Chapter 24

EARLIER THAT NIGHT

“ H ey, Cecilia.” Sinclair catches up with me as I exit the estate, descending the steps to the circular driveway. Darian waits in the car, hidden behind tinted windows. I don’t know what awaits me, and that makes me anxious.

I turn on the last step, tired and ready to admit defeat. Lauren smiles softly as she walks past me to her lift.

What could Sinclair possibly want? I’ve already fucked up royally tonight. What was I thinking?

Sinclair towers over me, standing a step higher, which makes him look impossibly tall—taller than he already is. He holds out the USB, so I reach for it, but he doesn’t let go immediately. “How much do you know?”

His voice is clipped, but behind the sharp lash hides a softness, which stares back at me through his cautious eyes. My heart jolts, and I clutch the USB as he lets go. What isn’t he saying? No one knows Darian better than Sinclair.

A cool breeze teases curls of hair across my cheeks. Reaching up, I slide them away.

Sinclair shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs. “Well?”

“I know enough.”

He simply nods, a rueful look flickering across his features. “Darian was only a young kid when your father and a group of Pawns raped his mother and killed his father in front of him while he hid in the closet.”

My chest feels too tight, and while it’s on the tip of my tongue to shake my head and deny his accusations, I know he’s right. I saw the proof with my own eyes when I searched his laptop. Well, what little I could stomach.

“My father took Darian under his wing, but he was never the same. His night terrors led him to spend time in a treatment facility for a while.” Sinclair’s intense eyes sear into me, making me feel ten feet small. “As you might have guessed, the Exodus doesn’t take too kindly to weakness, so my father kept Darian’s whereabouts a secret from the Bishop.”

The USB burns in my hand as his words sink in. I feel an insane amount of guilt for searching through his laptop and invading his privacy.

“My father treated him like his own son, which is the only reason Darian survived. Of course, Darian would never tell you this himself because he’s proud. It was hammered into him that night that it’s dangerous to show weakness.”

It feels strangely intimate to hear him talk about his friend like this. I’m Darian’s wife, but he hasn’t yet entrusted me with this information, which makes my heart ache.

“Listen,” Sinclair says, wetting his lips and glancing at the car, the trees to our left and, finally, me. “There are truths about Darian you don’t know yet, but when you do, just…” He lifts his hand and rubs his mouth, clearly uncomfortable. “Don’t hurt him more, okay? He’s been through enough.”

My brows draw together, and I open my mouth to speak, but what do I say to that? Sinclair is a man who usually smiles and has an easy charm, even if it’s a camouflage to hide his hedonistic tendencies. And he wouldn’t hesitate to slice my throat if he perceived me as a threat, so to see him this ruffled raises my shackles.

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

“Because you’re the bleeding crack in his shell, and if you keep pushing, he’ll break. I mean, fuck…” He points back at the large estate. “There’s a chance it’s already too late. You didn’t see him tonight. What crawled out of him back there isn’t a side of him I ever thought I’d see.”

“What are you saying?”

“Darian suppressed his trauma by exerting control in every area of his life. Then you came along and now his carefully constructed control is seeping between his fingers like sand on a beach.” He drops his arm, shoulders slumping as he runs a hand through his hair, ruffling the strands, agitated and frustrated. “For a long time after his parents were murdered, he couldn’t remember that night, almost as if his mind erased it to protect him, a coping mechanism that got him through the day. The only time the memories would haunt him was at night.”

“He remembers that night now,” I point out as I recall how he stays up late drinking because he’s unable to sleep, haunted by the past.

“Yes, parts of it,” he admits almost reluctantly. “Darian sat in his father’s congealing blood for several hours, trying to rouse him, before my father found him. His mind, the mind of a five-year-old boy, broke that day. And though he grew into a man in a ruthless world of money and power, that boy never got over the trauma of witnessing his parents’ murders. You have to understand that Darian carries tremendous guilt for not protecting his parents, especially his mom.”

“He was only a child.”

“He doesn’t think that way.” Sinclair’s Adam’s apple jumps on a swallow. “I see how you look at him.”

My eyes widen with alarm. “Excuse me?”

“You’re in love with him.”

