Taming SSR And UR RANK Superwomen-Chapter 75 — Where No One Will Find You

Inori coughed. It was a rough, deep sound, the kind that comes when a throat has been dry for far too long.

Her head hung forward, black hair falling over her face, and her hands and feet remained tied to the chair with a firmness that left no room to move, even if she had had the energy to try.

She was wearing a white shirt. Not hers. Seraphine stepped closer with a glass of water and brought it to her lips without saying a word. Inori drank.

It wasn’t a sip. It was desperation. She drank as if hours had passed since anything liquid had last touched her throat.

Leaning forward as much as the restraints allowed, with her eyes closed and her breathing quick between each swallow. When the glass was empty, she let the air out slowly and stayed still for a moment, her head still lowered.

Then she pulled herself together.

It was a slow process. Her shoulders rose. Her back straightened slightly. She lifted her head and looked around the basement with the eyes of someone taking stock of where she was and what condition she was in.

Her face was swollen. Her left cheekbone bore a color that wasn’t natural, and the corner of her mouth still showed traces of what had happened hours earlier.

"What time is it?"

Seraphine took her phone from her pocket and glanced at the screen.

"Two in the morning."

Inori processed that in silence. It took a moment, as if the number needed to settle somewhere in her mind before she could keep thinking.

"Soon they’ll realice I’m not home." Her voice was low but steady. "They’ll look for me." A pause. "They’ll find me."

Seraphine put the phone away.

"That’s never going to happen."

She said it with the same calm she would have used for anything else. No emphasis. No cruelty. Like a fact.

"No one will ever find you here." She bent slightly to meet Inori’s eyes. "Even if they reached the place where we’re keeping you, they wouldn’t be able to discover that you’re here. It’s impossible."

Inori looked at her.

"The moment you were captured, you lost any way out." Seraphine straightened. "The only one left is accepting the contract with my master."

From the back wall, Freja spoke without opening her eyes.

She was sitting with her back against the stone wall, legs crossed and arms behind her head, in the posture of someone who had been there long enough to get comfortable.

"There’s no point in asking those questions."

Inori turned her head toward her.

"You won’t get anything except prolonging your own pain." Freja’s tentacles swayed slowly in the dim basement. "If you accept the contract, your life will improve." A brief pause. "I hate to admit it, but being with our master isn’t as bad as it seems."

Inori frowned.

"What isn’t as bad as it seems?" Her voice rose slightly. "Beating innocent women isn’t as bad as it seems?"

Freja didn’t open her eyes.

She didn’t look at her. She didn’t change posture. She simply didn’t respond, as if the question hadn’t reached anywhere that mattered to her.

Seraphine took over.

"My master ordered that she not be beaten." Her tone was neutral. "But soon it will have to be done. Until she can no longer tolerate the pain and is forced to accept."

She stepped closer.

"So it would be wise for you to stop resisting." Her eyes met Inori’s above the mask. "Think carefully about what you want to do."

Inori’s eyes turned glassy.

It wasn’t dramatic crying. It was the kind of moisture that appears when someone has exhausted every possible answer and all that remains is the weight of the situation. She lowered her gaze to the basement floor and said nothing more.

Seraphine and Freja left.

◇◆◇

The basement stairs ended at a door that opened into a wide hallway of the mansion, with the kind of marble floor that doesn’t forgive the sound of footsteps. Seraphine went up first. Freja followed.

Catherine was waiting for them.

She stood in the hallway with her arms crossed and an expression of barely contained anger, the kind that had been building for hours and had finally found somewhere to be released.

"Are you going to explain why you have a kidnapped woman in my mansion?"

Seraphine stopped in front of her.

She looked at her for a moment in silence.

"First." Her voice was calm. "Address me while kneeling on the floor."

Catherine opened her mouth in shock. Then she closed it, frowning.

Her body obeyed before her mind finished processing the order. Her knees met the marble, and her hands fell to the floor in front of her, on all fours, her expression burning with a rage that had nowhere to go because her body no longer belonged to her in that sense.

