Chapter 13
She’s curled up on her bed, she looks so fragile, rocking back and forth. Her shoulders are shaking violently, and the sound of her crying is relentless. A raw, unfiltered agony that seems to echo in the small space and spill out into the night air.
She flinches at the sound of my footsteps, her head snapping up.
Her eyes are red-rimmed, swollen, glistening in the faint light of the panel above us.
She sees me, and for a split second there’s pure, unadulterated terror in them, like a trapped animal spotting a predator.
Then, the sobbing intensifies, becoming almost hysterical, wracking her entire body.
She curls herself into a tighter ball, burying her face further.
My steps are hesitant, I’m careful not to startle her more.
Softly. I have to be soft in this moment.
I want to reach out, to touch her shoulder, but I stop myself. Sometimes, proximity is the only thing you can offer. Touching requires trust, and trust, trust is a fragile thing right now. I fuck this moment up, I fuck up everything. All my carefully laid plans.
“Grace,” I say, my voice rough, unused to the strain. “It’s okay.”
The crying doesn’t stop, it escalates. It’s not just tears; it’s like she’s drowning, like her lungs are full of saltwater, and her heart is shattering into a million pieces. “No,” she gasps between sobs, the word barely audible. “No, it’s not okay. They, they’re coming again…”
I crouch down beside the bed, keeping my distance, my hands clenched in my lap.
“They’re going to hurt me again,” she whispers, the words slurring together with the force of her crying. “They… they said…”
“Who, Grace?” I ask, acting like I don’t know, like I didn’t set them on her. I intentionally keep my voice gentler this time. “Who’s coming? Tell me.”
She shakes her head, frantic, burying her face deeper in her knees as a choked sob escapes. “I… I can’t…”
“Who, Grace?” I press, my voice low and calm, trying to anchor her in the present moment, away from whatever demons are chasing her through the darkness of her memory. “You have to tell me. You can trust me, remember? Who’s hurting you?”
She takes a long, shuddering breath. Then, her voice is a raw, broken thing, spat out like poison. “The man you sold my family out to.” The words are a hiss, venomous, and I feel every bit of it. “Magnus Blake and his brother, Conrad.”
My heart starts hammering against my ribs, a frantic rhythm against the quiet. It’s the first time she’s outwardly accused me, outwardly said anything. Up until now she’s allowed my visits, my comfort, my time like she’s granting me the favour.
In truth, it almost feels like a relief that she’s finally speaking the words out loud. This here is progress. This here, I can manipulate. I can twist to suit my needs.
“What did they do?” I ask.
She looks up, her eyes wide with fear, but there’s something else in them too; a dawning, horrified understanding.
She swallows hard, and shakes her head again, a tiny, involuntary gulp accompanying the motion.
“I, I can’t even speak it,” she whispers, her voice trembling so violently it’s almost incoherent. “It’s, it’s…”
I see the sheer terror in her eyes, the unwillingness to articulate the horror. “Grace,” I say, my voice dropping lower, trying to convey a different kind of strength, a grounding presence. “You have to tell me. What did they do?”
She shakes her head frantically, curling tighter, pulling her knees up to her chest, hugging herself as if trying to disappear. “No,” she whimpers. “I can’t. It’s too much. It’s…”
My hand instinctively rises, the gesture forming itself before my conscious thought.
I want to soothe her, to stroke her hair, to tell her it’s okay.
That I’m here, that I won’t let them hurt her again.
But my fingers hover in the air, suspended just above the pillow beside her head.
The last thing I need is for her to associate my touch with the violation she’s already suffered.
No, that comes later. Right now she needs to see me as a source of comfort. Her only source, her only friend.
She jerks. It’s a violent, flailing movement, like a bird suddenly seized by a predator.
Her eyes fly open, wide with sudden, shocking awareness, and she recoils as if I’ve reached for her.
The sobbing cuts off abruptly, replaced by a high-pitched, terrified scream that tears through the room.
“DON’T TOUCH ME.” she shrieks, the sound echoing with raw agony.
“DON’T TOUCH ME. YOU… YOU DIDN’T STOP THEM. YOU… you’re the reason.”
The hurt in her eyes is mixed with the fear, but underneath it I see the raw, unprocessed grief and anger. She’s blaming herself, blaming me.
“Grace,” I begin, my voice hoarse. “Listen to me. You’re wrong.”
“No, you are.” she cries, throwing her hands up in a gesture of despair.
“You let them take her, you let them take both of them. You drank with them, feasted with them, celebrated while we were locked in those cages. Did you stand there and watch as Magnus murdered my father, as they carved his heart out?”
I blink back, as a vision of that moment plays out. Of how Magnus raised that still beating organ and tore a chunk out with his bare teeth.
Titus had it coming.
So did Elaine.
I warned her, I warned them both, and they wouldn’t listen. Titus would never listen, he always had a chip on his shoulder, always wanted more than what life and God had given him. Their arrogance and their pursuit of power got them killed.
And Grace is going to pay a far bigger price than either of them will.
“I begged her.” I say calmly. “I went to your mother, I begged her, and I offered help to get you both out. She refused me. She refused to leave your father.”
“Why should she have?” Grace screams. “You were meant to make him Chapter Lord, not Magnus. It’s you that created all of this.”
I let her anger and her rage hit me, and a part of me is surprised at how much she understands of the situation. I thought her parents kept her ignorant of the more sordid details, but apparently not.
God, it’s going to be such a beautiful thing to take all this anger, all this fury, and to strip her of it entirely. I’m going to make her my bitch in every sense of the word.
