Chapter One
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Henri
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WHO THE FUCK WAS I kidding?
I can’t do this.
I didn’t have the morals, the self-control, the strength.
Even suggesting I try to do this was like dumping an oblivious goat into a T-Rex paddock. The goat thought he’d scored a good spot—a nice place for a snack and a snooze, only to end up decapitated and spat all over the foliage.
I honestly didn’t know if I was the T-Rex or the goat in this scenario.
Honestly, I was both.
It took all my fucking willpower to restrain myself. To smother the parts of me that were rotten and monstrous all while doing my best to be good. To be a genuinely nice guy who didn’t crave such debasement.
To be like him.
My half-brother who’d fought such urges and won. Who’d not only survived with the inherited compulsion to cause tears and get hard on pain but to also find a wife capable of leashing him.
Fuck, I wanted that.
I wanted the freedom to be me, all while too shit terrified to even approach a girl these days.
Not after what I’d done.
Not after what I’d wanted to keep doing.
The familiar black hunger clawed its way through me, and every despicable part of me came out to play.
My hearing seemed to sharpen, my nose became more acute to the scents of writhing, sweaty bodies dancing in the club around me; even my teeth ached as if they could lengthen, ready to puncture sweet flesh and lap up the hot essence inside—
Christ, stop it.
Do you hear yourself, Ri?!
My fist spasmed around my glass of whiskey.
The cheap imitation crystal fractured, cracked, then exploded into shards, tearing through the meat of my palm and drenching my newly purchased suit in liquor.
“Merde, you okay, Ward?”
Ward.
The name on my falsified birth certificate but not my true name.
My true name I’d only just found out, and under no circumstances could it be uttered around this scum.
Cursing under my breath, I glanced at the man beside me.
The man I’d painstakingly stalked, befriended, and done whatever it took to gain his trust. Six months it’d taken. Six months to slime my way into his inner circle when I should’ve run in the opposite direction.
He was the type of human I did my utmost to avoid because he represented who I truly was at my core. Each time I hung out with him—slowly evolving from shared drinks with acquaintances to watching dark-web porn in his den—I came face to face with the monster inside me.
It clawed and snarled. It thirsted for things not normal.
It howled for things not sane. My dreams were full of despicable deeds, and my body hardened at the foulest images.
The first time I’d been invited to his house to watch some sick shit he subscribed to, I’d had to run to the bathroom to throw up.
Just because I had urges didn’t mean I would ever, fucking ever, give in.
I’d walked away when I’d wanted to keep going. I still had a shred of decency...unlike the animals in those movies.
But, little by little, video clip by video clip, I shut down the parts of me that I’d clung to all my life. I turned my back on the last embers of light and embraced the disturbing darkness within me.
That choice had gotten me this far.
But at what cost?
My fucking soul, that’s what.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered, snatching a serviette from the holder on the bar, watching with morbid satisfaction as the pristine white soaked a vibrant red with my blood.
I shuddered as I imagined someone else’s blood. A nameless woman with her eyes wet and legs spread—
Fuck.
Clenching my teeth, I scrubbed at the wound.
I was so fucking twisted.
I should’ve just killed myself when I had the chance—done myself a favour instead of being weak and reaching out to my half-brother.
A sibling I hadn’t even known existed until my mother told me on her deathbed seven months ago.
I’d thought my father was a deadbeat who’d knocked her up, then left her with nothing and no one.
Turned out, my origins were far, far worse.
“Looks deep, man.” Roland grabbed my wrist and inspected my wound. My skin crawled where he touched me, but I kept a perfectly schooled grimace on my face. It would not help my case if he learned how many murdering fantasies I’d had since entering this nightclub with him.
He was lucky I hadn’t grabbed the velvet rope stands of the queue outside and bludgeoned him around the head. Incredibly lucky I hadn’t shoved a microphone down his throat from the awful singing DJ or smashed a bottle of expensive Johnnie Walker and stabbed his jugular with glass shards.
My nostrils flared as his fingers tightened around me, then fell away.
Keep it together, asshole.
I only had one chance at this.
One.
If I succeeded in doing what my half-brother demanded of me, I would have a family for the first time in my godforsaken life.
