Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 456(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 304(@300wpm)
I want to know what he did.
And it was so easy. Just a whisper here, a whisper there.
“Don’t touch me,” I say when the soldier reaches for me.
“Then move.” The second one makes a sweeping gesture at the door and the instant I pass him, he shoves me so hard, I fall, just managing to catch myself before my face crashes against the stone stairs. My whole body feels bruised and for the first time, I look down at myself and see that it’s not in my head. I am bruised and cut all over, my arms black and blue, my dress torn and filthy.
Once I’m upstairs, the smell is the first thing I register, and I can’t decide the feeling that accompanies it. I stop, closing my eyes.
“Move,” a soldier says, shoving me again.
“Fuck you.” I tell him, but I keep moving.
It’s my father’s cigars. He loved them. I have always hated the smell of them. So did my mother. But in some strange way, they offered a sense of security. A line that couldn’t be crossed.
An illusion.
My own father crossed that line. I touch the back of my neck, feel those spots Cassian found. A prelude to what would come, punishing me to punish my mother. Michael picked up the habit.
Malek knew. He witnessed it multiple times and even tried to stop Michael once, but I now think it was an act. I think he enjoyed watching me suffer. Watching our family come apart.
I lick my chapped lips as I climb the stairs. At least he’s not playing the piano anymore. At least there’s that. When I reach what was once the Maestro’s living room, I find Malek looking out of the window at the back. Well, there’s not glass, that’s long gone, so he’s looking out of a hole in the back of the house.
“Houses like this don’t burn down so easily.” He turns to face me, puffs on the cigar before crossing the room to tap off ashes in the ashtray on top of the piano. I wonder why he bothers. The whole house is ash. A little more won’t make a difference. “Are you going to behave yourself or do you need to be handcuffed?” he asks, gesturing to the chair he’d sat on last time except that now a set of handcuffs is hanging off the back.
Instead of answering him because I don’t trust myself to speak, I move toward that chair. When the soldier breathing down my neck grabs my arm, I tug it free and sit, folding my arms across my lap.
My gaze moves to the cigar. He notices.
I clear my throat. “Where are Amal and Daniel?” I ask, because when Cassian finds out what’s happened to me, he’ll go to the house. He’ll take them. More collateral. But that’s assuming he’d know it was Malek.
And also assuming he’d care that I’d been kidnapped at all.
“My children?” He sounds surprised.
“I know you’d use them as pawns if it served you.”
“Well, now you insult me,” he says, picking up the cigar, puffing before placing it in the ashtray once more. “But they’re fine. Visiting family.”
“What do you want with me? What am I doing here? Why am I alive?” It takes all I have to keep my expression neutral. To keep from letting him see just how afraid I am.
“All good questions.” He looks at the cigar. “Your father had an excellent assortment of these. He wasn’t very good at sharing, though.”
“Did you steal them from his office after you killed him?” I try to say it with a sneer, but my voice falters.
“I thought you said you’d behave.”
“I’m not clawing out your eyes. I’d say that’s behaving.”
He smiles a smile reserved for an unruly child and gestures with a nod to the soldier at my back. Before I can think, the bastard has a fistful of my hair and is tugging me painfully to my feet.
“Kneel,” Malek says.
“Fuck you,” I tell him.
The soldier who still has my hair twists and I feel the heat of tears at the corners of my eyes.
“I said kneel,” Malek repeats, but doesn’t wait for my fuck you. Instead, he gestures to the soldier who forces me down to my knees.
I struggle against him, instinct, scratching at the skin of his hand when I can’t pry him off, my scalp burning when he pulls that much tighter.
Malek crouches down in front of me as the soldier forces my gaze to the floor.
“I wouldn’t,” Malek says and before I can even get a fuck you out, fire sears the back of my neck, and I let out a sharp cry. I hear the burning of skin, get a faint whiff of it over the stench of the cigar. He presses harder, twisting the cigar into tender flesh.
“Fuck. You!” I manage as the soldier begins to drag me to my feet.