My cock stirs enough that I have to swallow the thought, force it back down, make myself think of inconsequential, unsexy things.
Now is not the time. Touching her now, giving any hint of what I truly want would ruin everything.
They say good things come to those who wait. Well, patience is a game I can play. Especially when I know the time spent waiting is being put to good use.
I look at her, at the trembling, terrified shape huddled on her bed.
She has no idea how right she really is.
She has no idea that I really did sign her father’s death warrant the minute I chose Magnus over him.
Nor will she. At least, not until she’s so far under my spell, so far under my control that it won’t matter.
I’ll have her so enchanted by me, I could lay her on top of her father’s rotting corpse and fuck her on it, and she’d still not flinch away from my touch.
“Grace,” I say, allowing enough emotion into my voice to be convincing. “I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. I never wanted you to be caught up in this. I begged Elaine to take you away, to give you a chance, but she wouldn’t. I tried to help, Grace. I really tried.”
Her eyes are locked on mine, filled with a mixture of disbelief and lingering pain. She doesn’t believe me. How can she? Everything I’ve ever done, everything I am screams of failure and complicity in her eyes, because she doesn’t understand the complexities of our world.
She doesn’t understand all the sacrifices, the hard work, everything I have done to ensure the Brethren itself can even continue on.
“I know it doesn’t change what happened,” I continue, my voice dropping to a near whisper, trying to convey the gravity without the harshness. “And I know I can’t take back the past. But Grace, I can help you now. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, but I need you to trust me.”
“Trust you?” she scoffs, the sound bitter. “When you’re the reason I’m even here? When you’re the one who… who…”
“Who what, Grace?” I ask softly, patiently. “Tell me.”
Her breath hitches. She closes her eyes for a moment, as if drawing strength, or perhaps just summoning the courage to speak the unspeakable.
When she opens them, the pain is etched deeper than ever.
“They came,” she says, her voice growing slightly stronger, yet still trembling.
“Magnus. Conrad. They told me I’d damaged myself, that I’d devalued myself. ”
I don’t say anything. I keep my face neutral, though I marvel at the fact Conrad was smart enough to involve his brother. Conrad by himself is a brute, but Magnus, Magnus would have put the fear of God into her.
And poor little Grace wouldn’t have stood a chance against the pair of them.
It makes me wonder if I should throw Conrad a little cookie, a little tip for using his own initiative and thinking outside the box.
But then, usually when he does that, shit hits the fan and not in a good way.
No, Conrad had a lucky guess this time, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
It doesn’t make him a smart man. It doesn’t alter the fact that most days he’s a bull, smashing his way through life, not caring what precious pieces he destroys with his big old clown feet.
“They, they pierced me,” she whispers, the word hanging in the air like a curse.
“With… with needles. They, they put them in me, in places that I…” Her hand goes up, clutching at her neck and as it does, it pulls the fabric flat against her chest. For the first time, I see the outline of the diamonds dangling from her nipples.
I know the other piercing is far more intimate.
I picked it out myself, knowing exactly how her body would react once she is all healed.
Poor thing. She doesn’t have a clue that all of this might feel like a violation now, but really, it’s a gift. One she’ll thank me for in the years to come.
“Grace,” I say, my voice thick with emotion I can barely contain. “You’re safe now. You’re with me. Nothing else is going to happen to you.”
She looks at me, her eyes swimming with tears.
“You don’t understand,” she whispers, her voice raspy.
“They can come back, any time they want. They turned the camera off…” She glances at it, clearly with no idea that I too have ensured they’re not working whenever I visit.
Afterall, why would I reveal my hand so obviously?
“They’re going to come back.” She says more hysterically.
“They won’t come back.” I say, pulling her into my arms, feeling as her body gives in to me, as she all but collapses into my chest. “I will speak to them. I will ensure they do not come back.”
She sniffs, clearly knowing me well enough to know that I won’t do this favour for nothing.
“I need you to believe me.” I say reassuringly. “And I need a promise from you in exchange.”
She pulls back enough to look at me. Her eyes search mine, filled with a dawning, fragile hope mixed with profound caution. “What, what do you need?”
I take a deep breath, steeling myself. This is the crucial moment, the foundation of everything that comes next because how she responds to this will tell me how she’ll respond to her treatment further down the road.
How easily I will be able to manipulate her, how easily I’ll be able to break her down and remould her.
“I need you to promise me,” I say, my voice firm. “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself, not anymore. You hear me? You are safe, you are strong. You are going to be okay, but you have to promise me you won’t do anything to break yourself. Promise me.”
Her gaze darts away for a second, then back. She blinks as if gathering her strength, clearly pushing down the remnants of her fear and despair.
“But I can’t do this. I can’t stay here…”
“You can, Grace. You’re far stronger than you realise. Just focus on the now, on each day. Don’t think about what is coming. You can’t fight that. You have to accept what you have, what cards life and God has drawn for you.”
She chews her lip, looking like she might just burst into tears.
“Promise me, Grace. Promise me you won’t try anything stupid again, and I’ll make sure no one else gets in here. Not Magnus, not Conrad, not any of your father’s old buddies either…” I add as an extra threat to keep her up at night. “I’ll ensure no one but me is allowed to see you.”
In a voice so soft it’s almost a whisper, so fragile it could shatter, she says the words. “O-okay,” she murmurs. “Okay. I… I promise.”
It’s not a strong word, not confident, but it’s enough to give me what I want. What I need.