Chapter 31
Ileft the sacristy ten minutes after Father Jedidiah finished locking the main doors.
I had to get this done, stall the beast if nothing else. I couldn’t find a way to save both my prince and…my king without placating the beast who threatened them.
The town of Monticello was quiet as I walked along the paths. I had grown accustomed to the people here. Callahan was down to visit Beatrice, and his little girls were playing in the field with their beautiful mother.
Ethel greeted me when she saw me and asked if I needed an extra carton of eggs. It was so strange that the twin who treated me like an alien when I arrived was now used to seeing me around, and some even smiled at me.
I didn’t say much. I couldn’t. I was too afraid to say too much or too little. My smiles were what I offered to the sweet town of Monticello.
I knew Dawn and Jerry. They came to the parish a few times, offering me some clothes if I wanted to go about my day in something other than robes.
I loved Dawn.
She was so sweet.
Her fond expressions when she spoke of her children, Maria and Elias, made me feel like maybe someday I could know Jujiro just as well. I could find out what his favorite foods were and his toy preferences.
I’d missed the first moments…
I’d never get those back, watching him crawl or laugh for the first time. Kaito had stolen so much. I couldn’t let him keep my son, making me miss all of his firsts.
Monticello was the kind of small town quiet that felt like it was listening even when people weren’t around anymore. Snow lingered in gray patches along the sidewalk, the first sign this winter wouldn’t be kind to us. The church bell tower loomed behind me, tall and accusing.
I didn’t look back.
I’d learned not to.
I kept moving forward.
Only when you move ahead can you fix what you leave behind.
Kaito’s hotel sat on the far end of the main Street, connected to a bar. It was an older brick building that tried too hard to look charming. The neon ‘VACANCY’ sign flickered like it was nervous to see me, and I tried to breathe through my nose and keep my mouth shut.
Room 2194…
He told me to meet him…to give him an update.
I highly doubted telling him I came in a playhouse sufficed, but I was going to try to twist the truth enough to avoid becoming a lie.
When the sweet bartender greeted me, it caught me off guard.
“Visiting that hot grump in the second wing?” she said, and I tried not to grimace.
“Yes.”
After a moment of studying me, she nodded toward the stairs.
At the top, I realized he always chose rooms facing the street. Every hotel he’d dragged me to when I was captive, every single one faced the road. I remembered hearing the cars when I was chained to the bed. It was something I found myself doing.
Trying to focus on the outside sounds helped me to avoid what I could hear above me. Maybe Kaito liked the street lights.
Or…
He liked to watch the exits.
I knocked once, trying to readjust my dress and keep myself from stepping on it. I didn’t like flashy dressing. Simple and modest. The white dress I had on covered my arms and legs fully, and I needed that after what he did to me in a bathing suit.
The door opened immediately, before I could knock a second time.
Kaito didn’t greet me. Why would he? To him, I was a piece of his furniture being realigned.
He stepped aside and let me in, motioning to the small deck at the back.
The room smelled faintly of cologne and stale heat. I couldn’t focus on the bed. I had to look away. It would do me no good to fixate on the small speckles of blood.
What’s a monster without a victim?
“You’re late,” he said, lighting up a cigarette and blowing the thick cloud into the night sky.
“I had church duty, Kaito. That is my job and how I get close to our…mark.”
He closed the screen door behind me when I got to the patio. The click of the lock was deliberate.
“And?”
I swallowed.
“I got close to him, as you said. I…”
Kaito leaned against the railing, his arms crossed. He didn’t ask how. He never asked how. He waited. He wanted me to describe crude details to further my discomfort.
The silence pressed on my chest, and I debated pushing him over the railing.
“Where is Jujiro?” I said, looking around and seeing nothing.
Kaito shook his head. “Why? So you can shove my ass over this bar, snatch the boy, and live happily ever after with your priest?”
Yes. Precisely.
“Not a chance, Sayuri. He’s safe. For now.”
I chewed my lip, knowing I would not get any information that could hint at his whereabouts or if he was even still in New York.
“I…I did what you wanted.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“And what was that, Sayuri? You fucked the priest?”
My throat tightened at the crass term.
“Not yet…I touched him. He let me, and he…completed his joy.”
Kaito’s expression didn’t change, taking a drag of his cigarette and blowing the smoke in my face.
“Touched,” he repeated flatly.
Heat crept up my neck. I hated how my body reacted when I remembered the truth. He touched me. The act itself was lovely, but the look on Jed’s face when he made me…
The way he’d tried to give me control while barely able to contain his own.
I felt so free.
“I…”
I tried to recall what he did to me and flipped that action, as if I were the one to do it. “I touched his penis…and he had an orgasm on my hand,” I forced out.
The words sounded foreign in my mouth and dirty.
Kaito stared at me.
“Describe it.”
“What?”
Kaito shrugged. “Describe how you jerked off your holy man.”
My fingers curled into my coat sleeves, and I sighed.
“It was…quick.”
Kaito laughed, and it startled me.
“Quick, huh? A minute man then. Is he circumcised or intact? Like when you swirled your tongue on his head?”