I gasp, but when I start to protest, he holds his hand up to silence the denial on my tongue. “Spare me the lies. Just be good to him. Darian’s mind is…fragile.”

“Why are you telling me this, Sinclair? I don’t understand ? —”

“You’re the daughter of his enemy.” Reaching for my hand, he removes the USB, then holds it up for me to see. “You know the truth. Your father is behind the downfall of Darian’s family, and the Exodus is behind the downfall of yours. The soul-destroying hunger for revenge brought you together, so tell me… Are you Darian’s enemy or his ally? Because trust me, if you hurt him, I’ll come for you, and I will kill you.”

Sinclair hands me the USB, and I take it with trembling fingers and a bleeding heart. Next, he removes the Antichrist necklace I lost in my shuffle with Beaumont, fishing it out of his pocket.

He descends the last step, forcing me back, then turns me around to fasten the necklace around my neck. I hold my breath, unable to look him in the eye when he moves around me and tips my chin with his curled finger. “Are you a foe, Mrs. Cecilia Delacroix?”

PRESENT

My heart breaks at the confused look in Darian’s eyes. This is what Beaumont wanted: to use Darian’s greatest weakness for blackmail, a weakness that will see him killed in this cold, heartless world. If anyone finds out about my husband’s struggles, he’ll lose his Elder position and everything he has fought so hard for.

Darian grinds his teeth, listening intently to something behind him before turning over his shoulder and shouting “shut up” to the shadows in the empty cell.

I move forward, touching his cheek and coaxing his eyes back to me. His skin is cool to the touch. “It’s okay,” I whisper.

When his pained gaze drinks me in, my heart bleeds for him. I’ve never seen my husband this broken. The hurting boy who kneeled in his father’s blood stares back at me through the eyes of this grown man.

If I could only reach into his past and soothe the hurt my father carved on his soul, but I can’t erase the past. Nothing can. Darian’s brokenness is caused by the blood flowing through my veins.

As tears glisten in his eyes, I stroke my fingers through his sharp stubble, feeling it rasp beneath my trembling touch. “It’s okay that you don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember what?” he asks, confused, as his brows pull low.

I shake my head once and push up on my tiptoes to press my lips to his, whispering, “It doesn’t matter.”

Cautious fingers land on my waist before he pulls back. “Aren’t you angry?”

“Angry?”

“Your father? He?—”

Silencing him with my lips, I cling to him like he’ll fall to pieces if I don’t glue him together with my love, somehow. My broken, perfect, beautiful man.

My ruined monster.

My fractured tormentor.

“I could never be angry with you, Darian.”

That makes him chuckle, which acts as a band-aid on my splintering heart, holding it together when it feels like it might splinter. “My art collection respectfully disagrees.”

“Well, you were an asshole.”

His big arms wrap around me, and I’m enveloped with warmth, love, and fragile hope. My own heaven. Darian seems to have forgotten about my father, for now—the phantasm of the night haunting his nightmares.

I grip onto his bloodied shirt as he thrusts his tongue between my lips.

“There are truths about Darian you don’t know yet, but when you do, just… Don’t hurt him more, okay?”

“Darian’s mind is…fragile.”

My heart pounds, slamming hard against my bruised, sore ribs. I’m growing dizzy. Darian’s love holds me in a brutal fist, squeezing me enough to hurt, enough to gasp for air, yet beg for more.

Somehow, his mind has effectively blocked out parts of his past and distorted his reality to keep him safe and in control. I don’t know what goes on inside his head, but I know he’s hurting, and I wish I could heal him, no matter how foolish that wish is.

I wrap my arm around his neck and kiss him deeper until I’m no longer aware of where he begins and I end.

“Are you a foe, Mrs. Cecilia Delacroix?”

I speak against his lips. “Come with me, Darian.”

He slams his mouth to mine, kissing and nibbling, feasting on me like I’m the sun in his galaxy, and then he breaks the kiss, tearing his mouth away like it hurts him. “Where?”

Away from here. Away from this cellar. Away from the ghost of my father’s legacy.

“Anywhere. I’ll go anywhere with you.”

Questions flicker in his eyes, but then he nods, entwines our fingers, and walks ahead, leading me out of the room.

Look at me, Darian. Don’t look at the cell.

