Cruel Control by Candace Wondrak
Chapter Twelve – Markus
I didn’t even blink when Jaxon brought her in. This office was not mine; it was hardly ever touched anymore. It was also so much more than it appeared to be. A flat-screen television set hung on one of the walls, a small leather sofa facing it. The walls were bare beyond that, save for the hidden door which currently sat wide open.
I’d already picked which one she’d see. From what I recalled, it was quite gruesome and macabre, a Stella and Lincoln special.
Juliet wanted to see what we did here? I’d show her. I’d show her one of the worst, and she would never sleep again, not while in this house, not while knowing she slept under the same roof as cold-blooded killers and extreme sadists.
She thought she could handle the truth? Well, we were about to put that to the test, weren’t we?
Juliet was on the floor after a rough push from Jaxon. Jaxon did not look happy, and his attitude made me smile—on the inside, anyway. I didn’t really smile outwardly, not unless I had to. There was no point, not when you dealt in death and blood on an almost daily basis, not when you could not feel the rush your brothers did when they sank their knives and saws into flesh and bone.
“Lock the door, Jaxon,” I said, never once taking my eyes off the girl.
As Jaxon went to lock the door, Juliet was slow to push back, kneeling before me. Her eyes lifted, meeting my stare, and I felt a peculiar type of wanting just then—something I couldn’t say that I’d ever felt before. I wanted to wrap my hand in that yellow hair, pull hard, and force that pretty little mouth of hers to open.
I wanted her on her knees, and I wanted to feel that mouth on my cock.
But those were thoughts I should not have, and I pushed them from my mind, lest I start to show arousal. Now was not the time to lose myself in what-ifs or baser urges. Right now was all about Juliet finding out just who she currently lived with.
She wanted the truth? She’d get it, and then she’d regret it like I knew she would.
I pointed to the leather sofa in the corner of the room. “Sit,” I told her.
“Why should I?” She pouted her lips, though she did not get up. Kneeling on the floor made her lose some of her gusto. That, or she was already freaked out by this. Good. “Why should I do anything you say?”
A smirk crossed my own face as I folded my arms over my chest. I leaned back on the desk, holding her stare, making sure she knew how amused I was by her act of defiance. Juliet thought she was so strong, but she lived in a bubble of a world, a tiny house, unaware of the true nature of men and their sins.
“Jaxon,” I spoke, “get her up.”
Jaxon moved behind her, and without warning, he grabbed her by the back of the neck, lifting her off her knees and to her feet. She tried to struggle, tried to fight him, but he was stronger than her. I think damn near everybody in this house was stronger than her… and they only stayed away from her, kept their hands and their dicks off her, because I said so. If I let them have a free-for-all when it came to her, she just might be dead already.
She was fortunate I cared enough to intervene in that way.
“Take her to the sofa,” I instructed, and Jaxon did just that, moving her backward, causing her to stumble on her own feet as he went. It was an amusing sight, frankly. She was such a small girl, maybe five feet tall. Yes, she had the curves of a woman, but she still had a heart-shaped face that radiated innocence and purity.
What she was about to see might age her quite a bit.
Juliet was thrown onto the sofa, and she did her best to hold her head high, though she did sneak a glare in toward Jaxon, who dutifully ignored her. Good. Sewing dissent between the lovebirds was what I wanted all along, really.
She could not be his, you see, because she was already mine.
“Now,” I started, “was that so hard?” The look she gave me right then told me it was, and I held in a chuckle. What an amusing girl. Such fire, which I hadn’t expected, given her life… given everything her father had done. “Why so upset, Juliet? You’re about to get what you wanted. You’re about to see exactly what we do here.”
Her blue eyes shook with silent fury, and she hardly blinked as she glared at me. I could tell half of her wanted to get up and run away in fear, but the other half was a deadly kind of curious. Juliet wanted to know what we did here, and she was willing to swallow her pride in order to see it.
“Now, it should go without saying that what you’re about to see never leaves this house,” I started, moving around the desk and taking a seat. A remote sat in the center of the desk; I’d already had it loaded and ready to go. All I had to do was hit the power button and watch Juliet’s reaction to the truth. “Of course, you must know I don’t show our secrets to just anyone. When you do what we do, you can never be too careful.”
Juliet’s blonde eyebrows came together, and I could tell she didn’t understand.
“But you’re a, what shall we call you? A special case.” I grabbed the remote and hit the power button to the TV, and even though I could only see a slanted view of the television, I knew exactly what was on it, the image that was frozen to its screen, waiting for me to hit play.
Our basement was unlike most basements, I think. We had a powerful incinerator, along with multiple rooms where we kept marks for however long our clients wanted. Sometimes they simply wanted so-and-so dead, which was when I sent trusted family out into the world to get it done.
