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When moments went by and he said no more, she asked, “How old were you when the ‘cult’ was formed?”
“Three. By the time I was five, it was an isolated totalitarian society. Little by little, Riordan took over. He introduced a dress code, a job chart, a timetable, and guidelines that placed a lot of restrictions on everyone and made them reliant on him. In addition, he cut everyone off from the outside world.”
“Keeping them all isolated and inducing dependency would have made it easier for him to brainwash and control them.” It was little wonder that Knox was such a control freak and had such a total aversion to relying on others. Someone had once ripped control away from him. He’d taken it back, but it had made him determined to never lose it again. “Didn’t anyone speak up?”
“Not many, because he and his helpers punished any form of subordination. Riordan did whatever he had to do to keep his power.” Manipulated. Intimidated. Exploited. Oppressed.
As usual, Knox’s exterior was calm and his tone was even. But she’d come to know him so well that she could sense his buried rage. And she just knew that the answer to her next question would be bad, but she had to ask, “What did they do to you?”
He leaned toward her. “Maybe your question should be…what did I do to them?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The menace that had slithered into Knox’s voice made even her inner demon freeze as Harper watched him warily. He’d spoken so softly, so steadily. But the danger was there, sending a trickle of trepidation through her system. It was an instinctive reaction that she couldn’t escape, despite trusting that he wouldn’t exact that menace on her. He was the ultimate predator, and she could never overlook that.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” It was a dare that carried a taunt.
She swallowed, veiling her apprehension. “Not until you answer my question.”
“He punished anyone who wouldn’t give him the unquestioning devotion and submission that he demanded.”
Harper didn’t need to ask if Knox had rebelled. “Punished how?”
“Lots of ways.” Knox tangled a hand in her hair, watching as her jade green eyes swirled and changed into an entrancing cobalt blue. “He liked to keep people locked in a closet for a week or so. In that time, he wouldn’t let them eat, he wouldn’t let them sleep, and he’d beat them frequently.” His demon snarled at the memories. “Many of his followers helped. They got a taste for it, and they enjoyed it.”
Her apprehension was swiftly replaced by fury. “Then the bastards deserved whatever they got.”
“How can you be so sure when you don’t know what they got?”
“They hurt you, so I really don’t care.”
Her response warmed him and settled his demon. “I never said they hurt me. I said they punished people who refused to submit.”
“You refused.”
She was right. Knox and his demon had resisted Riordan’s control, refused to submit, no matter what he or his followers did. But the rage hadn’t really hit Knox until he left and got his freedom; that was when he’d realized what the outside world – one he’d been brought up to believe was bad and dangerous – was truly like, and he’d understood exactly what the bastards had stolen from him.
It had been difficult to adjust, but he’d worked hard to properly develop the sense of self that the bastards had tried to break down and take from him. In the sanctuary, he’d soaked up knowledge of every kind. When he left, he’d used that knowledge to gain all the things he’d been deprived of. And he’d vowed that he’d never again let anyone have any form of control over him.
“Didn’t your parents ever help you, ever try to stop him?”
“Not until the people who questioned or defied Riordan developed a habit of disappearing. That made them wary and suspicious. So when I was twelve, they tried to leave and take me with them.”
“He killed them,” she guessed. “You tried to protect them.”
“No, baby,” he said softly. “I avenged them.” Riordan had forced him to watch as he slit his parents’ throats. Knox had struck back, taken his vengeance out on everything around him. “You’ve seen what destruction I can cause. You can guess what I did. I warned the innocent ones to run, but most of them wouldn’t leave Riordan – they’d become too dependent on him, were utterly brainwashed. So they died with him. But I didn’t care. I was too eager to see him suffer.”
“Stop trying to scare me.”
“Scare you?” Knox cupped her chin and breezed his thumb over her bottom lip. “Baby, I’d never do that. But you have to understand that the answers you want to the many questions in your pretty little head will very often not be what you want to hear. They might shock you, they might disgust you, and they might even frighten you. I don’t want to scare you, but I won’t lie to you. Don’t ask for the truth unless you can deal with it.”
She could deal with it. So she asked the one question that might just have the potential to terrify her. “What are you?”
“You’re not ready for that answer yet.” And Knox wasn’t willing to tell her until he’d managed to make her so attached to him that she wouldn’t want to leave him, no matter what. It was ruthless, yes, but he was too determined to keep her to care about that.
Harper bristled. “I get to decide what I’m ready for.”
