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My patience is thin at the best of times, and right now, Ky is prancing all over fragile ice with reckless abandon, and he knows it.
“Don’t touch her.” My jaw is tight, and I button my jacket as we round the front of the car.
Ky huffs out something between a scoff and a laugh. “Threaten me with anything you like from your kinky little bag of tricks, Calliano. But all I’m saying is, if that girl touches me…then all bets are off. I’m not going to be held responsible for what happens next.”
I don’t have time to rebuke him or shove him up against the wall with the threat of a bullet to his ribs in order to emphasize my point. There isn’t time for any of that. Besides, you never know who is watching or listening in this cesspit.
So we wait in silence for the elevator to arrive, standing in the nondescript foyer just off the parking bay beneath flickering fluorescent bulbs, and when the doors open, we step inside one after the other.
Ky swipes his access card—still grinning to himself like a smug prick—followed by a press of his thumb against the biometric scanner. Once the system registers him, a green light illuminates on the panel, and the elevator whirs to life. As the doors silently close, we start to move.
Descending straight into the pits of hell itself.
7
I’m suffocating. Slowly but surely, this glass box is closing in on me, and I can’t suck enough air into my lungs. Slumping forward, my spinning head drops between my knees, and I try to slow down my frantic, shallow breaths. Black spots crowd the edges of my vision, and the tingling sensation in my fingers only spreads further and faster with each passing minute.
Of all the horrific scenarios that ever crossed my mind—wondering what might come clamoring for me from out of the shadows, I somehow missed this one. In my imaginings, I always thought things might end with torture or being sold to someone as their slave to do as they wished, or simply being murdered in my own bed.
But I never imagined I would be forced to fill the shoes of my father.
That shit burns my lungs, leaving me struggling for air.
I can’t.
I won’t.
He was a terrible man, intent on perpetuating a trade built on trafficking and warm bodies. They could never get me to even pretend for one second to continue his evil ways. I’ll find a way to either escape, or end my own life, before these twisted fucks ever put me in that position.
Everything I’ve worked for…the life I had built for myself…has all been wrenched away from me with cruel precision. Taking a scalpel to my world and slicing away anything I held dear.
My mother gave her life rather than see me abused. Yet, even in death, there are awful people intent on tarnishing her memory.
She protected me as much as she could and for as long as she could, even though we spent more time apart than together. In the world of the Anguis, children—if any are ever conceived—are notoriously seen as a liability. Having an heir is a carefully curated practice. Especially for the elite families of the Households, children are raised by nannies and tutors and boarding schools.
The woman who was determined to protect me flitted in and out of my life to the best of her ability, as much as the Anguis would allow her to, always being glamorous and kind, if only ever in a distant sort of manner.
But I understood why. Amongst the skull-masked security operatives always stationed outside my rooms within Noire House, to the constant presence of being watched while at boarding school—being the offspring of Andreas and Giana Noire was as dangerous for me, as it was for them. She had no choice but to concede to their customs; I don’t blame her for being absent.
I knew how much she cared for me.
Little did I know it was my father who posed the greatest threat of all. He had nearly nothing to do with my life, until around the time of my fourteenth birthday. That was when I first met the man who proceeded to flaunt me like a bauble, entertaining offer after offer for the key to his bloodline. Manipulating me with threatening precision every step of the way.
Just as these men intend to do, also.
Rage burns a bitter path up the back of my throat as I replay Thorne Calliano’s toxic words.
Do exactly as we say if you want your friend to keep breathing and if you want your mother’s memory to be preserved.
They might be powerful men with unchecked egos and a god complex, but I won’t let any of these men harm the two most important people in my life, even if one of them is long dead.
Right before her funeral was the moment I escaped. There was nothing but chaos inside the mansion in the wake of her body being discovered, and I didn’t dare wait around to say my farewells. I knew she’d done it for me. Given me the only opportunity I would ever get to run, and she gave her life in exchange for my freedom.
I still haven’t been to her grave. I don’t even know the details of how she died. Giana Noire’s body is buried in the plot on the Noire Estate reserved for Anguis elite, and knowing that I’m trapped right back where I started feels like I’m pissing all over her memory. Somehow, I wasn’t careful enough or didn’t run far enough.
Let my tombstone read: tricked by a handsome asshole.
I hate myself for thinking Thorne Calliano was anything decent while burning up on the inside with bitter shame, knowing that my own artwork is inked on his skin. He probably looks at it every morning and laughs at the reminder of how stupid and naive I was.
