Chapter 11
How many layers of a person had to be stripped away until you finally knew the real them?
I wasn’t na?ve enough to believe I knew every part of Saint—that there weren’t pieces of him that were a stranger to my obsessive longing—but this felt like a pretty big deal to miss.
He was a book with hidden chapters, pages censored and undiscovered.
I made it back to the hotel in a daze, barely registering my belly flop onto the bed as I struggled to wrap my head around what I saw. What was that? Some satanic ritual? A sex cult?
Was Saint in a sex cult?
What was a sex cult, even? An in-house orgy? A place that preyed on young, unsuspecting people?
Oh, God. My stomach tightened. Was that why Saint slept with me?
I felt like I was going to throw up.
I almost didn’t want to see him. Didn’t know what version of him I would get.
The one that shared my bed or the one that commanded that room.
My body curled into a tight ball under the covers. The sun had started to sink below the River Thames, casting a shadow into the room. I refused to turn on a light. Refused to move a limb beyond the mattress.
It felt like I was hiding from reality. Maybe I was.
Part of me wished I hadn’t given in to my compulsion to follow him, that I was still kept in the dark.
The other part, a larger part, was glad I had. To know that the Saint I had worshiped for years wasn’t the man I was convinced I knew.
What was that cliched saying my father always spewed at me? Ignorance was always bliss.
Well, knowledge was a bitch.
I almost didn’t come back here. But when I ran from the property, I didn’t have a clue where else to go. It was better I came here, in the end. I needed to make sense of what I saw.
I needed answers.
I needed to talk to Saint.
And he should be here any minute.
He texted me close to an hour ago saying he was finishing up work and was on his way back, and asked what I wanted for dinner.
Work.
How many times had he said he was working when it was really for this?
Whatever this actually was?
Did my brother know?
Was he part of it?
With all these questions swirling in my head, I hadn’t replied to Saint’s text. Nor did I have an appetite.
As if summoned by my thoughts, the hotel door clicked open, and Saint’s footsteps filled the room. So did the aroma that normally would’ve made my stomach growl to claim.
Now, it barely cared.
Saint brought me food.
I squeezed my eyes shut as he quietly shut the door, leaving the light off as he made his way across the room. He was quiet as he set the food down, his footsteps soft as they padded closer to me.
The bed dipped under his weight as he pulled back the covers and kissed my temple.
“Hey,” he said softly against my skin.
Here we go.
Rolling over, I gave him a weak smile. “Hi.”
“You never texted me back. Got worried.” Saint brushed the hair behind my ear. He looked so earnest as he peered at me, concern splashed across his features.
God, how could he look so normal after what I just saw? So unaffected?
This was the man I knew. Not the one in the robe.
Only, which one was real? Which one was the real Saint?
“Sorry. I wasn’t feeling well. I just wanted to lie down.”
He cupped my cheek. “How are you feeling now?”
I shrugged, pulling away from his touch.
“You brought food?” I asked. Before he could question why I pulled away, I sat up against the headboard.
“Thought we could have dinner in tonight.”
I didn’t say anything as he moved off the bed to fetch the takeout containers. Instead, I wondered if he could see the hesitancy in my eyes. Hear the violent thrashing of my heart.
If he did, he didn’t let on as he placed my favorite food dishes in front of me. Gnocchi, tempura shrimp, fried chicken, caramel cheesecake.
He must’ve gone all over the city for this.
A gesture that would’ve made me melt hours ago. But now? My limbs were locked like steel.
“So, how was your day?” he asked to fill the silence in the room. “Do anything exciting?”
“I saw you,” I whispered, low.
“What?” he asked absentmindedly as he took napkins out of the bag.
“I saw you. In that house, in the library.”
Silence settled around the room, like the idyllic calm before a natural disaster.
“What?” The word crackled with thunder, followed by panic.
Saint was good at hiding his emotions, but his eyes frantically roved over me. As if making sure I was still intact.
I got to my feet, creating some equal ground between us, as I explained, “I saw you with that woman as I was eating lunch and it didn’t look like a work call, so I got curious. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but you lied to me, and I wanted to see why. I followed you to that house and watched you do that thing with those people, that man. The cutting and kissing, but I didn’t hear anything other than Welcome home, Brother… I left when you all exited the room.”
