The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(140)

“You know why. It’s all to destroy your father, and—I might add—it’s working.”

“But why him? Why us? My father has never done anything to deserve—”

The man scoffed hard, a scowl passing over his lips as he looked away from her, snatching the bottle back. “Don’t be na?ve, Rapunzel, we both know he’s not as perfect as he pretends to be.”

“He has never touched me.” The accusation from before popped up in her mind, and she denied it again. He had always been a good father, sometimes absent, sometimes distant, but always good.

“Then I guess you really do live a charmed life.” Just as he went to take a drink, she took the bottle from his hand and drank instead.

“He’s a good man.”

“Do you really believe that?” There was open disgust in his voice, and she looked over at him, finally able to study his features. His dark brows were pulled together, his lips parted as soft breaths moved in and out. So beautiful to be so evil, so full of hate.

“Yes.”

He huffed out a bitter laugh and stood up, his boxers popped back into place, and he held out his hand for the bottle, mute and sullen. When she didn’t offer it, he growled and turned on his heel, moving to the door in furious silence. The lock grinding into place removed any hope that he’d forget in his distracted state, but she still had the liquor—and that was better than anything else he’d given her. Even better than the lights. She could still feel her pulse between her thighs, her clit pounding out the rhythm of her heartbeat, and what small, sane piece of her could still feel guilt was wracked by it.

Fortunately, there were still several inches of rum in the bottle.

A few minutes later, when the lock on the door shifted again, there was one less inch in the bottle and she was rapidly heading towards drunk. The man hadn’t bothered to gather the mask, but he did dump a pile of manila folders onto the floor. They scattered some, pages peeking out from inside them. “Why don’t you read these and tell me what you think of daddy dearest, princess.”

She didn’t even open her mouth to speak, cradling the bottle against her bare chest as she stared numbly at him. He waited, as if she were supposed to have some line in this little play they were acting out, but then he shook his head and left.

The door shut, locked again, and she stared at the scattered folders for a few minutes before she slowly moved towards them, gathered them, and then found her way back to the mattress. With another drink, ignoring the wetness lingering between her thighs, she opened the first folder.





Chapter Seven





Police reports. Affidavits. Case files. Private investigators.

Different women, all with similar stories, all of them talking about her father.

Daniel William Sinclair.

With a flinch, she tried to focus on the fourth file, squinting to read the slanted handwriting through the messy copy that had been made. The bottle was empty beside her, and she was a bit beyond drunk, moving towards the nauseated, uncomfortable state that warned of a wicked hangover. Regardless, she was still trying to read carefully, to dissect the information. She’d already questioned how the man had any of this, how he could have possibly obtained it, but it all seemed to be real. Different departments, different cities from around the area, but every document looked authentic. It was just the words that made no sense.

Threats. Confinement. Forced ‘procedures’.

What the fuck is all of this?

It read like some twisted, futuristic sci-fi nightmare. The case files tucked into each folder seemed to allude to drugs, accusations of fertility treatments, but the officers casually questioned the women’s sanity in their notes, and each file ended the same.

Complaint withdrawn. No charges filed.

That was where the private investigator notes took over in a couple of the files. Odd, grainy photos of women walking on sidewalks, stepping out of doorways, sitting in cars. Messy dates scrawled in the corners, some from almost thirty years before. All of the details were sketchy, but it painted a very strange picture of who her father might have been in the years before she was born. If someone were to read these, and not know the generous kind of man he actually was—they might even believe some of these dark insinuations.

Is this what had driven the man to do this? Did he know one of these women? Was one of these women his mother?

Raising her eyes to the cameras, she realized they were still off. No red lights peering down at her, measuring her every breath. Nothing but the strange silence that felt like a texture against her skin. Out of habit, she reached for the bottle and tilted it up, a few sweet drops touching her tongue before she sighed and pushed the bottle away from her. It rolled, across the sea of papers scattered in front of the thin mattress, and then onto the concrete. With a soft clink, it stopped against one of the rings embedded in the floor.

Grumbling, she tossed the folder in her hands into the mess of other papers and grabbed the last one. It was thinner than the others, a paperclip showing on the front, and with a sigh Rebecca leaned back against the wall as she opened it. Her eyes took a moment to focus, but then her stomach twisted.

Photos.

Close-ups of wrists rubbed raw and bloody. Ankles the same. Bruises around an arm that matched a handprint so closely she couldn’t imagine the force it had taken to form it. The bottom half of a woman’s face, golden haired, with a split lip long scabbed over. Flipping through the photos, she tried not to look, but then there was a single page. A handwritten emergency room report from 1990, Eastland General Hospital.