Chapter 35
Chapter thirty-five
ADRIANA brITTON
I still see it when I close my eyes, the way Jude lifted the gun with the same detachment for when he does mundane things.
But no, he just ended a man’s fucking life without flinching.
Aiden didn’t even have time to react before the bullet lodged itself in his brain.
What lingers with me is not the blood or the sound, but the way Jude stood afterward, staring at the red spreading across the floor as though he were studying something fascinating.
It terrified me because he looked so absent. And when they came for him, he couldn’t even fight. They just dragged him away while others rushed in to clean up the body and the blood.
That was two days ago.
Two days in which no one has laid a hand on me, which should feel like mercy but instead feels like delay.
Every time Erik brings my meals, he studies me in a way that makes my skin crawl.
Men like him don’t deny themselves without a reason, and I can’t shake the certainty that Alexei is likely preparing to hand me over to Vlad soon.
When Erik steps inside that evening, I don’t shy away from him. I march right up to the fucker and take the tray, setting it aside. “I want to see him,” I say.
He exhales as if I’m being inconvenient and leans against the wall with amusement. “I’m about to see him again,” he replies with a wicked grin. One I fucking hate.
“Take me with you.”
His gaze sharpens. “You can stand outside the basement door. That’s it.”
Anger flares in my chest, but I nod anyway because scraps are better than nothing, and even a closed door is closer than I have been in forty-eight endless hours. I have no idea what they’ve been doing to him, but I know it’s not fucking good.
He leads me through the house and down the back staircase, where the air grows colder and heavier with each step, as though the walls themselves absorb what happens down here. “This is where you stay,” he tells me, and before I can argue, he slips inside and locks it behind him.
At first, there is only silence, and I press my palm against the metal as if I might feel something through it. Then Alexei’s voice rises with anger. I can’t catch every word, but I hear Jude’s name, and something about discipline. What follows does not sound like a lesson.
It sounds like a person being broken.
A strangled cry rises up, and my stomach lurches into my throat.
It sounds like it was forced from somewhere deep inside Jude.
I slam my fists against the door, shouting for them to stop, shouting Jude’s name, but my voice feels useless compared to the muffled thud that follows, the sickening impact of something heavy hitting concrete.
I press my ear against the door despite myself, and what I hear next makes my stomach twist. There is another sound, choked and dragged out, not quite a scream and not quite silence, the kind of noise that claws its way out when someone is trying not to give the satisfaction of full agony.
No. No. Stop it. Please…
Tears are flowing down my cheeks, and my heart pounds against my ribcage.
Footsteps approach from inside, and when the door swings open, I stagger back.
Erik stands in the doorway, a smear of blood darkening his jaw and collar, his hair disordered, his eyes bright in a way that feels sick. He looks exhilarated.
“What are you doing to him?” I demand, my voice shaking despite my effort to steady it.
His smile widens slowly. “You really don’t want to know.”
Another sound rises from behind him, sharper this time, and something inside me ignites so suddenly that I don’t think before I act. My hand connects with his face in a clean slap that echoes up the stairwell.
For a heartbeat, he simply stares at me.
Then his hand closes around my arm, and he drives me back against the wall with enough force to jar my teeth, his body crowding mine. His fingers dig into my skin. The scent of sweat and metal clings to him when he grips my jaw and forces my mouth open. I struggle, but it’s no use.
His mouth crashes against mine in a violent, invasive kiss, and the metallic tang that floods my tongue makes bile rise in my throat.
I shove at his chest, but he only kisses harder, forcing his body against mine.
I whimper, clawing at his arms, but he just laughs before finally releasing me.
He wipes at his lip with the back of his hand.
“I just might buy you instead of Vlad,” he says with casual cruelty. “I’ve been denying myself way too long, baby.”
I swallow. “Fuck you.”
“Oh,” he reaches forward, choking me so tightly I can see the goddamn cosmos. “You will. Soon.”
Before I can respond, he steps back into the basement and locks the door, sealing me out again.
This motherfucker. I wince at the taste of him and.
..blood. Jude’s blood. Alexei's screaming at him in Russian, specifically one of two words he's hammered into his skull over and over.
I think it means obey. Desperately, I pound on the door until my hands ache, shouting for them to stop.
I am no longer afraid of what they will do to me, because the greater terror is what they are sculpting out of him, blow by fucking blow.
He never deserved this. Jude is good. His heart is good.
And we all fucking destroyed him.
“Fuck!” I scream, punching the door so hard that my knuckles bleed. My head is spinning. I can’t take this. I can’t take not knowing what they’re doing to him in there…
Then, without warning, a sound drifts through that stops me completely.
Laughter. Jude's.
It curls up and seeps into my bones, and every hair on my arms rises. My fists fall away from the door, my breath stuttering in my chest as that dark sound continues. It gets louder, becoming hysterical, weaving into the roaring in my ears as I take a step back.
Oh, fuck.