Atonement (Master's Protege 2)
A minute later, he’s secured with duct tape as well. I’m not sure I’d have been able to hold off a man as large as he is if I hadn’t had the element of surprise on my side.
“You’ll stay right here,” I say with a patronizing pat on the head. Any son of a bitch who defends that guy we’re about to interrogate deserves absolutely no mercy. “Anything we need to know about your boss before we begin?” I ask pleasantly, in the same tone as one might ask, ‘Do you want fries with that?’
He shakes his head vehemently from side to side, glaring at me like I just killed his puppy. Likely embarrassed he was taken down by a girl.
I, on the other hand, am pleased as punch and can’t wait to haul this asshole down to Cain.
I leave him secured at the top of the stairs where I can see him and go down to Cain.
What I see when I enter the room would’ve chilled me to the bone a year ago.
Gray Descamps, with a generous belly and meaty jowl, sits, secured in a chair beside the jacuzzi. He eyes the tub with terror. Score for Henri.
“Gray,” I say pleasantly, taking the folding chair Cain hands me. I sit across from him. “I’m sure I’m not familiar to you.”
He stares at me, unblinking, and at first doesn’t respond. He opens his mouth to speak, then clamps it shut. I don’t tell him not to. I let him look into my eyes. He won’t be able to hide his recognition of me if there is any.
His eyes hone in on mine, narrowed with suspicion and anger, but when I lift my chin so the overhead light shows the color of my eyes, he freezes.
“I know you. I—I knew your parents, too, I think. Is that why you’re here?”
I look to Cain. He nods. Sometimes he has an agenda. Today, we just need answers.
“It’s one of the reasons. Why don’t you tell me about my parents and how you know who I am.”
“You’re the girl with the violet eyes. Name’s Violet, isn’t it?”
I nod. “It is.”
“Your mother had the same color eyes.” His voice is high-pitched with fear. “I remember her. That was a long, long time ago. A lifetime ago.”
A cold shiver runs down my spine. No one in my entire life has ever told me that. “Did she? What else can you tell me about her, Gray?”
My voice is not my own, sounding distant and disembodied like I’m a ghost speaking to someone on Earth.
“I—I didn’t know her.”
Cain shakes his head like a disappointed father. “Now, now, Gray,” he says, while he pushes himself to standing from his seated position. “We won’t allow lying. We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to come here today, and we want answers.”
His phone buzzes. He glances at the screen and scowls. Cain’s voice drops to a menacing octave. “And the intel my men just sent me makes it a lot easier for me to put the screws to you if necessary.”
“Tell me.”
His eyes quickly dart to mine, then back to Gray. “Those accusations? Some were true. We have court-verified intel and eyewitnesses. And some of the women were minors at the time.”
Fucking hell. My hands clench into fists when I see the wide-eyed terror Cain’s words bring out in Gray.
He’s guilty as fuck.
“Now tell us, please, before we have to get a lot more unpleasant. Did you really not know my parents?”
Gray clamps his jaw shut and looks away. Cain moves as if by instinct. He walks to the jacuzzi, flicks the chrome handle, and water begins to pour into the tub. “Something tells me you don’t like water, Gray. Is that true?”
His face is red, his eyes beady as he shakes his head from side to side.
“He’s lying,” I tell Cain.
The water in the jacuzzi’s already a third of the way to the top. Cain shuts off the taps and steps toward Gray, who shakes his head from side to side. “I didn’t know them! I swear, I didn’t—”
Cain ignores him, picks him up bodily, chair and all, and drags him over to the jacuzzi.
“No! No, don’t, please!”
“Tell me, Gray,” Cain says, his lips a thin line of fury. “Is that what the girls you molested said to you when you took them into your home?”
Without another word, he dunks the minister’s face in the pool of water. I want to look away, but I don’t. What Cain does and who Cain is are inexorably intertwined. If I love him—and I do—I love all of him, even the cruel, vindictive parts that lurk in the shadows. Those are the parts that make all of him whole.
I watch Descamps struggle, thrashing in the chair he’s secured to until I know he can’t breathe. My own air’s constricted in my lungs until Cain brings him up. He hasn’t even broken a sweat.