special or ‘exceptional’ I’m just … nothing. I’m not worth anything, not even close.” So much self-deprecation in the face of my bruised emotions, fuelled with his words that bring out only a heavy hollow pain that makes me want to cry. He frowns at me steadily, tilting my face to him with a finger under my chin and wipes my cheek with his thumb to remove the trace of my tear.

“You really have a major self-esteem issue, it’s not the first time I have heard you say that. Do you really think I would lose my mind for an average girl? A nothing? A weak opponent? You fucked me up; you dragged me through hell and back, Cam. I would say it takes an exceptional woman to break through my steel exterior and find a way to tear me down. Many have tried and failed.”

Alexi’s determined tone and sombre face just gain another head shake. He has this all wrong.

“I didn’t do anything. You just assumed I did. I was honest with a man for the first time in my life and tried to be something more while losing myself to him and his games.” I point out bluntly, raising a brow at him as I lock my eyes on his and he has the grace to look guilty. He looks away first, at the table then at my hands in my lap before picking one up and entangling our fingers together snugly.

“I’m sorry. More than I can ever express.”