He knows that even if I ran, I’d be running with his taste in my mouth.
“Go to the library, Clara,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “Please. Just… just go.”
Clara’sface falls, the betrayal written in the black streaks of her mascara. Silas takes her arm, firm but not cruel, and begins to lead her toward the side entrance. She doesn’t fight him. She just stares at me until the door clicks shut behind her.
Peter lets out a soft, satisfied hum. “Well. Now that the children are in bed, let’s get you ready for dinner. We have guests, Wendy. And you’re the centrepiece.”
He hauls me up the stairs and into the house. The foyer is silent, the staff having vanished like ghosts. He leads me straight to the master suite, throwing the double doors open with a violence that makes the hinges scream.
He shoves me toward the centre of the room. I trip, falling onto my hands and knees on the thick, charcoal rug. The coat falls open, revealing the ruined Valentino dress, the green silk torn open to my navel, my skin mottled with the marks of his teeth and fingers.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, walking a slow circle around me. “A mess of silk and sin. You look like a war I’ve already won.”
He reaches down, grabbing the back of the dress where it’s still intact, and yanks me up. He hauls me toward the massive, walk-in closet—a room of glass, mahogany, and enough designer clothes to dress a small army.
“Dinner is in an hour,” he says, his voice a jagged rasp against my ear as he shoves me toward a rack of evening gowns. “My lieutenants are coming. The North End is watching. You’re going to walk down those stairs, you’re going to sit at the head of my table, and you’re going to look like the queen of the fucking underworld.”
“I won’t,” I choke out, spinning around to face him. “I won’t be your trophy, Peter. I won’t sit there while you discuss who you’re going to kill next.”
Peter laughs—a short, sharp sound that has no humour in it. He steps into my space, his chest pressing against mine, his scent of gin and woodsmoke filling my lungs.
“You’ll do exactly what I tell you, Wendy. Because if you don’t…” He leans down, his lips brushing mine. “I’ll bring the North End scout up here. I’ll let you watch what Silas does to him while we have our second course. Is that what you want? More blood on your hands?”
I stare at him, the horror of it sinking in. He’s not joking. He’s never joking.
“Choose, Wendy,” he whispers, his hand sliding up to my throat, his thumb pressing into the soft dip above my collarbone. “The silk or the salt. Which one do you want to feel tonight?”
My breath hitches. I look at the row of dresses—gold, black, silver—each one a different version of the same cage.
“The silk,” I whisper, the words tasting like ash.
“Good girl.” He kisses me then—hard, fast, and full of a terrifying triumph. “I’ll send the maid in to help you cover the bruises. But leave the one on your neck. I want them to know exactly whose breath you’re stealing.”
He turns and walks out, the door locking behind him with a heavy, final thud.
I stand in the middle of the room, surrounded by a fortune in clothes, and I realise I’m not fighting the door anymore.
I’mfighting the urge to pick out the dress that will make him look at me like that again.
The closet isn’t a closet; it’s a mausoleum for the woman I used to be. It’s a vast, vaulted chamber of backlit onyx and smoked glass, smelling of cedar and the suffocatingly expensive scent of brand-new leather. Row after row of gowns hang like colourful corpses, their silk sleeves brushing against one another with a sound like a thousand hushed secrets.
I wander through the aisles, my bare feet sinking into the plush white mink rug. Everything here is a trap. The $5,000 heels arranged by colour, the drawers of lace lingerie that feel like spiderwebs, the jewellery cases filled with diamonds that look like frozen tears.
Run, my mind screams. Run while he’s downstairs. Find a window. Find a way over the wall.
But my mind is a shattered mirror, reflecting a dozen different versions of a girl I don’t recognise. One piece of me is looking for a way out. Another piece—the darker, louder piece—is remembering the weight of his hand on my throat. My pulse is a jagged, erratic thing, thrumming in my ears like a funeral drum.
I hate him. I hate the way he smells like gin and power. I hate the way he looks at me like I’m a piece of art he’s finally finished painting.
“I am not yours,” I hiss to the empty room.
The rage boils over, hot and sudden. I grab the lapels of the cashmere coat and tear it off my shoulders, throwing it into a corner. Then, I reach for the shredded emerald silk. It’s already ruined, a pathetic green rag clinging to my hips. I grab the hem and yank, the fabricscreaming as it gives way. I rip it off my body, piece by piece, until I’m standing naked in the centre of the glass-and-gold tomb.
I want to feel clean. I want to feel like me.
But I don’t.
As the air hits my bare skin, my body betrays me. The bruises on my thighs—the deep, purple blooms where his fingers dug in—start to throb with a phantom heat. My pussy is heavy, aching, a dark, weeping secret between my legs that hasn’t forgotten the way he just destroyed me in that car. It tingles, a sharp, electric buzz that makes my toes curl into the mink.
