My drenched head was finally raised a merciless hand gripping a chunk of my hair in a tight fist, bringing me up from the water as I spit and choked, shaking.
"I don't want to do this. I don't want to trick people. This is wrong, please dad." I helplessly sobbed, feeling so weak, coughing up water as I cried while Gus just watched me, hands clasped in front of him before he nodded his head at the worker who was gripping onto my hair.
"No! No more- I can't! No more!" I screamed out, panicking, trying to flail my restrained arms in protest, my wrists held by a few more men before my head was forcefully ducked back down into the sink filled with water, my mouth open mid-shriek as more air bubbles escaped my lips, my screams muffled from the water and lungs filling with liquid.
Time and time again, failed attempt after failed attempt, the end result was always the same.
"You think you can tell Brandon what's really going on huh? You wanna be a hero so bad don't you." Gus laughed as I shakily clung onto the shark cage I was trapped in hanging right above the water while my father lounged on his boat with a cigar.
"You ever tell anyone, any of your targets who we really are or what's really happening, I'll erase their memory and you'll have to redo everything all over again. Just like I did with Brandon." He sneered when he was close to the cage before it abruptly lowered, slowly dropping me as I screamed, panicking when the cage began to fill with ocean water as I cried, one hand tightly gripping onto the metal bar and the other extending for help that would never come through the gaps of the bars.
I screamed until I was fully submerged, and my dad would only lift the cage up when every last air bubble escaped my lips.
I was drowned, silenced, and emotionally abused until I couldn't feel anything at all, until I was immune to everything.
That's why I got tattoos.
Not because they were accomplishments like I had told my brother and dad they were.
But because the only time I could really feel was when that needle touched my skin, the slight buzzing sensation of pain that set my skin on fire in the shell of the person I was living in, etching my sins on my body for me to wear as a reminder of who I was.
I wore my collection of sins.
The boys collection.
I had this reoccurring nightmare.
It was of my dad, forcing my head down into a sink of water like he always did whenever I deserved a punishment.
Soon the water enveloped my entire body, not just my face, and I was drowning in the deep ocean, no matter how hard I tried to swim up I would be dragged down to a dark abyss by the hands of all the boys I have scammed in my life.
Ever since I was fifteen that's been what I dreamt of every night.
Until him.
I remember the night after Harry had snuck into my room in Polly's beach house, thinking I was Bridget as he spooned me.
And then Alan coming in moments later thinking he was cuddling me when he was cuddling Harry.
It was the day that Harry saved me from drowning, and ever since then, my nightmare had a new addition to it.
I was still being drowned by my father, still being clutched onto and dragged by the others into the darkest pit of the sea, but right as my hand was the only visible thing left from the black, deep sea cavern a hand shot down and firmly grasped my wrist, tightly, never letting me go.
