“I didn’t know that,” I say, my voice trembling.
“Didn’t you?”
“No. I met him at a party,” I say. “He was very popular. He had a lot of friends. A lot of people who don’t even know he’s dead yet because your family kept it so quiet.”
“But you knew.”
So that’s what it feels like to walk into a trap you didn’t know had been set for you. I am off balance with him. Unsettled. And very possibly too stupid to be playing these games.
When I cannot answer that charge, he says nothing, but continues with the questioning.
“Your meeting with him, at a party. It wasn’t accidental, was it?”
“No,” I admit.
“You were sent to seduce him, because he was known to be a malcontent of sorts. He was supposed to be the easiest of us to peel away from the family. A spoiled baby brother with no discipline and no sense of duty.”
Every word Aiden speaks feels like a sentence being pronounced. I swallow and sit quietly, not knowing what he has planned for me.
“I didn’t know…”
“What they did not count on is the lengths this family would go to protect itself,” he says, looking at me with a cool viciousness that goes right through me.
This is all more complicated than he wants to believe. I was sent, and I did love Teddy, and I don’t know who killed him. It’s all true and yet one fact makes the others seem like I am lying about all of it, and I know I won’t be able to defend myself, so I just let him tell me his version of truth.
“There is no betraying the family, is there?” Aiden asks the question with frightening calm. “There is only being in it, or being out of it. And you, my dear, are in it.”
“I’m in it?” I am confused. My voice cracks as I try to understand what he is really trying to say.
“You wanted him to run away, didn’t you? You wanted him to be free. Well, he’s free now. As free as any of us will ever be. And you are in a world you do not understand, but are now so hopelessly connected to that there is no escape. I will never let you go, Ella. Icannever let you go.”
His hand is under my chin, his long, powerful fingers cupping my jaw as he speaks to me in a soft, but intense voice that drives each one of those words deeper into my psyche.
Suddenly, I understand that this has been a trap. From the very beginning I have been tangled in a web I could not see, but now I can absolutely feel as it wraps around me.
There was a time I could have run. If, when Teddy died, I just fucking left, maybe I could have gotten away. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to the funeral…
A single tear of fear and regret slides down my cheek. Aiden’s thumb brushes it away.
“No,” he says. “There was never any escape. Not once you tempted Teddy away. Once that happened, there was nowhere on Earth I would not have found you. You could have been living underground in a cave in the Australian desert and I would have hunted you down. Blood for blood, my dear. You are mine, because you are ours.”
I shiver as he looks into my fucking soul and some part of me immediately starts to believe him. Aiden has a unique energy to him that makes parts of my interior submit immediately. I will turn over my heart and mind to him. All those soft and intimate places that I thought belonged to me are being claimed by him.
“I know Leo has slept with you,” he says. “But you will spread your legs for me too, won’t you.”
“Yes,” I whimper.
“It won’t be here,” he says. “Not in a dirty little hotel room. It will be in a place where ritual makes it impossible for you to misunderstand how very much you are my property.”
I stare into his eyes, because I cannot tear mine away.
Aiden takes me to a place I know I should never go. In an arched chamber, deep underground, he and I walk through rows ofcolumns. This is one of those places where those without access to the secret world of cabals and power will never tread. This is the stuff of conspiracy and legend. There are carvings on plinths here and there, creating the feeling of being deep in a stone forest of art.
He is wearing a three-piece suit, and I am wearing a white gown that is not making me feel any better about the situation. Being dressed like a sacrificial maiden is not an enjoyable experience for me, and the feeling of dread is almost overwhelming.
Earlier, he made me stand with my arms upright as he slid the garment over my head. It is tightly fitted around the bodice and hips, allowing me to walk, but only just. The garment itself acts as a kind of restraint, holding me both together and back.
I think about running off through these columns, but I know there would be no true escape. Soon enough, I would come up against stone walls, and beyond those stone walls, hard-packed earth for miles.
