Read The Flesh Cartel, #10: False Gods for Free Online

fists and tongues and cocks. They didn’t want his cooperation, they didn’t want his skill, they didn’t want his service. No, they wanted his pain . And he’d have given that to them too, gladly, if they’d let him, because it was so much worse when they just took it instead.

    “Did you really think you were going to escape?” Nikolai asked, and Mat couldn’t help but laugh. He sounded like such a fucking evil supervillain sometimes.
    “Kinda, yeah.” He twisted his wrists in the leather straps that kept him secured to the chair he was sitting in. Metal. Nikolai was learning, apparently.
    “I didn’t expect you to be quite that stupid, Mathias. It wasn’t like I made it very difficult for you to figure out you were walking into a trap. No locks? No guards? Really?” The guy obviously wanted to monologue, so Mat let him. Nikolai flicked Mat’s left forearm. “And did you forget about the GPS tag, or were you just too arrogant to think it would matter?”
    Huh. Mat had forgotten, actually. Must have been the distraction of having his own brother almost rape him. Or maybe just the fact that its implantation had been such a minor, long-ago horror compared to all that’d come after, symptomless and easily ignorable. But he wouldn’t forget next time. Because if this little experience had taught him anything, it was that there would be a next time. That Nikolai wasn’t perfect and no place was impervious to escape and if he’d just remembered to cut their damn chips out, they might’ve gotten into a car that hadn’t belonged to Nikolai.
    “All I had to do was let you go, let Douglas follow. I sent Roger out as soon as you cleared the property line. Had him wait in the closest town until your trackers showed you were returning to the highway. Now let’s see your brother trust you enough to follow you ever again. You failed him, Mathias, to terrible consequence. He won’t soon forget.”
    “Yeah, well, you mind-raped him, and I’m pretty sure he won’t be forgetting that anytime, either. Not now that he knows freedom’s on the table. Now that he knows you’re the kind of monster who’d ask him to—” To do such unspeakable things. To betray me, and himself, and everything between us.
    Nikolai leaned in close to Mat’s ear and murmured, silky seductive, “Whatever you once were to him, Mathias, that’s over now. You destroyed what remained of it last night. He’s more mine now than he ever could’ve been without your help. I’m not a monster in his eyes. I’m his savior . The one you failed to be. And now it’s time for you to see just how badly you failed him, and just how much he’s willing to do to make me love him again.” With that, Nikolai stepped back, turned to the table in front of Mat and opened the laptop computer resting atop it, right at Mat’s eye level.
    It turned on, and the sound of Dougie’s screams filled the room.
    “Douglas is learning what his world would be like without me. Without my protection and care. And since you’ve positioned yourself as the man who would tear him from me, that means the world he’s learning about now is the one you would have him live in. He’s just getting a small taste of it, but I expect the lesson will stick.”
    Nikolai stepped aside, and now Mat could see as well as hear what was being done to his brother. He was pressed to his back on a dirt floor, one man holding his legs apart, another fist-fucking him so hard it was like he was punching the poor kid over and over. A third man had his teeth on Dougie’s nipple, and a fourth looked like he was trying to pull Dougie’s hair out by the roots.
    Mat squeezed his eyes shut and turned away, but it was way too fucking late for that. That image would be seared on his retinas until the day he died.
    “You know by now that I have a habit of buying back some of my old charges.” Nikolai nodded to someone standing behind Mat’s shoulder, Roger maybe, or another tamed man, who stood