An easy, clean-cut, almost surgical explanation of the turmoil I was feeling inside me.
Saint studied me with his towering presence, his index fingers pressed to his lips in thought.
And when he finally spoke, it wasn’t what I thought he’d say.
“Okay.”
“Okay? Okay? That’s all you’re going to tell me after what I just saw?”
“What do you think you saw?” he spoke hesitantly. Carefully.
“A sex cult with a blood fetish.”
He barked out a laugh in shocked surprise. Sharp and short.
I didn’t find it funny. “Is that why you slept with me, Saint? Because you’re a sick freak?”
He stepped farther into my space, his heat mixing with mine as he got in my face and whispered in a no-nonsense tone, “I told you why I slept with you. You make me breathe, Madelayne.”
“And I don’t believe you.”
“Believe this.” He grabbed my face as our mouths clashed together, passion and ice. Controlling hands and deception. He tasted of lies; he kissed me with sin.
And I was a prisoner chained to him.
My body sank into his and his hands moved to grip my throat. Catching me on a gasp, he slipped his tongue inside. He backed us up against the wall, his strong grip still secure around my neck. His hands were a weapon he wielded with a master touch.
A Saint-induced cloud filled my head, distracting me from everything but him. His touch, his lips, his tongue. His everything.
Until my hip clipped the bedside table and the pain that shot through me chased the cloud away. I pushed him off me with a glare. “You don’t get to distract me with that.”
“I wasn’t trying to distract you, Mady. I was trying to prove a point.”
“Want to prove it? Tell me what exactly I saw in that room.”
He rubbed his hand along his jaw in thought. “You won’t stop until you find out, will you?”
“You know I won’t.”
He remained quiet until he released a tight breath that pulled at his shoulders as he rubbed the back of his neck. Nervous. Saint was nervous. “An initiation.” His voice was low. Almost ashamed.
“What kind of initiation involves bloodletting and a kissing circle?”
“The kind that’s hell to get into.”
When he didn’t elaborate, I put my hands on my hips and waited.
And waited some more.
“Madelayne.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, exasperated. “Why did you have to follow me?”
“You lied to me.”
“Says the known liar.” He gave me a pointed look.
Saint was mad that I followed him, found out his little secret, but underneath I saw panic and worry and other emotions I didn’t understand.
He looked scared.
Scared for me.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he asked.
“I was thinking the same thing about you. What were you thinking when you didn’t tell me the truth?”
“You’ve lied your entire life, Madelayne.” He glared. “What the fuck does it matter that I did it to you?”
“I never lied to you!” I realized I was yelling, wound tight with frustration. “I’ve never lied to you,” I repeated in a softer, more even-tempered tone.
Saint’s face softened before instantly tensing back up. He drew in a sharp breath, releasing his anger in the exhale. “Icarus.”
I cocked my head. “Who the fuck is Icarus?”
With a heavy sigh, one that I could feel the weight of, Saint sat on the edge of the bed, where he pinched the bridge of his nose again.
After another deep sigh, he spoke. “What I say can’t leave this room.”
Saint pinned me with a stare until I nodded.
“We’re called the Sons of Icarus.”
That was very patriarchal of them.
“They found me while I was in my second year of university. Freshly nineteen, didn’t give a fuck about much. If anything.”
His eyes became distant, lost in the memory. “I remember them putting a hood over my head, keeping me sequestered in that library you saw today for hours with others they plucked from school. We had no idea what was happening. Some were terrified. Me? I was intrigued. Curious to know what was so important with the secrecy. If it’d be worth it.”
He didn’t look at me while he talked. “They told us they’d been watching everyone in the room for a year. Asked us all questions and with every question, I could hear people being escorted out. Where? I didn’t care. They weren’t going to waste my time by kicking me out before I saw what they were hiding.”
Only Saint. Only he would feel like his time was being wasted by being kidnapped.
“So they kept asking us questions until they told us to stand and undress to our underwear. We were given robes, then escorted into another room, where the hoods were yanked off and there was a circle of robed people before us. They told us who they were, Sons of Icarus.”
He spoke with stale awe and bitter reverence.
This was all fine and dandy, but it wasn’t answering who they were, what they were. “What are they?”
Saint stared at me, eyes blazing. “Power.”
“What kind of power?”
