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"So this is the one you chose," Jaejoong said disinterestedly, nudging Vernon's shoulder with the butt of the now-folded whip. Thankfully, he had stopped with the whippings after one of his men had opened the door and thrown Vernon in, a bloody mess, at his feet. Not that it made much of a difference. The pain had been an overload on my nerves, and all feeling had stopped on my back entirely. "Interesting."
My body sagged against the restraints, red hazing my vision and my skin. Vernon looked exhausted, and didn't make a move to defend himself as he was drawn upright into a kneeling position, facing me. His eyes were rimmed with red, looking angrier than I had ever seen him, but he stayed put.
"Did you figure out why I didn't kill you?" the heir asked, drawing what little was left of my attention to him. Most of my mind had shut down, unable to handle the agony that still weighed down my body. They had removed the vest when I'd been knocked unconscious, so there had been nothing more than thin fabric protecting my skin from the lashes. If I thought I'd known pain before, I knew better now.
"You...want me on your team," I whispered. The lashes hadn't been many, but they'd been effective. I remembered the raised scars on Taeyong's back, outline the massive butterfly tattoo that had been splayed across his shoulder blades, and felt like I finally understood why he had been so scared of his own brother.
Now I was, too.
"If that was it, I wouldn't have had to use the whip, would I?" Jaejoong asked. He looked unruffled, almost the same as earlier, the only differences in his appearance the loose strands of hair that framed his face as a sign of his previous physical exertion. "You're a smart girl, you must have guessed. Try, and maybe I'll let lover boy keep his limbs."
I scoffed, but it came out as more of a cough. Blood spattered my lips, and Vernon's mouth curled into a barely-controlled snarl.
"You're right, I probably won't," the heir said, as if he understood what I had been trying to say. I felt a sudden surge of something cold in my gut, remembering what he had said about us being similar. What if we were? What if I had actually become someone like him?
You can't think about that, the more rational part of my mind hissed. Compartmentalize.
"You killed my father," I said, and my hands trembled in their bonds—whether from anger or the physical strain of holding my body up, I didn't know. "How could you ever think I'd...join you?"
"If you're still hung up on that, you haven't learned your lesson." Jaejoong sounded almost sorry. "My own father died when I was a child, killed by my younger brother. You'd think I'd be happy for that, after the years or abuse, but honestly, I didn't feel anything." He shrugged. "Maybe I just didn't have time to, with all the covering for my brother and trying to hold the strings of the family together. That kind of thing really takes up your time." He cocked his head to the side, then looked at me thoughtfully. "I think I stopped feeling for so long, I forgot what it was like."
