The Flesh Cartel #6: Brotherhood

slugger, smooth, heavy. Huge. He squeezed the grip in both hands, flashed vividly on an image of beating this sick fucker’s skull in—how long would they have before Nikolai’s goons broke in? How long for him to hug Dougie and kiss him and apologize and apologize and apologize, even though it would never be enough?
And then what?
Even this had to be better than the serum. Nikolai would take care of him. Nikolai had no reason to lie. Dougie hadn’t been hurt when he’d come in here. Not a mark on him. Wouldn’t have gotten any of the marks he had now if Nikolai hadn’t felt the need to resort to this to drive a wedge between them. If Dougie didn’t idolize and love Mat so much.
This was all Mat’s fault. He was responsible for this pain. And there was only one way to end it.
He handed over the bat.
chapter five
    M
    at wouldn’t look at Dougie—was he really that disgusted with him? That disappointed and angry?— but Dougie couldn’t stop staring at Mat. He watched,
through a film of tears he wished desperately he knew how
to stop, as Mat fetched the bat for Dougie’s tormentor like
some obedient dog. They’d done something to him, they
had to have. Something unspeakable, something Dougie
couldn’t even fathom—and he’d learned how to fathom an
awful fucking lot lately. That was the only explanation for
Mat’s behavior. For his . . . his indifference. His coldness. If not
learned helplessness, how else could he sit by and watch a man
torture Dougie in a room with no guards and no cameras and
not help him?
Or maybe . . . maybe he’d been drugged. Yeah. That made
sense. Some kind of dissociative or hypnotic, something to
make him numb and susceptible.
Mat had always protected him. Always. Even when he’d
been in the wrong. He’d protected Dougie, then given him
shit for it later. But he’d always stood up for him.
Not tonight, though.
Dougie pressed his face to the mattress. He was on his
own tonight. Maybe . . . maybe even after tonight. He had to
take care of himself.
He could do this. This was . . . this was why Nikolai had
been training his ass. To prepare him for this exact thing. He
just had to relax. Not fight it. Put on a show for this guy—he wanted to see Dougie beg and cry, so he’d beg and cry. He swallowed. Felt the blunt end of the bat slide up the back of his thigh.
Nikolai had prepared him for this. In some sick way, Nikolai was the one protecting him now.
“Lube, Mathias.”
Ohthankgod.
“What?” Yes, Mat did sound drugged. Dazed. Slow. Like he wasn’t quite all here. Dougie held on to that. Needed to believe it.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t keep a tube of it in your second dresser drawer. I’m your father, Mathias. I know these things.”
“Yes, Dad.” Dougie heard a sound that was unmistakably Mat getting up from his knees and shuffling in the direction of the little end table that had been set just so by the bed. The drawer opening and closing.
“Thank you, son.”
“Stop calling him that,” Dougie whimpered before he could stop himself. “Just stop it. Stop making us play along with your sick game. Just . . . if you’re going to rape me, just do it. But don’t . . . don’t make him . . .”
“You think this is a game, son?”
The bat cracked into the back of Dougie’s thighs, a thick, heavy thud that sank deep, so much worse than the belt. He screamed, reached down to clutch at his legs, the cramping muscles, but the man wedged a knee in his back again and pinned him down.
“Is that what you tell yourself ? How you make it okay to seduce him? You tell yourself he’s not your brother?” He hit him again, crippling and loud, and for a minute Dougie could’ve sworn the fucker had broken his leg. And Mat . . . just stood there. The whole time. Doing nothing.
That hurt more than the fucking bat.
“You still think it’s a game?”
It took him a while to answer. The pain was so bad he could barely think. But maybe it was better that way, better not to have to think about Mat standing there doing nothing while some fucker beat him bloody and then raped him with a baseball bat. “N-no, sir,” he said, and then forced himself to add, “Dad,” though it made him sick, perverted those precious memories of the real thing, rare and sacred—what little remained of them, young as he’d been. Felt like a second death, somehow. As much a death as he felt at the sight of Mat standing by like a well-trained slave, broken, watching impassively as Dougie