“Thou shalt not covet thy brother’s wife.”
“It was you!” I scream, nearly falling on my ass as I face him. “It was you. Not me. I didn’t take shit that belonged to you. She. Was. Not. Yours.”
“Nor his female servant,”he says with a stupid fucking smile on his face.“That’s what she was. My slave to abuse.”
“FUCK YOU!” My curse bellows out of me while he laughs, but it’s only my voice reverberating through the church. There’s a soft click breaking through the residual screams, and I turn on one leg to see the white light above the confessional booth.
The tiered booth feels like climbing a mountain as I step up onto the dusty carpet, ripping the door open to an empty chamber. With the dim lights behind me, I can barely make out the architrave joining the walls to the ceiling. Different religious symbols are fixed on the corners, keeping everything contained so there’s no way to climb over it to get to the other side. I grip the door as I slowly raise my hand, feeling beneath the tight trellis obstructing the window between the two chambers, but there’s no gap to tear through it.
“In the name of Power, Sacrifice, and Rebirth,” the woman says. “What choice did you make?”
“Fuck you,” I grit as dust particles fly up in the dark box from the force of throwing myself onto the cushioned bench.
I cough while this fucking bitch continues, “My, aren’t you disrespectful? In the house of the Lord too?”
“I’ll do something else,” I rush out, battling my need, anger, and pain. “You didn’t give me choices. You gave me nooses.”
“They are choices, aren’t they? After all, you could havechosena noose tied around your pet. Or you could havechosento put it around your relationship.”
“I’ll give you whatever the fuck you want. Pick something else, have it. My life, money, anything.”
“Now, why would I want to kill you? That wouldn’t be satisfying, would it?”
Why the fuck is nothing ever simple with these fuckers? First Lennox’s riddles, now this dumb bitch. The booth is suffocating with the dark, dust—Asher’s fucking unwelcome presence haunting me.
“She wants you to fuck her, like you made deals with Rowan too. My baby brother—a dirty slut.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Pain usually makes everything quiet but there’s too much inside of my head that blood could flow like a river, yet I’d still be tormented. I beg, “Please. I’ll do anything else. You want my heart on a platter? Done. Just tell me where she is first and then, when she’s safe, I’ll give you it.”
She doesn’t say anything.
All of my rage is channeled into my fist as I punch the wooden panel separating our booths.
“I said I’ll fucking kill myself. I’ll sacrifice my life. Tell me where Delilah is and where the island is.”
“The saying ‘I’d give my left arm for…’ is an interesting one, don’t you think?” she muses.
“It’s a saying,” I force out through clenched teeth.
“Yes, but why the left? Why not the right?”
“Because most people’s dominant hand is the right.”
“I enjoy the way you think,” she says, a smile audible in her voice as I narrow my eyes to see through the small crosses in the panel. “Would you give up your dominance?”
I can’t see anything with it being dark like my side is. “You want my arm? Take it.”
“Again, there’s no satisfaction in that.” She sighs. “Leave. Walk to the altar to await your instruction.”
“Tell me where she is,” I demand, refusing to move. “Then you can cut my arm off. I don’t give a fuck. Take my legs too. Take my head, any organ, whatever you want.”
“You were told to leave,” she says coolly. When I don’t move, her voice hardens. “Once you have disobeyed by refusing to make a choice. Do not make that mistake a second time or you’ll face the consequences, Mr. Kobalt.”
“Another punishment,”Asher says, like I don’t know about them.
I slowly limp out of the confessional booth, my body aching now it’s having to take my weight again. Peering around the back, I wait for her to leave. But there’s no door on either side as I drag myself around it, pressing my fingers to the ornate trim where a fucking door should be.
Keeping Delilah at the forefront of my mind allows me to keep moving until I hobble up the stone altar steps to the pulpit. The stone has worn away at the edges from the lack of use, spiders making their homes in the keyhole design of the curved pulpit covering my legs. I lean against the crumbling edge, uncaring if it falls as long as the weight is off my leg, then rest my foot on a dusty box as I wait for the bitch to continue with her ego trip.
