Chapter 24
24
I could just run. Reaper said he’d protect me.
I stood in the shower back at King’s house, letting the water cascade over my head like it might help me formulate a plan. I couldn’t go through with the wedding, and I trusted Reaper to shield me, but I needed to find a way to shield the club from King’s wrath.
“You’re home early,” I said, startled to find Kevin leaning in my bedroom doorway when I got out of the shower. I’d managed to sneak back in without getting caught, thanks to a diversion Reaper created, but it had been such a close call.
Worth it , I thought as I forced myself to kiss Kevin in greeting. Despite the corner Reaper had backed me into with his deal, it had still been the best night of my life.
Kevin’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. “I have a gift to show you. An early wedding present…”
Don’t act nervous. He doesn’t know anything. Don’t give him a reason to be suspicious.
Once I’d pulled some clothes on, he led me to one of the downstairs drawing rooms that had been cleared out except for something in the center, enormous and covered by a sheet; some kind of art installation, it seemed like.
I braced myself to fawn over some modern-art monstrosity, but when he pulled the sheet off with a flourish, it revealed a marble statue. For a moment, all I could do was stare.
“It’s exquisite,” I breathed, genuinely struck by the beauty of it.
A man and a woman were carved with such finesse that their bodies looked to be made of flesh rather than stone. The woman was in flight, mid-transformation. Her feathered arms stretched wide like wings, while her feet curved into delicate fins. A look of such desperate anguish twisted her face as the bull of a man wrapped his arms around her, stopping her from fleeing.
The man was at ease, confident in his physical superiority. The look on his face was smug, like he was satisfied he’d captured her, perhaps amused by her attempts to flee. It was all a game to him.
I turned to look at Kevin in amazement. “It’s incredible how much it looks like a Bernini. Who’s the artist?”
His expression wasn’t unlike the sculpted man’s. “Bernini.”
I blinked. “A descendant of Gian Lorenzo Bernini?”
He ran a hand along the woman’s face, tracing a tear that looked real even though it was marble. I had the irrational urge to tell him not to touch her.
“Sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1625 and 1626. Commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese.”
It wasn’t possible a piece of Bernini’s this spectacular, on this scale, could’ve escaped the notice of art historians for centuries. But questioning him was dangerous.
He wrapped his arms around me from behind, holding me to his chest as we admired it together. “You think it’s a fake, and you’re scared to tell me.” I started to deny it, but his arms tightened. “Do you think I’m a fool, Juliet?”
“Of course not,” I said quickly, trying to pull away.
He tightened his grip until it felt like he was crushing me.
I was scared.
“You must think I’m a fool if you think I’d spend a king’s ransom on a fake. It was a closely guarded secret, then made its way into a private collection. I purchased it at the Black Rose Auction last year. For you.”
It was exactly the sort of thing that would be sold at the highly secretive auction we’d be attending a few months after the wedding. If that was where he’d gotten it, it was almost certainly not a fake.
“Thank you,” I gasped, hoping he’d made his point.
“It’s Zeus and Nemesis. He loved her, but she ran from him. She tried turning into all kinds of creatures to elude him, but he chased her to the ends of the earth and caught her.”
Fear gripped my chest as tightly as he did.
“Where were you last night?” The gentle way he said it was more frightening than if he’d shouted.
“I was here…” I said, clinging to the hope that he was just testing me.
He released his hold on my chest. “I have another present for you.”
He held out a velvet ring box, and I forced myself to smile when I took it from him.
As I opened it, he said, “You lied to me.”
It took me a fraction of a second to realize what I was looking at, and I dropped the box in horror. Josh’s pinky ring with its sapphire stone rolled onto the floor, still attached to part of a finger.
“I wasn’t…He didn’t!” I was hyperventilating too much to get a coherent thought out.
“Oh, I’m aware he didn’t touch you. But he failed in his duty to keep you safe, and he’ll pay the price.”
I gasped like a fish out of water as the room spun around me. “I’m going to be sick.”
He laughed softly. “But I’ve got another gift for you.”
