Chapter 7 #2
I bolt for the back, where hopefully there’s a window that will lead from the bathroom to the rear of the hotel, where I can make my escape. There is a window, but it’s barred. To stop break-ins, no doubt.
Cursing, I go back to the chair. I don’t know what Aiden is doing outside; squaring up with the manager, maybe? Buying the whole fucking motel? I’m surprised he doesn’t already own it.
A moment later, Aiden walks back in. He seems pleased to see me still sitting in the chair. He sits down on the end of the bed across from me, leaning forward with interested menace.
“I have been looking into you since I became aware of your existence. Obviously, Leo has done the same,” he says. “Though I doubt he took the same approach.”
“Okay?”
“You’ve not had an easy life, Ella Chick,” he says. “You have known some very bad people in your time.”
“That’s true,” I admit.
“And though you’ve tried to extricate yourself from the past, the past hasn’t been willing to give you up very easily, has it?”
“No,” I agree.
He sits back and up a little, his hands clasped in front of him. “You and I probably know more about the way the world works than any of my brothers. Certainly more than poor Teddy understood.”
I bite my lower lip and give a little shrug. I don’t want to talk about Teddy. The thought of him makes my eyes well with tears. Teddy never deserved anything that happened to him.
“You’re crying,” he says.
“I’m not crying.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and I know that he is trying to work out if my emotion is genuine, or if I am trying to manipulate him, but he’ll never be able to tell, and neither will I.
At this point, it feels like any expression of emotion is somehow manipulation, except in front of men who do not care. And no men care, not like Teddy did.
“God, just kill me already,” I mutter. “I knew it was going to happen eventually. It may as well happen today.”
“You loved him.”
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. I want so badly to control my emotions, but I am not certain how I am going to do so. I am afraid in a way I have not been for a long time.
Leo wanted to use me sexually. His desire was to turn me into his personal fuck toy. As distasteful as that could be, it also came with a side of protection. I don’t think Aiden has any interest in protecting me. I think he wants to know who killed his brother.
I’ll be dead if I tell him.
“I think you know more than any of us do about Teddy, and the events of the last days of his life,” Aiden says smoothly. “I’d like for you to share them with me now.”
He’s not threatening to hurt me, but I think we both know he will if I don’t do what he wants.
I hesitate. He reaches out and taps me lightly on the knee. “I know, for instance, that Teddy had begun working for law enforcement. I know he was killed for working undercover.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say, my voice trembling.
“Didn’t you?”
“No. I met him at a party,” I say. “He was very popular. He had a lot of friends. A lot of people who don’t even know he’s dead yet because your family kept it so quiet.”
“But you knew.”
So that’s what it feels like to walk into a trap you didn’t know had been set for you. I am off balance with him. Unsettled. And very possibly too stupid to be playing these games.
When I cannot answer that charge, he says nothing, but continues with the questioning.
“Your meeting with him, at a party. It wasn’t accidental, was it?”
“No,” I admit.
“You were sent to seduce him, because he was known to be a malcontent of sorts. He was supposed to be the easiest of us to peel away from the family. A spoiled baby brother with no discipline and no sense of duty.”
Every word Aiden speaks feels like a sentence being pronounced. I swallow and sit quietly, not knowing what he has planned for me.
“I didn’t know…”
“What they did not count on is the lengths this family would go to protect itself,” he says, looking at me with a cool viciousness that goes right through me.
This is all more complicated than he wants to believe.
I was sent, and I did love Teddy, and I don’t know who killed him.
It’s all true and yet one fact makes the others seem like I am lying about all of it, and I know I won’t be able to defend myself, so I just let him tell me his version of truth.
“There is no betraying the family, is there?” Aiden asks the question with frightening calm. “There is only being in it, or being out of it. And you, my dear, are in it.”
“I’m in it?” I am confused. My voice cracks as I try to understand what he is really trying to say.
“You wanted him to run away, didn’t you? You wanted him to be free. Well, he’s free now. As free as any of us will ever be. And you are in a world you do not understand, but are now so hopelessly connected to that there is no escape. I will never let you go, Ella. I can never let you go.”
