Chapter 70 Antonio
Vihaan moves around her like a shark circling. He’s already discarded his jacket. His stench is a violation in itself, a thick, oily smog that threatens to suffocate us both.
“A true masterpiece, Antonio,” he says, his voice a low, grating purr. He doesn’t look at me. His eyes are only for her. “A man of your particular tastes, I always wondered what you would deem worthy of keeping. Now I see. She is exquisite.”
I say nothing. My jaw is a knot of granite, my teeth ground so tight I fear the enamel will crack.
I am seated in a low, velvet-upholstered chair, a King on a throne of thorns.
My hands are clenched on the armrests, the velvet rough against my whitened knuckles.
Every instinct, every primal, screaming fibre of my being is telling me to rise, to cross the room.
To put my fist through Vihaan’s smug, leering face.
To break the bones that form that smirk, to tear this entire damnable club apart with my bare hands until I can carry her out of here, untouched, untainted by this filth.
But I don’t move.
Grace turns her head, just slightly. Her eyes find mine. They are wide, pools of shattered glass, glistening with a film of terrified, uncomprehending tears. She is searching my face, desperately seeking a sign, a signal, a flicker of the man who whispered promises into her skin in the dark.
I give her nothing. I am a statue, a monument to betrayal. I have to be. If I let even a sliver of the storm inside me show, it will all unravel. I will unravel.
Vihaan reaches out. His fingers, adorned with heavy, ugly rings, brush against the nape of her neck. She flinches as if branded, a full-body shudder that screams through the silence. Her gaze never wavers from me.
Antonio. Stop this. Please. That one look pleads without the need for words.
“Such soft skin,” Vihaan murmurs, his voice dripping with a grotesque parody of reverence as he finds the hidden zipper of her dress. The sound of it parting is like a razor slicing through the tension in the room. A tiny, metallic sigh of surrender.
I stop breathing.
He pushes the silk from her shoulders. It slithers down her body, a whisper of purple against her pale skin, pooling at her feet on the cold concrete floor.
She stands there in only her lace underwear, her arms crossed over her chest not in modesty, but in a last, futile act of self-preservation.
She is trembling, and the light catches the faint sheen of goosebumps on her arms.
Still, she looks at me. The question in her eyes has died. Now there is only a dawning, horrifying realization. This is not a trick, this is not a test. This is the transaction.
“Dio mio,” Vihaan breathes, his voice thick with genuine, awed lust. “You are a lucky, lucky man. To have this waiting for you. To have this possession.”
That word makes me more furious. Grace is not my possession.
She is... She is the unexpected crack of light under a door in a room I thought was sealed forever.
She is the reason my coffee tastes better in the morning, she is the quiet laugh that disarmed me when I thought I was beyond disarming. Grace is not a thing to be bartered.
But today, she is.
Vihaan runs his hands over her shoulders, down her arms. His touch is proprietary, assessing. He is evaluating his new purchase. His rings are visibly cold against her skin; I see her shiver again.
“So delicate,” he says, his voice rising, needing an audience, needing me to hear his every appraisal. “Yet so strong. You can see the fire in her. A spirit like that… it makes the conquest so much sweeter. Don’t you agree, Antonio?”
My vision tunnels. The edges of the room go dark, and all I can see is his hands on her. The contrast of his coarse, ringed fingers against the perfect, alabaster canvas of her back. I want to peel the skin from his hands for daring to touch what is mine.
But she is not mine. Not right now. Right now, she is the currency and I am the banker, coldly counting out the notes of her dignity to buy the information I need.
Loyalty to the Brethren. Loyalty to our Grand Master. She is… she is one woman. One fucking woman.
The thought is a poison in my veins.
Vihaan turns her around to face him. She resists for a fraction of a second, a final, tiny act of defiance before allowing herself to be moved.
But her head turns, and her eyes lock onto mine again.
The tears are falling now, tracing silent, glistening paths down her cheeks.
She doesn’t make a sound. She just stares, and in her gaze, I can see everything we were being dismantled.
It is all being publicly executed in this sterile room, and I am the silent, complicit executioner.
He kisses her neck, and I see his lips press against the frantic pulse beating there. I see her eyes squeeze shut, a spasm of pain and revulsion contorting her beautiful features. A single, choked sob escapes her, the first sound she’s made.
It takes everything I have not to react to that.
“So delicious,” Vihaan moans against her skin, his voice muffled. He is putting on a show, amplifying his pleasure for my benefit. Each moan, each groaning compliment is another turn of the knife he knows he’s plunging into me. “So sweet. You must taste of heaven itself.”
He is outplaying me. Vishaan knows this is torture, he knows the information is vital, but he also knows the price is my sanity. He is buying his salvation and the destruction of Antonio Macrae in one single, devastating transaction, and I am letting him.
My fury is a living thing, a caged beast roaring in the confines of my chest, rattling my ribs, demanding release. It is a red-hot tide threatening to drown all reason, all duty.
Kill him. Kill him now.
Fuck the Brethren. Fuck the Esau. Take her and run.
The image is so vivid I can almost feel the satisfying crunch of his nose under my fist, the warm spray of his blood.
But then the Grand Master’s face superimposes itself over the violence in my mind; the weight of the centuries-old oath I took, the lives of every man in our Order, the future, the greater good. This one painful, horrific sacrifice for the ultimate victory.
The conflict is tearing me in two. I am a man split down the middle but the choice is made, the amputation is complete.
I feel a part of me die, a fundamental piece of my humanity shatter and go dark forever. I chose. I chose the Order, I chose the Brethren; I chose the ghost of a holy relic over the living, breathing woman weeping silently in front of me.
I force my body to relax into the chair. I unclench my fists, one finger at a time. I will my breathing to even out. I let the coldness, the void left by the part of me that just died wash over me. It is a chilling, terrifying numbness.
I meet Grace’s gaze. The tears are still falling, but her eyes are changing. The terror and confusion are hardening. The shattered emerald is melting and reforming into something else: a cold, brilliant, and utterly hateful diamond.
She sees it, she sees the moment I make the choice. She sees the life leave my eyes, replaced by the cold calculation of the soldier. Grace sees the betrayal not as a momentary lapse, but as a fundamental truth of my character she had been blind to.
Vihaan moves his hands lower, his touch more invasive, his commentary more crude but I barely hear him.
The world has narrowed to the silent communication between me and Grace.
There are no more pleas in her eyes, no more questions.
There is only the devastating, absolute knowledge of what I have done.
She is seeing the real me for the first time, and the real me is a monster who sat and watched.
He leads her toward the large bed in the corner of the room. She doesn’t fight him. She moves like a sleepwalker, her body compliant but her spirit already gone, already retreating to some deep, hidden place inside herself that he cannot touch. That I have already violated.
As he lays her down, her head turns on the pillow. Her eyes, those beautiful, broken eyes, are still fixed on me. They are my anchor and my damnation.
Vihaan fumbles with his belt, his breathing heavy and eager. The metallic clink of the buckle is the sound of a cell door slamming shut.
Her lips part. No sound comes out, but I can read the words she forms, a silent curse meant for me and me alone.
I hate you.
I hate you.
I hate you.
And as Vihaan moves over her, blocking her from my view, I finally break. I look away. I stare at the wall, at a meaningless smear on the concrete, and I let the numbness consume me. The beast of my fury is gone, slain by my own hand. All that is left is a vast, empty silence.
I have the information, I have my loyalty, I have my victory.
And I have just lost everything that ever made any of it matter.