Chapter 9

“ D arian,” Mom’s soft voice invades my dreams. “You have to wake up, sweetheart.” Soft, trembling fingers shift my hair away from my face.

Removing the quilt, she helps me sit up before stroking my hair and cheeks as though she’s checking for injuries. “Remember your favorite game, hide-and-seek?”

“Huh?” I rub my eyes, confused.

A sudden crash from somewhere in the house causes her to jump and squeeze her eyes shut briefly.

She inhales a shaky breath and looks at me. “Do you remember?”

I’m tired, and Mom makes no sense. “I remember.”

“Good,” she replies with a weak smile as she palms my cheeks. “This will be just like that time.” Unclipping her heart-shaped necklace from around her throat, she fastens it around my neck. Tears gather on her lashes, so she quickly wipes them away before rising to her feet and pulling me to mine. We cross the room to the closet, and she guides me inside, crouching down. “No matter what you see or hear, you don’t come out, understand? You don’t make a sound. No matter how frightened you are.”

“You’re scaring me, Mommy.” My heart hammers as my bottom lip begins to wobble. I’ve never seen her this pale before. Where’s Daddy?

She cups my cheeks, and her firm touch both soothes and frightens me.

“I know you’re scared, but you have to be a big boy for me. Can you do that? You need to be brave, okay? Hide in here and don’t make a single sound.”

“Mommy?”

“Promise me that you’ll hide in here.”

“I promise…”

Heavy footsteps thunder on the stairs as deep, scary voices filter through the walls. Mom slaps a hand over her mouth and whimpers, but then she seems to shake herself off.

She quickly pulls me in for a hug before closing the closet doors, and I shrink back into the shadows.

“Remember to stay quiet. Don’t let them hear you,” Mom whispers seconds before the bedroom door flings open.

Three men enter, dragging my broken and beaten father by his arms. I surge forward to peer through the slats.

“Oh, looky what we have here. Did you think you could hide from us?” one of the men says to my mom, cracking his knuckles while the others toss my groaning father to the floor. Mom backs away and picks up a pair of hair scissors on the dresser.

“What are you going to do with those, sweetheart?” Chuckling, the man tightens his grip on his gleaming knife.

“Stay away from me,” Mom bites out.

A fourth man enters the room, wearing a three-piece suit and shiny black shoes. Something about him makes my fear skyrocket. Shadows cling to him as if he’s Lucifer himself, and I can’t keep my teeth from chattering.

His cold, cruel eyes darken even further when he spots my mom.

Removing a pair of black latex gloves from his pockets, he snaps them on and says to the other men, “Make Mr. Delacroix watch, but don’t kill his wife. Not yet. She’s my offering for the night.”

“It’ll be my pleasure, Mr. van der Meer,” the man with the knife replies as he leers at Mom.

The bad men prop my dad up against the wall. He can barely keep his head upright. His right eye is swollen shut, and blood is trickling from his broken nose.

When the man comes for my mom, she lashes out with the scissors, but she’s no match for his strength. He drags her over to the bed and tears at her clothes.

The urge to run out there and tell him to leave her alone overwhelms me, but I stay hidden because I’m scared. Besides, I promised Mom I would hide and not make a noise.

When the screaming starts, I shrink back into the shadows and slide down against the wall with my hands over my ears.

I wake with a start, drenched in sweat, my heart hammering hard enough to make me briefly worry about an impending heart attack. These nightmares are happening nightly now. I can’t shake them.

Rubbing my eyes, I dig my fingers into my eyeballs. Not that it helps when the last remaining reason behind these recurrent nightmares is sleeping in the other wing.

Restless, I throw off the quilt and swing my legs over the side of the bed. I should kill her. Get it over with. Silence these voices once and for all.

With my elbows on my thighs, I drag my hands down my face. Sweat clings to my bare back. I didn’t shave this morning, which isn’t like me. When life is normal—and I don’t have a firecracker living under my roof, making her presence known with her trail of destruction—I live according to a strict schedule. Some say I have OCD. Me? I like to feel in control.

Control over my surroundings and others. But then my new wife barged into my life like a typhoon and turned my home and routine upside down.

Sinclair thinks she’s good for me, but what does he know?

My day-old stubble rasps beneath my fingers as I try to silence the echo of my mother’s screams that linger like the sweat on my back. Guilt is slowly eating me up from the inside, chewing on my intestines like parasites. I hid in the closet that night because I was scared.

Weak.

I’ll never forgive myself for not rising above my fear. A strong man acts; he doesn’t hug his knees to his chest and cower.

I ball my hands and punch my head. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

“Oh, looky what we have here. Did you think you could hide from us?”

Shooting to my feet, I pace a hole in the carpet.

“Make Mr. Delacroix watch, but don’t kill his wife. Not yet. She’s my offering for the night.”

My mother’s necklace is in the bedside drawer, so I pull it open and shift random items out of the way until my fingers touch the silver chain.

I lift it out, brushing my thumb over the heart pendant. “I should have done something that night.” My voice sounds far away, lost in memories of the past. “I should have stopped them.”

I place the necklace back inside the drawer with trembling hands, and then quickly shower to wash off the lingering nightmare. There’s no way I can sleep now; it would only send me back to that day.

Once dressed in joggers and a T-shirt, I leave for the office, or at least that’s my intention, until I pause at the top of the grand staircase.

The hallway leading to Cecilia’s quarters is dark and terrifyingly inviting. I’m on the move before I even know what’s happening, too curious not to inch her door open and peer inside. Just one peek. But of course, her door is locked, and I glower as if it’ll magically open if I direct my ire like a solar flare.

