Chapter Twenty-Six
I’m lying in the bedroom of a penthouse suite in the closest city to Harmony Hills, the same city where the social worker once took me, the same city where I first caught a bus. Large enough that we can be anonymous, though I didn’t ask how they managed to bring Sarah Elizabeth here. She’s currently tied up in the bed in the other room, a gag around her mouth.
It’s hard to imagine how this day could have gone worse. A man is dead. A girl is kidnapped. And I’ve learned something horrible, something that explains everything about me.
I did come from evil, and I do have a demon inside me—but not because I’m a woman. Not because I have breasts and a vagina. Not even because I like to get spanked by a man I call Daddy. No, I’m evil because of what’s running through my veins.
His blood.
His genes.
His teachings.
I’m a product of my nature and some very controlling, depraved nurture. It’s not something I can ever escape. It’s inside. Leader Allen is inside me.
Ivan comes in and washes his hands at the bathroom sink, his back to me.
“What are you going to do with her?”
He turns slightly. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“I don’t understand why you took her. Won’t that only link us to Leader Allen’s murder even more?”
“I had room service deliver some fruit and pastries. It’s outside on a tray. Let me bring it inside.”
“No. Stop. I’m not a child. I’m not a little girl you need to feed and spank and put to bed on time. I’m asking you questions, and I deserve answers.”
His eyes grow cold. “Fine, you want answers? We took her because she’d have been dead by now if we’d left her. The people there are going to go on a witch hunt when they find him—and she was standing there, holding a shotgun, in shock, wanting to put more bullet holes into a dead man.”
I swallow hard because he’s right. He may have never met the other men and women in Harmony Hills, but he understands how they work. Just like he understands how I work. We’re followers. Sheep. “Is Luca okay?”
“He’ll live.”
“Why did he take Sarah Elizabeth?”
“We’re going to question her. She was close to Leader Allen. She might have heard something.”
“I want to be there when you talk to her,” I say quickly. I know how intimidating Ivan can be. And I don’t think he’d hurt her. He knows that she’s innocent even if she knows something. But he can get feral when it comes to the Grand.
I expect him to fight me, but he simply nods. “Come then.”
I follow him into the other room.
Sarah Elizabeth’s eyes are cloudy as she watches us come in. There’s a small dark vial on her nightstand, and I realize that’s how they kept her asleep through all this. Did he use it on me too? Or is this sluggishness just part of the shock from this morning?
Ivan settles into a chair in the corner, and I stand awkwardly in the center of the room, trying to figure out where to go. It feels like choosing sides. How they’re treating her isn’t right. But the Grand needs to be safe again.
Then Luca comes in, and I realize why Ivan is sitting. Luca has a bandage across his stomach and no shirt on. He looks angry. He looks terrifying as he pulls a folding knife from his pocket, and I gasp. Sarah Elizabeth gasps too, and squirms away on the bed. With her hands bound behind her back and her ankles tied together, she doesn’t get far.
Her gaze is wide now, all sleep drained from them, and so are mine.
Luca grasps her hip, and she goes very still.
I can see her chest rising and falling from beneath the shift. I can see more of her body than I expected to, the shadowed outline of her breasts, the dark circles of her nipples. I never realized how revealing the shifts were. Or maybe it just seemed normal to me back then.
With a rough jerk, Luca slices through the gag around Sarah Elizabeth’s mouth. She coughs the fabric onto the bed and then spits into his face, making him laugh. It’s a cruel sound, and I realize I’ve never seen Luca perform his job—as a bodyguard, as an enforcer. He’s occasionally been stern with me, but in the end, no matter how much I protested and pretended, I was too obedient to need anything worse. There’s blood seeping through the white gauze, making him look savage. He’s a wounded animal, and wounded animals lash out.
Sarah Elizabeth has no intention of being obedient. She’s glaring at Luca like she’d shoot him again if she were still holding that shotgun. “Let me go.”