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Stretching out my fingers, I reached for the door. The handle was right there, just a few more inches.
So why couldn’t I touch it?
I heard loud breathing behind me, and a shiver rolled down my back. The hair on my arms and neck stood at attention. As I turned my head to the side, fear rocked through me when my eyes landed on four tall men with broad shoulders.
My mouth dropped in horror at the sight of the paint on their faces, one half covered in snakeskin. The tallest of the group had golden scales branding his tanned skin. He looked like a copperhead snake, poisonous and deadly.
But so were his friends.
All of them had tattoos on their necks, arms, and hands. They wore black hoodies and fitted jeans, the right sides of their faces obscured by the paint. Beside the tallest of the group, a man with white blond hair raised his tattooed hand to his jaw. He painted his pale skin yellow with white chevrons like a king cobra.
The man on his left had the greenish yellow hue of a pit viper. They were all terrifying, but the last man was pure evil. His scales were dark brown, and when he opened his mouth, I gasped at his black tongue.
A black mamba.
What the fuck?
But before he could speak, my vision blurred, and someone shook my shoulder.
“Alex, wake the fuck up.”
My eyes shot open at the sound of Marcello’s deep voice. He held onto my shoulder, sitting at the edge of my bed. Concern scrolled across his face. I attempted to speak, but my mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed.
Maybe he wasn’t real.
Maybe it was all a dream.
“Look at me.” Marcello slid his hand beneath my chin and squeezed, forcing my eyes open. “How long has this been going on?”
“What?”
“Night terrors. They’re getting worse.”
I blew out a deep breath and shoved his hand away from my face. “Don’t act like you care about me, Marcello. You’re the one who locked me in this room. I only have you and Luca to blame.”
He glared at me, his hand rested on the top of the headboard.
“I was dreaming about the night you and your sicko brothers dragged me out of bed at Wellington Manor. How you dropped me off in Beacon Bay in the middle of the night and let The Serpents chase me until I had a panic attack so bad I had to be hospitalized for a week.”
The Serpent Society was a small gang of unknown men connected to the Salvatores. Their name came from the serpent in the Salvatore crest, so I’d assumed they were related. But no one knew the identities of The Serpents, only their code names—Hades, Morpheus, Charon, and Lethe—named after the most notable personifications of the Greek Underworld.
For years, I had woken up from the same horrific dreams. The dark closet. My mother and her slow, agonizing torture. Those old, painful memories of my bullies and their constant torture.
Aiden had slept beside me most nights when we were kids to help quell the terrors. He would rock me back to sleep and hold my hand to stop the shakes. When we left for college, the dreams stopped.
The distance from the Salvatores had kept them at bay. But after two nights away from Aiden, his loss was unlocking a part of my mind that held all of my worst memories.
All of my fears.
Marcello grabbed a tray from the table by the window. He set a tea cup and a plate of toast in front of me. My stomach rumbled as I looked down at the butter and strawberry preserves beside the toast. The Salvatores knew everything about me.
It was disturbing.
I sat up and hooked my finger through the cup’s handle, lifting it from the saucer. “Is this a peace offering?”
Marcello ignored my question, hands on his narrow hips. I slurped down the liquid, my stomach rumbling, and shoved a piece of toast into my mouth.