But if I failed...that family I wanted so desperately would slit me from ear to ear and bury me in an unmarked grave.
Probably with my heart torn out and cock ripped off, just like he’d promised.
“Ah, merde, he’s here. Mop up that massacre.” Roland chuckled, sending his baguette and chocolate éclair-loving guts jiggling. “Then again, he might like it. Maybe the Master Jeweler will make you bleed tonight instead of some poor girl.”
I kept my lips plastered into a grin instead of reaching for the glass splinters on the ground and driving them into his eyes. For a man who indulged in sexual appetites as much as he, I wasn’t sure how Roland hadn’t burned off the layer of fat he carried.
He’d be such easy prey.
If everything went well, I would eventually have the pleasure of killing him.
Unless my half-brother killed me first.
Pressing the serviette a little harder against the still oozing cut, I looked up to where his watery blue eyes had focused. I’d befriended Roland Olivan the Third thanks to my half-brother informing me he was one of the last remaining bastards who dared dabble in forced pleasure in France.
My older bro had done a particularly good job of exterminating most of them but the odd one kept sprouting up like weeds, infected with the same curse I had. The same plague that was passed on by my father.
“Don’t make me regret this, Henri.” Roland hastily smoothed down his custom-made navy suit. The expensive material shimmered under the crystal ball twinkling above, painting him with wealth, even if his eyes remained that of a thief. A thief who stole lives for his own pleasure.
“How would I make you regret this?” I growled, stuffing the bloody serviette into my black suit pocket and ensuring my dull bronze tie was perfectly smooth. My gold cufflinks sparkled, making my heart thud.
The simple birdcage emblems seemed to shout who I truly was. That I was descended from the Mercer line and in cahoots with the infamous Q.
The cufflinks had been his idea.
Not because he’d wanted to welcome me to his family but because he didn’t trust me.
The tracking device no doubt told him exactly where I was right now and where I’d end up if tonight was a success.
Supposed I should be grateful.
If tonight went well, I doubted I’d be in France much longer. If it all went to shit, perhaps Q could use the cufflinks to find and save me. Then again, he’d probably conclude I’d lost myself in the cesspit of sin and come kill me instead.
I had an awful feeling that was his plan all along.
He was seasoned at this. He knew how these trafficking bastards worked. He knew how slippery and evil they were. The fact he hadn’t given me any training, no weapons, and not even a back-up plan told me everything I needed to know: he didn’t care if I won or lost.
He probably wanted me to fail so he didn’t have to welcome me into his home.
“Remember what we talked about?” Roland asked, looking me up and down with a critical sneer. “You like gemstones. You enjoy taking raw stones and breaking them apart to show the priceless rock within. Tell him how much you enjoy smashing those jewels and—”
“You expect me to speak in code all night?” I turned to face him, balling my hands and wincing at the fresh pain on my palm.
The pain was good...helped me focus. The pain was bad...
made me lose control. “Pretty sure he won’t care if I speak plainly.
” I swallowed the sour taint on my tongue and let the beast within me wake.
“I think he’d appreciate my honesty if I say how much I crave their screams. How I can’t sleep at night, picturing how skin bruises and bleeds.
How I have dreams of helpless conquests all begging me to stop.
And I bet he’d welcome me with open arms if I confess that the moment they start to struggle, I get hard as a fucking rock—”
“It sounds as if you’re listing my own fetishes, which is rather disconcerting, seeing as I’ve never met you before.”
I froze.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled.
The monster inside me snarled to meet this other beast. To find kinship in shared sickness. But my struggling goodness did its best to remember this was a ruse.
I’d agreed to do this to prove I wasn’t like them. Not to turn my soul over to the devil.
Fuck.
Sweat rolled down my spine as I slowly turned to face the Master Jeweler.
I did my best to smile like a human, but the moment the suave, self-composed asshole—who was rumoured to have singlehandedly trafficked over a thousand people—met my eyes, he knew.
He knew, just like my half-brother had known.
I might want to be good.
I might have fought all my life to remain a worthwhile citizen who pretended to be like everyone else, cared for his sickly mother, and paid his taxes on time, but the truth was...I wasn’t.
I was a monster.
Just like this bastard.
And I officially signed my death warrant by shaking his hand and stepping willingly into his den.