Darkest Before Dawn Read Online Free Page B

quickly than the others. A week of solitary confinement and only eight days of this: time with me. Her green eyes stray to my lips. Her chest rises in anticipatory breaths. She swallows as I gently sweep my fingers over her cheek, smiling when she leans into my touch.
    “What are you thinking, Lucy?” I ask.
    “How wrong this is.”
    And there it is…a slight confession. And this is wrong. She shouldn’t love me. I am, in a sense, her captor. But the thing is, I have made her love me.
    Emotions. You can control emotions. Fear. Sadness. Happiness. Love. Love is an emotion, and guess what? You can control that more easily than you think. I’ve spent the last four months studying the psychology of the human mind. Behavior. Motivation. And love is one hell of a motivator. I managed to find these people, thanks to the cell phone of that fucking john, Travis, and somehow, because I am resourceful as fuck, plus the son of the late Jacob Carter, which gives me clout, I managed to get hired in his position. Ever since then, I’ve dissected what makes people fall in love. It’s simple actually. And not only is it simple, but due to the particular situation these girls such as Lucy find themselves in, well, it is much different than running into a random girl at a park. I’m not hoping to find love. No, I’m wanting to manufacture it, bottle it, and sell it to the highest bidder.
    And it is sick.
    There is a psychology behind making a captive fall in love with their captor—evolution, if you will. Survival of the fittest. Because at one point in history, and as barbaric as it may sound, men took women by force. Most women were captives to the man they lived with. You fought, you died. You stayed, you survived. According to biology, it is almost natural to be captive to love. Love is, in a sense, a prison.
    And on the same accord, controlling someone is easier than it should be. Mixing abuse with kindness actually forges a stronger bond than always being nice. It’s manipulation at its finest—having normalcy appear as an act of giving. Stripping someone of all power fucks with their mind. Pretending you love them in a world where love should not exist, well that just makes you a knight in fucking gleaming armor. What you must do is distort reality. Take away time and sense of self. Take away everything until all that is left is you. And here I stand with Lucy.
    All that is left is me…
    I smile. “What’s wrong, darlin’?”
    “How I feel about you.” Her eyes fill with tears.
    Leaning in closer to her, I cup her soft cheek in my palm. I allow my lips to barely brush hers, but I won’t dare kiss her. “Tell me how you feel,” I breathe the words over her lips.
    “I…” Her warm breath washes over my mouth. I hear her swallow. “I think I love you.”
    The corner of my lip kicks up. “And that’s how you’re supposed to feel.” Her brows scrunch with confusion. “And I care for you,” I say, “but I’m not a man capable of loving someone.” I drop my hand from her face and turn to leave the room.
    “Please don’t leave me,” she begs.
    “I’ll be back. I promise.” I open the door and gently close it, locking both deadbolts behind me.
    When I first started this job, I felt guilty for doing this, but over time you can justify nearly anything. After the first month, I realized that love can make you do crazy things. And it is because of my love for Lila that I do these terrible things. Am I hurting people in the process of trying to save her? Yes, but as I said, with time you can justify anything.
    These girls are mostly homeless drug addicts or prostitutes or both. They have no family, no money. They have nothing, and at least this way, I am giving them something . They may be taken against their will, but they’ll see in the months and years to come what they will gain is much more than the inevitable overdose or jail time or miserable death that was waiting for them outside of these walls. In a