Four Mercenaries - The Complete Collection by Merikan K.A

Author:Merikan, K.A. [Merikan, K.A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Acerbi & Villani Ltd.
Published: 2019-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9 – Drake

Drake’s head throbbed with images he craved to forget. No matter how much he would have preferred for his memory to blur, his brain had the sharpness of his blades.

He’d been six when his mother sold him off to Apollo. Drake had stayed in the man’s ‘care’ a couple of weeks. He’d slept with four other children in a room with walls painted to resemble a meadow, and every night, My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music was played to them at bed time. Three times. On a loop.

Apollo hadn’t even tormented Drake or the other children the way his later owner, Theo had, but he had been the owner of the enterprise. The one who profited from the sale, and he knew exactly what purpose he was selling the children for. Drake couldn’t even begin to estimate how many people had passed through Apollo’s hands since then, but it had been over twenty years, and the man was still in business.

Apollo had already been grey back when Drake had first met him, so he’d assumed the bastard had passed his business on to an enterprising son or quit and lived somewhere in Bali. Finding out that he was not only alive but still running the same operation, his greedy claws reaching for Clover, made blood boil in Drake’s veins to the point of every move he made burned.

The fact that Apollo hadn’t physically harmed Drake didn’t make him any less of a monster. Apollo was still the man who’d hurled Drake down the mountain and into the depths of Hell. Throughout the years, he’d been an occasional presence in Drake’s life and had caught glimpses of Drake’s torment yet did nothing about it until Drake became an empty puppet whose single goal was to avoid pain.

Drake’s owner had been more than happy to show off his ‘little vampire’, as Drake used to be often called, because of his complexion. It was hard to get a tan when one wasn’t allowed outside. Theo had acted as if Drake really was a human pet, not a person in his own right. Maybe he hadn’t been. Throughout the years of living under Theo’s roof, becoming a well-rounded man hadn’t been a priority. Survival was.

At least rape had become rarer after Drake had turned fourteen and must have not posed as much of a temptation for the sick pedo and his friends. It had taken Drake years to establish a sexual identity he could call his own, and some days he still had to fight the memories of a time when his body hadn’t belonged to him.

He’d only learned to read later in life, when Theo had decided he could actually use Drake as something other than a sex object. His struggle with reading was still a source of insecurity, not to mention a whole array of life skills and experiences he’d missed out on because his mother had decided drugs were more important than her child. Apollo had snatched the opportunity instead of calling the child services.

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