“The kind of power people fuck, steal, and kill for.” Because that cleared everything up. “Have you ever wondered why my company grew as rapidly as it did? Became as successful as it did?”
“Honestly? No.” I didn’t give their success much overthought. “I just thought after Dad helped get you started, you guys put in the work and reaped the benefits. Wait. Did he actually help? Does he know about this?”
“If only it was that easy.” Saint shook his head. “No, your dad doesn’t know about Icarus. His help got us started, but as powerful as Anthony thinks he is, it was Icarus that gave us the connections and leverage we needed to grow at the pace we did behind the scenes. There is no way we’d be where we are after only five years without them.”
“So you basically cheated. And Archer knows about this as well?”
“All successful businesses cheat, Madelayne. Any company who pretends they didn’t to get to the top is lying,” he told me. “And no, Archer doesn’t know.” I saw the tension in his eyes as he admitted that. To keep something like this from my brother... “The Sons of Icarus is a secret for a reason.”
A secret society.
Wow.
I didn’t know if I preferred that over a sex cult.
All this time, I thought of Saint as this loyal, self-made man when he was someone else entirely.
“Why are you telling me, then?” Despite everything, I liked the fact that I knew something about Saint that Archer didn’t.
“Aside from the fact you demanded it?”
I nodded.
“Because you can’t tell anyone what you saw.”
Because no one could know Saint and I have been together.
Suddenly, all the warm feelings I was feeling about knowing this secret dissipated like mist in the air.
Nothing between us would leave this hotel room, and it stung to be reminded of that. But if I had come this far, I might as well know everything.
“What else?”
“What else?” he parroted.
“Why did you join in the first place?”
He grew quiet. “Because I was lonely. And they offered me a family.”
My heart splintered for the man in front of me.
There would always be a piece of him that was the little boy discarded by his family, desperate for affection.
Through this society, he got the two things he loved most: power and devotion.
But at what cost? “What did you have to do to get in?”
“They make prospects go through what they call the Labyrinth Trials.”
That felt very on theme, but didn’t answer my question. I waited for him to explain.
Silence stretched between us, filling a chasm we had placed ourselves on either side of.
Saint stared at me, I stared at him. Stress was etched into his usually playful eyes, begging me not to make him answer.
I didn’t.
Saint’s head fell forward as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“What’re you doing to me?” he rasped, low enough for me to guess I wasn’t supposed to hear, before he picked his head up, meeting my waiting gaze with a steady resolution.
“It was an entire year of my balls in their vise grip. I didn’t know when they would show up, what they would require of me. Only that every month, on whatever day they chose, they’d appear and give me a task I’d have to complete before the month was up. Sometimes, it would be in the beginning of the month, sometimes in the middle. And sometimes it was on the very last day. Whoever didn’t complete the given task was cut.”
He gave me a sharp look that pierced my chest with the determination burning through it. “And I wasn’t getting cut.”
There went that glazed look crossing his features again. “Some of them were easy. One time, they made me drink bottle after bottle after bottle of Irish whiskey.”
I blanched. That was easy?
He chuckled at my face. “Compared to other things they had me do, the drinking was a sweet piece of cake.”
Good God. “Like what?”
Saint shook his head. “Too many things for your sweet ears to hear.”
I bristled at the compliment. “I’m not made of glass, Saint. I won’t run out that door screaming in horror.”
“I know that, Madelayne. But maybe I don’t want you to look at me any differently than you have been. Maybe I want the way you looked at me when I left the hotel room this morning back, and if I told you what else they had me do, you’d never give me that look again.”
His voice was raw, almost broken, as he begged me to give it to him now.
“How did I look at you?”
“Like I lived in the stars.”
My hand went to my necklace he gave me.
“Do you think you could ever look at me like that again?”
Could I?
I moved toward him. He leaned back, with apprehension tightening his features. Though they smoothed out when I straddled him.
This was the Saint I knew.
My Saint.
The man I saw in that room was just another piece of him. It didn’t matter how he got there, it just mattered that he came back here.
To me.
But not for much longer.
Our time in London was running out, the week shrinking to days, and soon to be hours. There were other things I’d much rather be spending our time doing.
My lips hovered above his as I whispered, “If we’re sharing secrets in this room, let’s exchange a few more while we can.”