I’m here. Your nightmares aren’t real.

He turns and walks backward to the exit. The torch burns lower then, and the fading light flickers across his face.

My skin tingles where our fingers connect, and I trap my lip between my teeth as he reaches for my other hand. But good things never last, not in our godless world, yet for a brief moment, as Darian’s coarse, warm palm glides over mine, I let myself believe in the burning devotion in my husband’s eyes.

Perhaps we could burn bright in a dark world. Maybe I could be the flame to his darkness and spark of hope in his nightmares. Maybe I can be the reason he finds his way back from the night.

I’m torn from my thoughts when the door slams open with a loud bang to reveal a large, burly man dressed in black, with his face covered in a hawk mask and a crossbow in his hand. He barges into the room and aims the weapon directly at Darian’s back, then fires a shot just as I let out a scream.

Darian collapses to his knees, a pained groan filling the room while the bow protrudes between his shoulder blades. The intruder quickly moves around him to reach me.

Panic floods my body, and I run in the opposite direction, but he’s quicker and catches me by the hair. Terror claws at my clammy skin as I fight with everything I have to escape his strong grip, but it feels like fighting a brick wall. I know I don’t stand a chance, yet I refuse to let him take me.

More masked men in black enter the room, quietly and methodically, as though this attack has been planned for some time. They haul Darian away, who barely struggles, while I cry and beg and squirm in my assailant’s hold like a worm on a hook.

Once the men disappear down the hall with Darian in tow, Lauren enters the room, having changed into a black top and a leather skirt.

As she nears, I spit in her direction. “You fucking planned this.”

I should have seen this coming a mile away. She warned me the Antichrist would be there tonight, and she told me they would come for us sooner or later, but I didn’t take her seriously.

“You should show me gratitude,” she says, grabbing my chin and inspecting my face while I pant hard through my nose, struggling against the constricting arms around me. “I could have left you here, imprisoned, but I’m a better friend than that, and you deserve more.”

I jut my chin, trying to free myself of the sharp grip her nails have on my chin.

If my arms weren’t trapped by the behemoth of a man behind me, I would punch her in the face. “Darian’s hurt,” I point out, and she raises a brow, a smirk playing on her lips, as if she finds my worry amusing. “He needs hospital treatment.”

“He’s an Elder, Cecilia, a disgusting pig, but you can’t see that because you’ve been compromised and forgotten what we’re fighting for.” She inspects her nails and then lifts her gaze. “You opened your legs to that monster and disrespected everything we’ve fought for. All the people who’ve died fighting the Exodus. Why? So you could be that pig’s whore?”

How dare she speak to me like that? She knows nothing. A blast of fury heats my cheeks. I spit at her again. At least it gives me a smidgeon of satisfaction to see her eyes flare with anger right before she backhands me so hard, the sharp sound bounces off the cellar walls.

Breathing harshly, I try to control the maelstrom of emotions pressing on my sternum—an agonizing mixture of fear, rage, and betrayal. They’ll kill Darian or use him for leverage against the Exodus.

“I know you’re not in the right frame of mind,” she says with a heavy breath. “So I’ll forgive you this time.”

She turns over her shoulder, calling out for someone, then smirks at me as another man enters, carrying a cloth and a brown bottle of liquid.

As he hands it to Lauren, my eyes widen. “Chloroform?”

She shrugs and pours some onto the cloth. “We can’t risk you screaming the place down. It’s better this way.”

“No, no, no,” I cry, struggling in the man’s firm grip. “Please don’t do this.”

“We’re not going to hurt you,” she replies, reaching for me.

I turn my head at the last second, but she sighs like I’m an unruly child and then grabs my jaw, pressing the cloth over my mouth.

Her eyes glimmer with a sadistic gleam as I hold my breath, refusing to inhale the sweet scent. “It’ll be easier if you stop struggling. We’re on the same side,” she says.

My eyes widen in fear, and I try to shake her off with the bit of energy I have left, but my lungs burn.

Soon, my survival instincts kick in, and I inhale a greedy breath, struggling in vain as my vision begins to blacken at the corners.

I feel myself growing weak, held up by the man behind me, whose hot breath fans my ear. Lauren’s voice swims in my head, sounding distant. “I’ll see you soon.”