I knew the answer, but what did it matter?
“He—” I faltered.
My mind scrambled. I couldn’t replay it cleanly. It wasn’t the mechanics I remembered. It was the tension and the way Jed had gripped my hips like he was bracing for impact.
“He…um…struggled,” I said finally. “He tried to stop me.”
“And?”
“And he didn’t stop me. He was completed.”
Kaito pushed off the railing slowly, sizing me up like meat on a shelf.
“What did he taste like?”
Shit!
When Jed put his fingers in my mouth, it was strange, wet, very slippery, and like rose water. Did guys taste the same?
“Um, like…sweet…water?”
Kaito shook his head and sighed, as if he were dissatisfied.
“You’re lying, Virgin Mary.”
The word cracked through the room.
“I-I’m not.”
“You can’t even describe what you did, and guys definitely don’t taste like fucking ‘sweet water’ ”
“I don’t need to—”
“You came here to lie to me. You are brave or very stupid. Why so desperate? Is the priest losing interest in your cock teasing, or are you gaining too much interest?”
He stepped closer, and I swallowed.
He wasn’t violent. He was controlled.
“I’m real tired of these games, Sayuri. You need him to nut inside you. If you don’t have his baby makers in your picky pussy, we can’t get a rape kit to prove he did it. Even if you did give a blowie, which I know for a damn fact you didn’t, that isn’t good enough.”
My pulse thundered.
“You need to know his weaknesses to get close enough to make him feel trustworthy of you.”
“I know his weakness,” I snapped, and I instantly regretted it.
“Oh? Humor me.”
“It’s guilt and restraint. It’s pretending he’s holy when he’s not…”
It’s me.
Kaito studied my face.
“You’re toying with him then, or you can’t give it up when he’s ready.”
“No.”
“You enjoy the game, Sayuri. Don’t fool yourself. So many years you didn’t have control, and now we all bow down to you, waiting for you to make your move. Does it feel good, Queen Yakuza? Does it feel justified to strike him down?”
“I’m doing what you asked, Kaito. I’m fulfilling my end of the deal. Are you? Where is my son?”
“Poorly,” he snapped. “And our son is safe. Like I said. For now. That depends on you.”
The air shifted, and I felt the tension spike.
“You had a month,” Kaito continued calmly. “To make him confess. To break him and to bring him to us.”
I felt the floor tilt slightly.
“I am breaking him.”
“You’re getting attached.”
“I am not.”
His gaze sharpened, and he laughed.
“You hesitate when you speak about him, make excuses when he’s involved. You’ve let the one thing you’ve begged for years to have slip further and further away, all because you have a wittle crush on a fucking man of God.”
My stomach twisted, and I felt bile rise in my throat.
“You hesitate even now, because you know I’m right.”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even breathe.
Kaito stubbed out his cigarette right next to my face. I felt the smolder and felt the burn on my cheek where he grazed me.
“Kaito…please…”
Kaito didn’t speak. Instead, he pulled a room key card from his pocket.
“You have two weeks,” he said, pulling my dress up slowly and slipping the card into my panties, before letting my dress fall back to the ground.
“T-Two weeks? How can I seduce a man in two weeks?”
The words hit harder than I expected.
“A whore can do it in a day. Be lucky, I have business to attend to and need my own time to finish the task.”
“I…Kaito, that’s—”
“Two weeks to get him to fuck you, come in you, get a statement for rape, and make him confess.”
“That’s not enough time.”
“You’ve wasted half of what I gave you.”
“I haven’t—”
Kaito plucked a flower from the small pot hanging overhead, twirling the petals near my face.
“You’re softening, Sayuri, you know what happens when you soften?”
I felt something crack inside my chest as he flicked his lighter on underneath the petal, and the beautiful object burned to a crisp.
“I would…never soften for him…never for any man.”
That used to be true.
Kaito tilted his head slightly and flicked the remaining burned petals away.
“Then prove it. Two weeks.”
My hands trembled, and I hid them in my coat.
“And if you fail,” he continued evenly, “you shall see how soft our sweet son is.”
A pause.
“When you get his head in a box.”
My breath hitched before I could stop it, and a desperation burned inside of me.
“No! I will do what needs to be done.”
“Good girl. That’s what I thought.”
Silence stretched between us, and I looked out into the dark street.
Two weeks…Fourteen days to destroy a man who once saved me.
Fourteen days to pretend I didn’t feel the shift happening inside me.
Fourteen days to subject the man I loved to worse than death itself, but true hell.
Kaito stepped back toward the door.
“Next time you come here,” he said, “I expect progress. Not stories you can’t even describe.”
He opened the door for me.
Dismissed…I was being shooed away to complete my soul-blackening task.
I walked out into the cold without another word to him or anyone else on my way to the streets. The church bell tower was visible from here, tall and unmoving. It was like it was watching me, too, waiting to see what I would do.
How can I survive this without blood on my hands?
For the first time since I’d arrived in Monticello, I wasn’t sure who I was trying to destroy anymore.
Because every step I took to the parish destroyed me.