While I was in a foggy daze of guilt and terror, he dragged me out to the grounds and down to his menagerie, staffed by zoologists he’d stolen from the finest facilities in the world. He had a breeding pair of giraffes, an assortment of savanna animals, and smaller creatures like arctic foxes in enclosures.
But he didn’t lead us to any of those areas. He steered us towards a new one he’d had built to accommodate a leopard.
When we stood just outside the enclosure, Eric handed him another, slightly bigger, velvet box. One side of his mouth turned up into a leering smile when he looked at me.
Kevin held out the box with a gleam in his eyes, and I shook my head, trying to yank my arm away from him. He jerked it so hard, it felt like my shoulder was going to come out of the socket. “You’ll only make this worse. Open it! ”
My fingers were trembling so badly, I struggled to get it open. Inside was Lola’s blue collar.
He spread his hands wide. “Your dog was suffering, waiting at home for you while you were out with someone else, so I put her out of her misery. She made a nice appetizer for my new huntress.”
I choked on a sob, trying hard not to give him the tears he was obviously after.
He shrugged. “Better sport than Josh.”
A sudden gut-wrenching scream made me actually look into the leopard enclosure. It took me a second to make sense of what I was seeing through the foliage, but the leopard had ravaged Josh’s shoulder and was dragging him into the bushes. He was coming in and out of consciousness, probably from the blood loss, but he was fully awake and sobbing for mercy as she tore at the flesh of his arm.
“Leopards aren’t usually this violent, but it’s amazing what starvation and a little amphetamine concoction will do to a wild cat.”
I puked onto the grass in front of me, then collapsed onto my own vomit, trying to drown out the sounds of his suffering with my hands over my ears.
This is my fault.
Kevin stood there and watched until the screaming stopped. It took so long, he made a phone call, discussing upcoming plans with someone; the bit of normalcy made me feel completely detached from reality.
Josh’s screams went quiet, and all that was left in the enclosure were ripping noises that were threatening to make me puke again.
Kevin snatched me by the arm and dragged me back up to the house. He took me into one of the downstairs guest bathrooms, turned the shower on, and shoved me into the stream of cold water. When he was content the worst of the filth had been washed away, he turned it off and mercifully left me sitting on the tile floor, hugging my knees and shivering so hard, my teeth felt like they were going to crack.
“You will be waiting here when I want you. You will never lie to me again. And if you try to run… Do you know the story of Bernini’s first love?”
I shook my head, cowering against the wall.
“Bernini had an affair with a married woman named Constanza. He was hopelessly in love with her until she also had an affair with his brother, Luigo. When Bernini found out, he hired a man to hunt her down. Then he had the man cut her face with a razor blade so she’d never be able to trick another man into loving her again.”
He snatched my jaw and forced me to look him in the eye. “He sliced her from her forehead…” He slashed his nails across my face. “All the way down to her chin, splitting her nose open and tearing her cheek so you could see her teeth through it. Defy me again, and you’ll beg for a punishment so lenient.”
I couldn’t get words out around my sobs, so I tried to show him I understood by nodding, and he released me.
“Where were you?”
He doesn’t know. He couldn’t know, or he’d go after Reaper and the others. What if Styx was next in that cage after everything she’d been through? I’d selfishly put them all at risk.
If he did know, and I lied, I’d make this worse for myself, but it was worth the risk to protect them. If he knew I’d been with Josh, he already knew I’d been to Thor’s bar.
“The biker b-bar off Forty-Seventh,” I blurted, stuttering between sobs. “I…I didn’t mean to go there. I just w-wanted to see my sister, and I knew you’d say no. I got stuck at the bar. I was scared they’d hurt me, and I hid in the woods overnight, then managed to get a cab home this morning.”
He narrowed his eyes. “If I find out any of that is a lie…”
“It’s the truth!” I pleaded desperately.
He pulled a towel down from the rack and wrapped it around my shoulders, urging me to stand. He pulled me into his arms and held me as I cried, and that was the thing that broke me. I had to accept the comfort of a monster as the tears consumed me.
I’d been a reckless fool, and others had paid the price. I’d never make that mistake again.