Sometimes they wanted so-and-so dead, but they wanted to see it, so we taped it and offered it to our clients. There were times when they were precise about how they wanted their deaths to occur. Mutilation, torture, anything and everything. Nothing was off the table when it came to us. As long as you had the money to pay and we accepted the job, we would be at your service.
Occasionally they didn’t care either way, and that’s when some of my brothers, and Stella, got to have a little fun.
This video was a slight mixture. The client wanted the mark to pay in a certain way before she was killed, and we had a pair of resident killers who loved mixing pleasure with blood. It was not the tamest video we had, but I chose it for that exact reason.
Let this girl see just who we are, who I am, who the people I control are. Let her see the truth, let her judge us, and let her fear us. We were the executioners. We were the hangmen. We were the firing squad, only we tended to use sharp steel instead of bullets. Everything we were, everything we would continue to be, was eternal. We were the monsters above the law, too rich to fall prey to its rules. We were divine devastation, the horrors we unleashed biblical.
There was no escape. Not from us. Once you were in our grasp, you never got out. Surely Juliet would start to realize that soon?
I hit play, and I leaned back to watch Juliet’s reaction. Jaxon stood near her, eyes on the screen, though I’d bet anything he was only staring so hard at the screen because he didn’t want to look at Juliet, didn’t want to see her reaction to this video and what the people in it were about to do.
It wasn’t for the squeamish, that’s for sure.
Immediately, Juliet’s eyes got wide. “What is this?” She could barely get the question out, probably because she was stunned to see a naked woman on the screen. She was in her twenties, an attractive enough girl from what I remember, but she’d pissed off someone with money… and when you pissed off someone with money, the repercussions were never a pretty sight.
The woman’s hands were tied over her head, strung up by chains. She was on her tiptoes, a gag in her mouth. Her back was against the tile wall that was ever-present in our basement, her hair greasy. Her eyes were open, and she whimpered every now and then, struggling to try to break free of her restraints.
But she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t.
Juliet looked at me. “What is this?” she said again.
“This is what you wanted,” I told her. “You’re about to see what we do. Congratulations. Most people who see what we do end up much like that woman. Hope you can handle a snuff film, Juliet, because you’re about to see one.”
I had no idea if she knew what a snuff film was, but judging by her reaction, she didn’t quite get it yet. Her eyes returned to the screen, and the sound of a door opening came from the TV. The girl whimpered when she saw who it was, and it took a few moments for two figures to stand before her, wearing all black, masks on their faces. Simple, black things. I required them anytime the cameras were on, though they’ve evolved over the years.
A tall figure with black hair and shoulders almost as wide as mine stood beside a slender woman with brown hair. As the tied-up woman cried through her gag, begging to be let go, the two figures turned to each other, and though you couldn’t see their faces on the screen thanks to his back, you could see the taller figure bending down, lifting his mask, and kissing the other woman.
The man went toward the woman on the wall, and he glanced over his shoulder, saying, “I think we both like it better when we hear screaming, right?” The other one he was with nodded, agreeing with him, and he tore the gag out of the woman’s mouth, letting it hang around her throat.
“Please,” she begged, “please let me go. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t—”
The masked woman took two long strides to the side of the room, where knives of all kinds sat, her favorite. “That’s what they all say,” she said, picking up a rather sharp and jagged-edged knife, moving to take her place beside her man.
As soon as the woman saw the knife in her hand, she stopped begging.
“The truth is we don’t give a shit about what you did or didn’t do,” she went on, the silver steel in her hand glinting in the ugly light. “You’re about to pay for whatever it is with your life… but first, we’re going to have a little fun with you.” She let out a laugh, but it was a hollow, foreign sound. It made the woman on the wall flinch.
“No,” Juliet said, getting up as she shook her head. “I’m not going to watch this—”
“Sit the fuck back down,” I ordered her, my voice hard, “or I will have Jaxon hold you down.”
She glanced to Jaxon, and she knew, without a doubt, he would do as I said. It might pain him to do it, but he would. Juliet was slow to sit down, breathing heavily before turning those eyes back to the television.
On the TV, the man had taken a hand to the restrained woman’s neck, squeezing tightly, making her choke. “Too bad she’s not on her knees,” he mused, his wide chest thundering with a laugh. “I like ‘em better when they’re on their knees.”
The woman hummed, wordlessly agreeing, and when he released the other woman’s neck, she brought the knife to her throat. “Make sure to scream for us,” she said. “It’s always more fun that way.” She nicked her neck just a bit, causing the woman to start to sob.
The sound of a belt being undone echoed in the room on the screen as the man began to take his pants off. Watching him do it, the woman on the wall started to sob harder, which only brought the one wielding the knife glee.
Oh, they were psychopaths, pure and simple. It’s why I chose this video to show Juliet. They reveled in blood, they liked hurting other people, whether they deserved it or not. There was nothing saintly about either of them.
