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Chapter twenty
Gunnar
My eyes snap open, heart hammering in my chest. I’m still feeling the adrenaline high from our fight with the Eclipse, my arms jerking despite myself.
And that’s when I realize that I’m bound.
And Aisling…she’s gone.
I struggle for a moment even though I know it’s probably no good. My wrists and ankles are tight to the chair, and I’m stripped down to just my jeans. It’s dark in this room, but I’m alone…which hopefully means that Aisling got out safe.
God, I have to hope she’s okay.
Otherwise I’ll lose my fucking mind.
I calm down enough to look around, take in the details. I’m sitting at the center of a large, circular room—concrete all around, and quiet as the grave. The walls look to be hand-painted, decorated with trees whose branches twist upwards to cover the ceiling, roots painted across the floor in a dense tangle. I frown as I take in the scene, which rings a bell but isn’t quite clear in my muddled mind.
Fuck.
Of course.
The branches of a tree, tattooed on the faces of mysterious men.
“Shit,” I curse, fighting against the ropes. I yank again, harder, but the chair holds firm, a solid anchor in a sea of uncertainty. “Fuck me, fuck…”
“Comfortable?”
The voice cuts through the silence, smooth like the slide of a knife out of its sheath. My eyes dart from down toward my wrist to up toward the door, and that’s when I see him.
Standing in the shadows…maybe watching this whole time, masking his scent somehow.
Caius Rossi.
I’ve never met him before, but I know what he looks like; everyone in the city does. Shoulder-length black hair slicked back and graying at the edges, brown eyes that almost glint gold. He’s wearing a nice suit that even Vance would envy, a gold watch glinting at his wrist with the same tree pattern that’s painted on the walls.
It feels so obvious now that I’m in the beast’s lair.
Lianna isn’t just involved in this cult…the Rossis are the cult.
“Can’t say that I am.” I keep it cool, level, even though my gut’s doing somersaults. “What’s this about?”
He snorts. “Do I need a reason to keep you prisoner when you stole from me?”
Ais. Of course…she’s been with me long enough that it’s easy to forget Caius has more than enough reason to capture me. I bit her, marked her over the proprietary tattoo Caius had engraved into her skin. I took his property.
“She’s not a thing you can steal,” I mutter. “She came with me because she wanted free of you, you fucking bastard—“
“And now you’re here, thanks to her.”
“You don’t even give a shit about me,” I say. “I’m nobody. Just some low-level grunt.”
He gives me an odd look—one I recognized on Nero’s face when we spoke with him at his mansion.
They know something I don’t.
“You know more than you think you do,” Caius says, coming forward to sit across from me. “Given who you are…”
“Who I am?”
