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Chapter 19
JAKUB
Words fail me. I can’t even fucking breathe. Who is this creature standing before me? What the fuck am I looking at?
Nothing’s eyes glower with fury. The intensity of her hate is powerful enough to make me pause. But nothing prepares me for the sheer fuckingbeautyof her birthmark. One she’s been hiding from us. I swallow hard, time standing still as I drink in the deformity. I’m greedy, feasting on her appearance, seeing her in a new light. I have to blink several times to make sure I’m not imagining it, but every time I open my eyes she’s still marked, still flawed, still my kind of beautiful. The redness of her birthmark is almost purple in places. I’m sure many people would find her uncomfortable to look at.
I don’t.I don’t.
I want to touch it. I want to touch her. This is nature messing with genetics, meddling with society’s ideal of perfection, and fuck if it doesn’t turn me on. My father spent years searching for the most beautiful men and women. He brought them back to the castle, used and abused them. Then, when he’d finally beat the beauty from their skin and discarded them—because in the end their beauty wasn’t enough—he took his wrath out on me. His obsession with perfection was a disease, one he fed regularly. I grew up hating beauty because all it brought me waspain.
“Jakub, what is it?” Leon asks, approaching us, drawing me away from my thoughts momentarily. I hear the caution in his voice, the concern. I’ve no idea what he’ll think, whether he’ll be disgusted or intrigued, either way I’m not ready to share her with them just yet. I force her backwards into the shadows of the hall, until she’s seeped in darkness just like me.
“What are you doing?” she asks, trembling under my touch. I hadn’t even noticed I’d put my hands on her. My fingertips tingle. My cock fills with blood, punching against my trousers in an effort to get to her.
Iwanther.
Earlier I’d fucked her cunt with my tongue. I’d wanted to take her first orgasm as my own. It’d pissed me off that Leon had touched her before me and I wanted to take something for myself, but now? Now this new yearning to claim her asmineoverwhelms me.
“What the fuck, Jakub?” Konrad says, his footsteps coming closer too.
“Czekac! Wait!” I say, needing a moment.
I need to fucking think. I need to decide how to play this. I may be the youngest, but I’m the true heir and as such I have to maintain what we’ve built here. We stole this woman with nothing more than the need to exact revenge and yet, she’s only been here a matter of days and she’s already fucking with our heads.
Konrad has fallen for her beauty, or at least the accepted side of her. He gets his kicks out of uglying up beauty temporarily with bruises and slashes from his whips and his paddles. It’s why my father loved him so much. Konrad will use pain to punish, just as Leon does. Their only difference is where they draw the line.
Konrad might be obsessed with marking something pretty, but he’s also turned on by the healing process. He thinks I don’t know about his cravings, but I’ve seen the way his gaze lingers on the Numbers after he’s made them come with both pain and pleasure down in the dungeon. I know how he loves to watch Thirteen tend to their wounds whilst pretending he’s making sure they’re still able to perform in The Menagerie, to fuck our clients. Before Thirteen arrived and became the Numbers’ unofficial healer, Konrad would insist on being in the room with the Numbers whilst a maid applied arnica to their bruises and washed their welts and cuts. He would pace up and down like a caged animal, chomping at the bit, wanting to be the one to soothe and pacify but always holding back.
Konrad is a man of two halves, but has only ever revealed the darkest side to the Numbers.
He’ll chase and capture, whip and torture, but he also wants tohealandvenerate. He finds peace in the process and, I suspect, the tiniest shred of humanity. It’s why Twelve stole from me to get his attention, why she accepted the punishment because she wantedhisattention specifically. She wanted to push him into revealing his other side. Of all the Numbers, she’s been the closest to seeing the gentler side of his nature, but now that his attention is fully on Nothing she’s had to take drastic action. Of course her plan backfired. Twelve’s in love with a monster who’s equally brutal as he is gentle, and who has no interest in her.
Leon, however, is just a monster. Just pain and darkness. He wants the fight. He wants the screams and the tears. He wants his victims to beg for mercy and never give it. He likes the power that he wields. Two, Six and Eight only survived him because he was more afraid of our father’s wrath than he was concerned for their lives. He never overstepped the line. Father understood that whilst Leon did not share his blood, he shared his darkest desires. So after Eight, Leon’s skills have been put to better use elsewhere. If a client disobeys our rules, he’s the one who deals with them.
Endsthem.
The Masks have become feared and respected because of his thirst for violence. Now my father’s dead, there’s no telling what he’ll do. Beautiful or ugly, deformed or perfect. Neither version of this woman that stands before me now makes a difference to him. Nothing won’t be safe with him. Not ever.
“Brother, what is it?” Konrad insists, impatient now.
I swallow hard, trying to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do. “She’s…” I can’t even bring myself to speak. Instead, I press my fingers against her birthmark, unable to control the tremor in my voice.
“I repulse you...” she murmurs.
I nod my head, even though that’s a lie. “She’s marked.Deformed.”
The words come out as a snub. They’re hurtful like I intended, because I cannot letherknow that she is anything more than a toy to play with. Too much hangs in the balance. We can’t afford to be distracted past the point of exacting revenge. Besides, my brothers and I made a promise to each other a long time ago that no one would come between us and I’m going to stick to it, regardless of how my cock twitches and my fucking dead heart stutters back to life. We will stick to the plan, we willuseher, then we willdiscardher.
That’s it.
“You’re an arsehole,” Nothing says, her jaw gritting as angry tears form in her eyes. This time she lets them fall, and I feel the jewelled drops warm my hand. I want to lick them from her skin. I want to know what sin tastes like.
Resisting the urge, I drop my hand and step back. “No, I’m your worst nightmare.”
“What do you mean, deformed?” Konrad snaps, stepping up beside me at the same time as Leon does. “Let me see!” he reaches for her, pulling her out of the shadows and back into the light.
“Get your hands off me!” she growls, her temper flaring once more, and I can’t help but notice how her birthmark darkens with the emotion. I swallow hard, and bite down on the inside of my cheek until it bleeds.