Dragging the knife softly down the woman’s naked body, she had eyes only for the man shedding his pants and freeing his cock. After a moment, when his legs were bare, she pulled away from the woman on the wall, dropping to her knees before him. She moved her mask, but it was all off-screen. All you could see from the camera angle was the way the man’s hips started to jerk, how his ass clenched with every thrust into her mouth.
“Oh, my God,” Juliet whispered, once she realized what was happening. She looked away, but then she caught me staring at her, and she begrudgingly brought her gaze back to the TV, where two of my most deadly psychos were only starting to have their fun.
He pushed her away, and she pulled down her mask, getting to her feet as he moved closer to the woman on the wall. Her legs were not chained up. Her body shook with fear, but most of that was blocked out by the man’s wide shoulders.
“No, please, don’t—” The woman on the wall became a blubbering mess, tears streaming down her face. There was nothing she could do, really. What was coming was inevitable, and she was as helpless as a woman could be.
He grabbed her by the hips, jerking her up and prying her legs open. Beside them, the other woman stood, watching every movement with interest. The man turned his head to look at his woman, staring at her as he positioned himself between the legs of the mark. He let out a groan when he pushed into her, though the woman’s cries drowned out what pleasure he voiced.
And then he started to fuck her, rattling the chains above her head, pumping into her violently as his woman watched and toyed with the knife she held onto. The woman cried out, tried to struggle, but again, it was all very useless. She was fucked, quite literally.
Juliet turned her eyes away, and with a wave of my hand, Jaxon was beside her, grabbing her face and forcing it back to the TV. Her eyes were slow to open, slow to watch the animalistic fucking on the screen.
It went on for a few minutes, screams and grunts blending together. Eventually, the man came, and when he did, he jerked his hips forward, coming inside her. He did not linger in her; he pulled out almost right away, turning towards his woman. His cock glistened, but the woman dutifully ignored its still-erect length, moving to stand before the mark.
She took the knife between her legs, and the woman whimpered, jerking away, but she wasn’t cutting her. Not too hard, anyway. She was only gathering some of his cum on that knife, which she then lifted to her mouth after pushing up her mask and licked off, while the restrained woman shook with fear. All you could see from the camera angle was the back of her head, but you saw enough to know what was going on.
“Fuck,” the man muttered, “that’s hot.”
Knowing her, she was probably grinning beneath her mask, and she turned around to face her man, once again dropping to her knees. If there was anything those two were good at, it was losing themselves in each other and what they did. They were uniquely crazy, in that way. A couple of psychos who killed together, fucked together, and… fucked and killed together.
The woman cleaned off his cock with her mouth, fixing her mask as she got up and instructed, “Do it again, but this time, I want to be there.”
It was not an order he would refuse—and normally, he hated taking orders. It’s why he tried to make it out there on his own. Didn’t last too long, of course.
The woman stood between the man and the one on the wall, her back to her, her masked face staring up at his tall frame. With the knife in her hand, she lifted her arms, and he responded by picking her up and fixating her to his chest. She wrapped her legs around his midsection, knife at the back of his neck, cutting a thin line into his flesh, which neither of them seemed to care about.
Beneath her ass, he once again positioned his cock. This time, he fucked the woman on the wall with his woman between them, so she could feel every thrust of his powerful body. He fucked her like an animal, grunting and groaning, taking as much pleasure as he could in the filthy deed.
Juliet didn’t want to watch, that much was obvious, but she managed to keep her eyes glued to the screen as the man came a second time, his hips thrusting wildly into the restrained woman’s cunt.
He was slower to pull out of her this time, slow to let go of his woman, who, behind the mask, seemed to be having the time of her life. The woman on the wall had screamed and fought, but it was for nothing. She stood there limply now, realizing there was no hope left for her, and she didn’t even flinch when the other woman brought the tip of her knife beneath her chin, angling it up so she could look into her eyes.
And then she stabbed her in the shoulder.
It was such a quick, violent movement, it caught even Juliet off-guard, and Juliet tried to turn her face away as the woman screamed anew, as the new pain coursed through her body. But Jaxon’s hands on her face were firm, not letting her turn away… so she sought to close her eyes.
“Open those eyes,” I warned, “or I will have them recreate this video with you in chains instead.” Of course, I wouldn’t let them kill her, but let them have some fun while torturing her? Maybe. They were just tools to me, things I could use to get the girl to fall in line. Threats that were more like promises than anything else.
Juliet didn’t want to, oh, she didn’t want to at all, but she once again looked at the screen. And when she did, she found that the woman on the wall had gotten her throat cut, blood gushing out of her like a waterfall of gore… and the man was busy yanking down the leggings on his woman, about to fuck her, too, as she continued to stab the one on the wall.