No such luck.

Retrieving my phone from my pocket, I do the only logical thing: I wake up Miss Sanders and demand she bring the spare key to my wife’s bedroom.

Exactly seven minutes and thirteen seconds later, on the dot, she turns the corner, flustered.

Her hair is a mess and her blouse is buttoned up wrong. I’ve fired people for less, but I have greater issues at hand than the state of my PA’s clothes.

“You’re two minutes and thirteen seconds late, Miss Sanders. You know how I feel about tardiness.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” She holds up the key between us like a peace offering. “In my defense, you woke me up at three in the morning.”

I snatch the key. “Don’t let it happen again.”

“I won’t.”

When she fails to move, I glare. “You’re dismissed.”

She turns on her heels and hurries out of my sight, no doubt breathing a relieved sigh on her way.

In the ensuing silence, I stare at the key in my hand like a foreign object from an alien planet, confused by my feelings. On the one hand, I’ve dreamed of avenging my parents, but on the other, I’m also curious about the sleeping woman on the other side of the door—curious enough to insert the key and turn until the lock clicks.

I poke my head inside her dark room. She’s asleep on her side, facing away from me, so I open the door farther, stepping over the threshold.

Her feminine, flowery scent is everywhere, perfuming the air, and clothes are strewn on the floor. I almost trip over a designer shoe. My wife is messy. That much is clear.

As I near the bed, my steps slow, and I just…stare.

Her blonde hair looks almost white in the moonlight. I gently touch a lock and bring it to my nose, inhaling the scent of tropical coconut and summers on the beach.

A soft breath escapes her as I let go of her hair, and she rolls over onto her back.

How does something so lovely and untainted come from a monster like Mr. van der Meer? A man who didn’t think twice about raping and torturing a mother of a young, terrified child in front of her husband.

My father had to watch her scream and cry and beg for her life before they finally put a bullet through his head. And my mom? Well, that was the last time I saw her. Once my father was dead, Mom was dragged out of there, naked, bruised, and bleeding. All in the name of the secret society that raised me.

It’s funny how that works. We accept the old traditions blindly. We don’t rebel. Not in the traditional sense, anyway.

I hook a finger in the quilt and pull it down to reveal the swell of Cecilia’s generous tits inside the silk gown she wears. Mr. van der Meer’s daughter soon grew up.

As I trace my thumb over her plump bottom lip, her soft breath fans my skin. At least she’s agreeable when she’s asleep, but even so, I miss her smart mouth.

The steel door creaks open on rusty hinges, and I descend the spiral stone steps to the cellar, where the cell is located. This small space is cold and damp and smells of mold and rot.

I light the torch on the wall. “Your daughter tastes divine, van der Meer. Quite delectable.”

A shadowed figure slowly comes into the light, shuffling on the floor.

Covered from head to toe in grime, Cecilia’s emaciated father grabs hold of the bars and presses his face up close. “Touch a hair on her head and?—”

“You will what? Kill me?” A bitter laugh echoes off the stone walls. “You did that a long time ago, van der Meer, when you broke into my home and murdered my family. It’s only fair that I return the favor. We’re family now, after all.”

I take great joy in seeing him blanch. Years locked up in my cellar have reduced him to bones and tattered clothes. The seemingly larger-than-life man who destroyed my family is nowhere to be seen.

“That’s right,” I reply to his unanswered question. “Your daughter is now my wife. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I say when he looks like he might throw up. “She was quite the willing participant.”

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but he doesn’t know that.

“You thought I wouldn’t find her. That I thought she was dead.” Shaking my head, I crouch down before him. “I’m not that easily fooled. You see, I had you captured, but then your wife disappeared with your daughter before I could find them—before anyone in the Exodus could. Your wife hid her well from the greedy wolves, I’ll give you that. I looked for her everywhere without luck, but then one day, your daughter walked into my territory to revenge your name.”

My face breaks into a deranged smile. “Like a turkey jumping up onto a Christmas table.”

“Please don’t hurt her,” he pleads.

His sour stench assaults my nostrils, so I waft it away. “How does it feel to rot away in your own feces, van der Meer? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” I rise to stand. “I have no intention of hurting your daughter because, unlike you, I don’t touch women unless it’s to bring them pleasure; remember that when you’re stuck in the dark with nothing but your thoughts to eat you alive. Everything you’ve ever owned is mine—your precious money, legacy, and even your daughter.”

The satisfaction I feel seeing him reduced to nothing is unrivaled. I could feast on the sight for eternity and never grow bored.

“And your daughter’s tight pussy?” I stare down at him with a cold smirk. “It looks so fucking pretty after I’ve stuffed it with cum.”

“You’re a sick asshole,” he sneers weakly, retreating into the shadows.

“Maybe,” I agree, then stroll to the door with my hands in my pockets. “Do you think your daughter will hold you in such high regard if she finds out what a sadist you are?”

His eyes seem to gleam in the dark. “You think you’re any better? You think she’ll love you when she finds out you’re keeping her father locked up in your cellar?”

“With all due respect, Mr. van der Meer. I didn’t marry your daughter because I wanted a companion. I married her because I knew how much it would torment your mind to know I’m fucking her every chance I get. She’s a little slut, you know? Moans like a porn star. Always ready to be bent over the desk and fucked to within an inch of her life.”

I haven’t actually fucked her yet, but the white lie is worth seeing the rage on her father’s face.

“Because I’m feeling generous tonight, I’ll leave the torch lit and let you enjoy a few hours of light.” Turning on my heel, I leave him to wither away in misery, forgotten and insignificant.