Chapter 30 Bite Of The Snake
BITE OF THE SNAKE
PATIENCE
Through the dark fog, I swear I smell apples.
Something sweet and tempting.
Red and ripe.
The fruit of the vine.
It reminds me of Jacob’s cologne, which is fitting. My greatest sin. My first real taste of disobedience.
I never understood Eve’s fall. How one bite could be worth all that destruction.
Not until I met him.
An ache in my wrists cuts through the fog in my mind. Darkness fades, and my eyelashes flutter. My shoulders ache from how my arms are stretched, but when I try to tug, something metal digs into my wrist. Two links in a chain grind together, pinching my skin.
The sting of iron grinding against flesh has me snapping my eyes open. Overhead, I see my wrists bound to a metal bedframe. My feet are free, but there’s nothing within reach besides a crumpled blanket on the mattress.
The room is dark and cool, like it’s underground. The walls and floor are solid cement. It reeks of urine and vomit, which might be from the bucket beside the bed or the soiled mattress.
I manage to pull myself to sitting, but the chain is bound too high on the metal bedframe to find much relief. My shoulders ache as I try to adjust them. The best I manage is to prop myself up higher to relieve some of the pressure.
Sitting, I’m able to get a clear view of a murky liquid in the bucket beside the bed. I gag, barely holding back vomit as a lock unlatches across the room.
The door swings open, casting a bright glow from the well-lit hallway.
My eyebrows pinch until it closes behind a man, and I’m once more face-to-face with the red-haired man from the hallway at the restaurant.
His eyes are darker, filled with more malice than they were the first time I saw him.
And it only occurs to me now that I’ve seen him before.
He was on campus with the blond man, walking out of Jacob’s office.
How could they possibly know each other?
The man slicks his hair back, offering me the full force of his angry blue eyes. They brighten with the slimy grin curling in the corners of his mouth. “She’s awake.”
On instinct, I curl my legs closer to my body, trying to get as far away from him as possible. Not that it will do me much good with how I’m bound.
“Who are you?” I try to maintain my composure.
Alex always warned me not to show fear to monsters. They crave it.
The man grins, pacing the room. “You can call me Anson.”
“I don’t plan on calling you anything.” I glare. “What do you want?”
“Feisty.” He pauses at the edge of the bed. “I can see why he took an interest in you. I suppose it helps that you also have no resemblance to your father.”
I don’t know who he is, but at least one thing is clear—this does have to do with my dad.
“If I’m here so you can leverage me against my father, you’re too late. He’s missing, and I haven’t heard from him. And even if I had, he wouldn’t care if I was taken.”
As much as that hurts to admit, it’s the truth.
“Are you sure about that?” Anson tilts his head. “You are his prize after all. His perfect angel. His only daughter. What do you think he’ll do when he finds out we have you?”
“You assume he cares.”
“About you? No.” He chuckles. “Gideon only ever has one soft spot, and that is your mother. But his reputation is a close second. He might not care about your life, but what would he do to stop the family name from being sullied? Maybe we broadcast the defiling of his perfect angel and see how long it takes for him to snap.”
I clench my thighs, my stomach dropping.
It might be an empty threat, but something about the shimmer in his eyes says he enjoys the thought of it enough for me to need to be worried. Especially if he has a bone to pick with my father.
What wouldn’t my father’s enemies do to get to him?
“My brother will gut you when he finds out about this,” I warn.
“True.” The man shrugs like he doesn’t really care. “Alex’s bloodlust is only matched by the Interrogator himself.”
A chill runs down my spine thinking about the man who administered Alex’s trial.
A man with no name. No face. Feared by all but known only by members of Sigma House.
He technically saved my brother by getting him to a hospital when his initial trial went south, but he’s also the one who tied my brother to that chair.
Who electrocuted him.
If there’s anyone I hate more than Declan Pierce—than my parents—it’s the man the fraternity fears.
The Interrogator.
“Although, I suppose that can work in my favor as well,” Anson continues. “I wonder… what would they do to get you back?”
They?
“My father isn’t working with my brother anymore.”
Anson grins like I’m missing something crucial.
I shift on the bed, and the chain pinches my skin again, making me wince. And when I realize Anson caught it. That his eyes lit at seeing me in pain, my stomach turns.
“Maybe I should be more understanding.” He takes a step closer to the bed. “Maybe I should try to see what all the fuss is about. I’ve been wondering how one girl could walk in and ruin everything we’ve worked so hard for.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That, I believe.” He grins, reaching for my cheek.
“Don’t touch me.” I pull away.
“It’s interesting you still think you have a choice in anything that happens to you here or anywhere else. You’re a child of the House. Female at that. You are a thing to be used as we need. I always assumed Gideon would have ingrained that in you by now.”
“I’ll never be Sigma Sin’s bargaining chip.”
“Except you already are. He made sure of it.” The man reaches for me again, and I manage to get in one good kick to his thigh before he dodges the second.
He snags my ankle, and I realize my shoes are missing.
How much time has passed?
What happened?
Jacob must be worried sick by now. I went to the bathroom and never came back. That’s assuming these men didn’t go after him, too, just to tie up loose ends. I never should have involved anyone in my life. I know better than to think the House would look past it, no matter how far from home I was.