Seraphine looked down at her. She smiled beneath the mask.

"Lick my boots."

Catherine lowered her head.

Her tongue met the black leather of Seraphine’s boot with the slow inevitability of someone doing it because she cannot help it, her face flushed and her eyes shining with a fury that had no outlet. She licked. Once. Again.

Seraphine let her.

"This mansion now belongs to me as well." Her voice was soft, almost kind. "If my master needs it to hide women, that’s how it will be used."

Catherine kept licking.

"You don’t need to ask questions. You just have to shut your pathetic mouth and bark at us obediently." A pause. "Understood?"

Catherine barked. The sound echoed through the marble hallway with a clarity that left no room for ambiguity.

Seraphine let out a breath through her nose, her expression genuinely tender.

"What a good bitch."

Freja watched the scene from the side of the hallway with her arms crossed. After a moment, she placed a hand on her waist and let out a sigh that carried both envy and longing.

"I hope it’s soon that our master lets me have my own slaves too."

◇◆◇

Thomas arrived at the mansion past midnight.

He didn’t knock. The front door opened before he reached the last step of the entrance, as if the mansion already knew it was him. Seraphine stood on the other side with her mask on and her hands behind her back.

"Master."

"How is she?"

"Conscious. No change."

Thomas nodded and stepped inside.

The marble hallway was silent. There was no sign of Catherine, which meant she was where she should be or had learned not to appear unless called.

Freja was sprawled across one of the sofas in the main hall, her tentacles hanging over the backrest, staring at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes.

"Welcome, master." She didn’t move. "Your guest still refuses to cooperate."

"I figured as much."

Seraphine guided him to the basement.

She summarized the situation as they went down the stairs. Inori hadn’t tried to use her ability since being tied up, probably because physical exhaustion left her with no reserves for it. She had drunk water. She hadn’t eaten. She hadn’t said anything since Seraphine and Freja left.

Thomas listened without interrupting.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Seraphine stopped at the door and opened it without going in.

Thomas entered alone.

The basement smelled of damp stone and something metallic that wasn’t exactly blood but was close. The only light came from a bulb on the ceiling, illuminating the center of the room with a cold, flat clarity.

Inori was exactly where they had left her.

Tied to the chair. Her head slightly lowered. The white shirt wrinkled. Her black hair fell over her face, and she made no move to brush it aside when she heard Thomas’s footsteps approaching.

Thomas dragged a chair and sat in front of her. He watched her in silence for a moment.

"How do you feel?"

Inori lifted her head slowly. Her golden eyes met his with an expression that wasn’t fear, but something colder. More deliberate.

"Does that matter?"

"I’m asking because I want to know."

"No." Her voice was low but steady. "I won’t enslave myself."

Thomas didn’t change expression.

"I haven’t asked you for anything yet."

"There’s no need." Her eyes didn’t leave his. "I know why I’m here. I know what you want. And the answer is no."

Thomas rested his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers.

"Your ability is extraordinary." He said it sincerely, without the tone of someone flattering to manipulate. "The shadow blade especially. That’s not in any manual. You developed it yourself."

Inori didn’t respond.

"You could do much more with it if you had access to resources you don’t have right now."

"I’m not interested in anything you can offer me."

"Don’t you even want to hear it?"

"No." A pause. "I don’t trust you. I don’t trust any of the women you have. And I’m not going to sign anything that binds me to someone who uses violence to get what he wants."

Thomas looked at her.

Inori held his gaze with her jaw tight and her eyes wet without spilling over, the kind of restraint that costs more than it seems.

Thomas stood up.

He didn’t say anything else. He picked up the chair, returned it to its place, and walked toward the door.

Seraphine was still waiting outside. Thomas closed the basement door behind him and looked at her.

"Soften her."

Seraphine nodded without asking what exactly that meant. Both of them knew there was no need to specify.

"I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon."

"Of course, master."