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My protest falls on deaf ears. He manhandles me down the stairs. I almost trip trying to keep up with him, barely managing to find my footing. My feet leave bloody prints on the pristine, yellow floor, but I don’t feel pain. I vaguely register that I must’ve cut my soles on the glass shards.
He drags me across the foyer to the front door.
“Angelo,” I say again, trembling in his bruising hold.
He punches a code into a wall panel. “Do not say my name. You don’t deserve that privilege.”
The door clicks open. A blast of cold air hits me in the face. He shoves me outside, making me lose my balance. I go down, catching myself on my hands and knees. Lights go on in the garden and on the porch. The bright glare that shines in my eyes blinds me. I have nowhere to run, but I know one thing. I have to. And I can’t let him catch me, because Angelo isn’t human right now.
I struggle to my feet, slipping on the tiles that are wet from dew, but before I can straighten, he catches me again, his fingers finding purchase around my bicep and in my hair. He pushes me ahead of him down the steps and along the side of the house.
Running not to fall, I knock my toes against rocks. The cliffside of the house is dark. Another few steps, and a spray light goes on. The light must be motion triggered. I’m shivering with cold and fear when he stops in front of a metal door.
I fight him, but he easily constrains me by gripping both my wrists in one of his hands behind my back.
“Angelo,” I try again when he punches another code into a wall panel.
“I said not to fucking utter my name.”
The door clicks open, revealing a staircase. The inside is dark. Freezing. I don’t want to go down there, but I don’t have a choice when he wraps his arms around me in a steel vise and lifts me off my feet.
I twist in his hold, trying to free myself, but when we get to the bottom, I still. It’s so dark I can’t see my hand in front of my face. Yet I don’t have to see to know this place is shrouded in death. I smell it in the strong scent of bleach that hangs in the air.
When he drops me to my feet, I scurry away from him. A single, naked bulb flicks on, throwing a circle of weak light into the shadows. Angelo stands in that pool of illumination like a dark angel, hatred bleeding from his pores.
Swallowing, I retreat until my back hits the wall. Something clanks as I stumble into it. Chains. If I didn’t know before, I now know without a doubt what the cellar is for. What he does here.
This is where he kills people.
The realization restricts my throat. The air is cold and brittle. It hurts to breathe.
I try again. “Angelo.”
What he does next makes my knees buckle. He takes a whip from a hook on the wall.
“Angelo, please,” I say, raising my palms as he advances on me.
He tests the whip by lashing it on the damp floor. A sharp slash cuts through the air. Pausing in front of me, he says, “Stop fucking saying my name.”
“Then what am I supposed to call you?”
The way his knuckles turn white around the handle draws my gaze. I shiver so violently my teeth chatters. He swings the whip past my face, hitting the wall behind me. I jump. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to beat me to death.
“I’m sorry,” I say, tears streaking over my cheeks. “I shouldn’t have gone in there. I was just curious.”
Swishing the whip next to me again, he says in an icy tone filled with loathing, “You have no business being curious about them. Not about my mother, and not about Adeline.”
“Stop,” I say, flattening my body against the wall when another thwack falls on the other side of me. “Stop before it’s too late.”
“I should fucking kill you,” he says, clenching his jaw. “My father would’ve.”
I try to make myself small. “Then why did you marry me? Why didn’t you just kill me that night when he told you to do it?”
He stills at that, stabbing the fingers of one hand into his hair while raising the whip in the other. The effort it takes him not to bring that whip down on me shows in his eyes, how hard he’s fighting with himself.
“It’s because you want me to pay,” I answer for him. “If it’s going to take whipping me, then do it. Do it or kill me now and get it over with.”
He utters a raw cry, throwing the whip aside and cupping his head while walking in a circle with his face tilted toward the ceiling.