My chest aches thinking about what I’ve brought upon Jacob. Worse, that I might never see him again.
“This is pointless.” I try to bury my nerves, but I’m failing. “I’m not going to get you what you need.”
“That’s just not true, Patience Lancaster.
It seems you’ve become something to a few men.
Important ones at that.” Anson reaches for me again, and I try to pull back, but he just grins.
“It would be a waste to just have you sitting here while Derek figures out the best play, wouldn’t it?
I’d like to know what about you turned the most lethal man I know into a fucking cunt.
Is your pussy made of gold or something? ”
The man reaches forward and snags my ankles in one sweep, pulling them to him as I kick and fight.
The chains dig into my wrists as my body hovers over the bed, and I’m surprised they don’t snap as he spins me around and plants me face-first on the mattress.
“Stop.” I buckle my hips, but he climbs over me too quickly, pinning me down.
With my hands bound, I can’t stop him as he reaches around to unbutton my pants. And when he drags them down my hips, exposing my ass, he sits on my legs, preventing me from fighting back.
It’s no use trying to fight the tears that begin to fall.
Tears Anson couldn’t care less about. If anything, it seems to spur him on.
My parents might have made my childhood a living hell, but their name—my father’s role in the House—protected me from men like this. Now that he’s fallen and Alex is far away, there’s nothing to stop him.
I’m a token to be used.
A pawn.
“Don’t.” I try to fight, but there’s no use.
Anson’s fingers grip my ass cheeks, peeling them apart as I bury my face in the dirty mattress and try to shut off my mind. The only hands that have ever been on me are Jacob’s.
“Were you a virgin for him?” Anson taunts, sliding his hands to my thighs and widening them. “Is that why he broke for you?”
I shake my head, not understanding what he’s talking about.
“Or do I have it all wrong? Did he turn his back on everything we planned because you were his little slut?”
Something loud crashes on the other side of the room, and my shoulders jump.
One second, Anson’s weight is holding me down; the next, something warm drenches my back. Liquid heat soaks my clothes and covers my skin. And then Anson rolls to the side, falling to the floor while he grabs at his split-open throat.
The life in his eyes goes out like a switch flipped. He’s there, and then he’s gone, and I’m left with dead eyes looking back at me.
“I didn’t know he came down here,” someone says, panic flooding his voice.
But it’s the one that follows that has my heart racing.
“I told you to leave her out of this.”
I whip my head to the side and find Jacob towering over the bed. His eyes meet mine as he leans over and pulls my jeans up my hips, smearing the blood that’s all over me. Which is when I see the bloody blade on the mattress beside me.
“You”—I shake my head as Jacob undoes the chains at my wrists next—“you killed him.”
His eyes are stone-cold as he quickly releases me and pulls me off the bed.
“I’m sorry. He was told to stay away. This should have never happened.” Jacob’s jaw tenses as he turns to a blond man standing by the door. “I told you not to go near her. Plans changed.”
My blood freezes when I realize the other man cowers at Jacob’s words. As I take in the man before me as if it’s the first time.
If Jacob were just a professor, he wouldn’t understand what’s happening here. He wouldn’t know these men at all. Instead, he commands the room.
He slit a man’s throat.
“What would they do to get you back?” Anson’s question plays differently now.
He wasn’t talking about my brother and my father. He was talking about my brother and Jacob.
“Who are you?” I pull away, and to my surprise, Jacob lets me. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? Sigma Sin?”
I’m surprised I don’t vomit at those words. At that thought.
Jacob nods once.
Confirmation that strikes me like a wrecking ball to the chest. I play back every word Anson said. Everything that’s happened since I met Jacob. The strings he’s pulled, the games he’s been playing.
Him sitting beside me on the plane.
My apartment conveniently being across the hall from his.
My father’s resistance to my coming here.
Jacob getting close to me.
I’ve been at the center of this game all along. A ploy. Bait. A chess piece. Whatever I thought we were is a lie.
Then I glance at the man cowering on the other side of the room, scared to death of him, and everything clicks.
“You’re the Interrogator.” My heart is pounding so hard my ribs barely contain it. “It was you all along.”
I can’t breathe.
I’m going to vomit.
Taking another step back, I knock the bucket beside the bed. All while Jacob watches me scramble. He watches me fear him.
“Patience—”
“Stay away from me.” I step back. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
To my surprise, he listens, tucking his hands into his pockets.
Still, that isn’t enough. It doesn’t erase who he is or what he’s done.
The Interrogator. A man instrumental in sending my brother to a psychiatric ward for two years. A man who ruined my life before I ever met him.
“Let’s go somewhere, and I’ll explain.”
“No.” I nearly choke on the word. “I never want to see you again.”
I turn before the first tear falls because I know, once I start crying, I won’t stop.
Maybe my mother is right. There’s something sick inside me after all. Because just like her—just like all my friends, I fell for a monster.
Clenching my stomach, I run from the room. I run until the maze leads me up and out of a strange building. Until I find the street, and clean air finally fills my lungs.
I run, and I don’t look back.
Take the bite of the apple and feel the bite of the snake.
It hurts like hell.