He had stamina, I’d give him that.
Juliet brought a hand to her mouth when he took the woman from behind, pushing her up against the now-warm corpse of the woman, smearing her entire front with blood as he fucked her. Neither seemed to mind the mess; in fact, they both loved it, and that was plain in their body language. Even with masks on, you could see their vicious glee.
I let the video play for a while, let her see the corpse of the woman on the wall when the two changed fucking positions. Her body was full of stab wounds, blood coating her tits and her stomach. The only bits of her that were unblemished were her arms, and that’s only because her arms were held so tightly above her head.
I stopped the video, saying, “Leave us now, Jaxon.”
Jaxon released his hold on Juliet’s head, not looking at me or her as he left, leaving me alone with the girl who, until very recently, thought she could handle the truth.
I folded my hands over the desk, staring at her. She wouldn’t look at me. She stared at the carpet on the floor, and I could tell her eyes were teary. Such sweet, innocent emotion. She had to be scared. If she wasn’t scared before, she sure as fuck was now, but that was the whole point of this little show.
“I’m surprised you’re so speechless,” I said. “You were up in arms earlier, so I assumed you’d have something to say after all that.” I let a long stretch of silence spread between us, the corners of my mouth quirking upward as I added, “Tell me, Juliet, are you scared of us now? Do you finally get what we do here?”
What came from her was a whisper, a whisper I hardly heard thanks to the distance between us: “You’re all monsters. You’re… you’re evil.”
“If I would’ve known all it would take for you to realize that was showing you that video, I would’ve started out with it,” I told her. I got up, the chair rolling behind me as I moved toward the sofa, where she sat.
Juliet’s back straightened, and she still did not look at me. Nor did she get up and try to run. A refreshing change of pace.
I took the cushion beside her. “I warned you, didn’t I?”
Finally, those big blue eyes rose to meet my stare. “What?” She probably couldn’t think straight, not after watching that, not after seeing how feral this family could get. I imagined she’d be having nightmares for a while.
I reached for her, grabbing hold of her neck and jostling her closer. I did not pull her onto my lap, though I wanted to. Instead I merely whispered as I held onto her slender, oh-so breakable neck, “I warned you. I told you you wouldn’t like the truth, and now that you’ve seen it, now that you’ve borne witness to what we do here, you regret it.”
Her eyes were extra watery as she looked at me. “How could you do that to that woman? How could you?”
It took me a moment to realize what she said, and I let her go, leaning back as I stared at her. “You thought that was me in the video?” Her reaction was enough of an answer for me. “Juliet, the people you saw in the video were worker bees. They do as I tell them. That man wasn’t me. I was behind the glass you didn’t see, watching. I was the one who had the woman brought here, the one who sent a copy of the tape to the woman who wanted her dead.”
She did not look relieved, not that I expected her to.
“I organize it all,” I said. “Those two?” I pointed to the TV. “They would gladly have at you if I let them. Whether or not I do, well… that’s up to you, Juliet.” The hand that pointed to the TV lowered to my lap, and before I knew what I was doing, I was touching her leg.
Juliet could not speak for a few moments, not that I blamed her. It was a lot, especially to someone as delicate as her. The cruel horrors of the world had been bottled up and multiplied inside this house.
As I stared at her, as I waited for her to speak, I wondered if I could really let someone go at her like that. Hurt her, fuck her, make her realize she was nothing. But then… that was a lie, wasn’t it? Because she wasn’t nothing. If she was nothing, she wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t feel the need to control every little aspect of her diet. I wouldn’t have had Doc ask her those questions when she first arrived.
There were a lot of things I wouldn’t have done if she didn’t matter to me.
But she did, and so I could not say whether or not I could actually go through with letting the psychos in this house hurt her like that.
When Juliet did speak, she asked something I did not expect: “Does… does my dad do this too? Is that what he does for you?” She could not stop her voice from cracking, from trembling, and I could tell she wanted to crawl inside herself and disappear.
A part of me felt bad for subjecting her to that video, but I had to. I had to show her, so she knew exactly how serious this was. This was not a child’s game. This was not just a kidnapping. My family… we didn’t do things lightly. Everything had a purpose, and that included her being here with me right now.
I didn’t answer her, and she pulled away from me, getting to her feet, muttering, “Oh, my God. It’s true. He does.” Her shoulders shook, and before I could tell her she was wrong, she ran out of the office, sniffling and starting to cry.
I sat there, motionless for a while. I didn’t know what to do. Tears did not affect me—not usually, but knowing she was crying, it made me feel conflicted. Which was a joke in and of itself.
Let her cry. Let her believe her father worked for me in the same capacity. I would not stop her from thinking it. It was close to the truth, in a way, but reality, as always, was far different than what one would imagine.
The truth about her father was so much worse.