His hand is under my chin, his long, powerful fingers cupping my jaw as he speaks to me in a soft, but intense voice that drives each one of those words deeper into my psyche.
Suddenly, I understand that this has been a trap. From the very beginning I have been tangled in a web I could not see, but now I can absolutely feel as it wraps around me.
There was a time I could have run. If, when Teddy died, I just fucking left, maybe I could have gotten away. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to the funeral…
A single tear of fear and regret slides down my cheek. Aiden’s thumb brushes it away.
“No,” he says. “There was never any escape. Not once you tempted Teddy away. Once that happened, there was nowhere on Earth I would not have found you. You could have been living underground in a cave in the Australian desert and I would have hunted you down. Blood for blood, my dear. You are mine, because you are ours.”
I shiver as he looks into my fucking soul and some part of me immediately starts to believe him.
Aiden has a unique energy to him that makes parts of my interior submit immediately.
I will turn over my heart and mind to him.
All those soft and intimate places that I thought belonged to me are being claimed by him.
“I know Leo has slept with you,” he says. “But you will spread your legs for me too, won’t you.”
“Yes,” I whimper.
“It won’t be here,” he says. “Not in a dirty little hotel room. It will be in a place where ritual makes it impossible for you to misunderstand how very much you are my property.”
I stare into his eyes, because I cannot tear mine away.
Aiden takes me to a place I know I should never go.
In an arched chamber, deep underground, he and I walk through rows of columns.
This is one of those places where those without access to the secret world of cabals and power will never tread.
This is the stuff of conspiracy and legend.
There are carvings on plinths here and there, creating the feeling of being deep in a stone forest of art.
He is wearing a three-piece suit, and I am wearing a white gown that is not making me feel any better about the situation. Being dressed like a sacrificial maiden is not an enjoyable experience for me, and the feeling of dread is almost overwhelming.
Earlier, he made me stand with my arms upright as he slid the garment over my head. It is tightly fitted around the bodice and hips, allowing me to walk, but only just. The garment itself acts as a kind of restraint, holding me both together and back.
I think about running off through these columns, but I know there would be no true escape. Soon enough, I would come up against stone walls, and beyond those stone walls, hard-packed earth for miles.
In spite of our subterranean location, the sky has access to the place. When I look up, I see bright spots where mirrored tubes have been carefully located. This has the feeling of an ancient tomb.
Again, I want to run, but the mental image of me rushing through these statues and columns barefoot in a flowing white gown, the muslin veil at the back billowing under the full moon—because of course it is a full moon, and of course there is muslin involved—makes me think I would only add to the dark romance of this moment.
A sacrificial lamb makes a helpless bid for freedom only to be brought down by the wolf who walks beside her.
Aiden offers no comfort, of course. His tenderness, if you can call it that, is limited to ensuring that I do as I am told. Following his whims and wills in this dark night.
He reaches out and takes my hand just as a circle of firelight becomes visible through the columns. His hand is large, warm, and firm. It could be comforting, but I will not be comforted by the hold of a monster.
As we step into the grove, we are no longer alone.
There is a circle of men all wearing black masks that cover their eyes and noses, but leave their mouths free for speaking. The effect is chilling. They are all dressed as Aiden is of course, black three-piece suits and high boots that come up to the knee, shined to a high leather gloss.
I will never know who these men are. Allies of a kind, most likely.
I have known evil before, and I know how it enjoys a good secret society and mask event.
There are more of these groups in the world than anyone might imagine.
This is what passes for friendship when you are truly rich and powerful, with a penchant for ritual.
In the middle is a stone altar, a place I know I am destined for.
It is intricately carved and inlaid with images from various ancient stories, both biblical and pre-biblical.
The sun, the moon, the scythe, the arrow, the horse, the deer, the fish.
They are all picked out in stone, their meaning opaque to the uninitiated.
Leo came to my house to claim me in the night, but Aiden Levin is not content with that kind of personal invasion. He has brought me into his world, a place where I am small and even more vulnerable than I was in my bed.