The one on the right is much bigger. Bulkier than the other two in muscle mass, but not taller. Boulder shoulders sloping up to a square, chiselled face. Not as menacing as the other one, a look of mild curiosity pasted on his sculpted features. Golden blonde hair that’s been slicked back, an escaped tendril curling down into his eye, which is as blue as mine. A straight nose with a slightly raised bump on the ridge. He’s got on a short-sleeved grey compression shirt, bearing two full, bulging arms of black and shaded tattoos.
But the one in the middle, I recognise the Slender-Man silhouette immediately. They’re all pretty tall, but he’s the tallest by a couple inches. He has this dominating presence that overpowers the other two. I didn’t get a clear look before, my retinas still sensitive to the assault of the sun after days without it. But now I see him clearly. The stone-cold, irritated, green-eyed glare boring down on me from the foot of the bed is attached to my soon-to-be husband.
I’ve never met him before, my eyes have never laid upon this man before me, but I know who he is as soon as I see those devilish eyes clearly. Everyone in my world knows who he is. My future husband is part of the dark web’s biggest flesh salesbusiness on the black market, and dismembering professional, Caden Blackwood.
The notorious, ruthless, violent and terrifying, Caden Blackwood.
My stomach twists into a knot so sickeningly tight it pushes bile up my throat.
Now I know why my father was so evasive about telling me who I was marrying. I would have leaped from the balcony.
There’s one thing that ties my Valor family to the Blackwoods. Our new business. But our business only integrated because I did something terrible. Something that tainted my soul and conjured nightmares so terrifying, I fought off sleep for days. I saved my family from destitution, but it came at a cost too high for any human psyche to recover from.
“Well, our sleeping beauty’s awake!” the one on the left, with the black curls and owner of the silky-smooth voice, says, knocking me from my stupor. His devious smirk parting his lips to reveal a set of straight white teeth.
I take in my surroundings. We’re in a bedroom, the sheets bundled up around me are shiny and soft as silk. Pure black. Like the rest of the room. Black painted walls, black poster bed, black carpet. I notice a door behind the men, looks to be an en suite.
It’s like I’m in some upgraded version of my cell and the monsters have been upgraded from shadows to three leering, intense and unsettling beings. Looking at them now, I think I prefer the monsters from the darkness.
“How do you feel?” Caden says, an almost tired and bored tone lacing his raspy voice.
I stare at him. Does he care how I feel, or does he just feel obliged to ask that?
Those glistening balls of silver on his face that I saw in the sunlight glitter under the light. He’s got piercings. Left eyebrow,right side of his straight, pointed nose, and a snakebite on the right side of his plump bottom lip. His black hair’s still messy, like he’s been running his hands through it.
All three of them stand there – at the foot of this giant bed – sizing me up. Glaring, condemning, suspicious. Not a single smidge of evidence that any of them are happy for me to be here. Not one hint that they want me to feel welcome.
I just stare back, unwilling and untrusting of the enemies before me. My intention of escape now almost palpable in my bones. The urge to run, to leap, to fight, all awakened and thrumming beneath my skin, rippling through my drained muscles.
“Ah, great,” Dark Hair says, “she’s fucking mute. That’ll make things more interesting.”
“Answer the question,” Caden says. “Now.”
I lock my blue eyes with his green ones. He’s intimidating, sure, but so is my father. I remain silent.
He licks his top teeth behind closed lips, a clear sign of impatience. The piercing at the edge of his bottom lip sparkles under the light.
“Gees, this’ll be more fun than I originally thought,” Dark Hair says.
Caden moves around to the side of the bed where I’m folded up against the headboard. I back away to the other side, where Dark Hair decides to close in too. Blonde Hair remains at the foot. Solid walls have covered all three escape points. Again, just like my cell.
“Elodie, if you can’t answer a simple question, you and I are going to have much bigger problems than an arranged marriage.” The way Caden says my name – like he’s sick of it already – makes my skin crawl.
“Where am I?” it comes out so thick and croaked it doesn’t even sound like my voice. Well, I haven’t used it in a week.
That tongue licks over his teeth again, those eyes assessing me so intensely I can’t help but shudder internally, before he says, “You’re in my home.Ourhome.”
I break away from his gaze to look around the black cave again before landing on the blonde in front of me.
“You’ve hit the jackpot, little princess. You’re living in a modern mansion now. Nothing like that medieval shit you grew up in,” he says. That baritone in his voice ricochets inside me.
“We’ve answered your question. Now answer ours,” Caden says, pulling my attention back to his black, suffocating aura. “How do you feel?”
It’s smooth enough, if not a little strained, matched with the tight muscles of his forearms as he holds them crossed over his chest. He has patchy tattoos on his left arm, sporadically placed. It looks like a bunch of black squares with different images inside, although I can’t clearly see from here. Black lines stark against his pale skin. Rumour has it he gets a tattoo for each murder he commits, each a cryptic symbol relating to the individual death. Each body he rips the soul right out of. I know I’m part of this world, his world, but I’m just a tech geek who comes from a drug lord. I’ve never borne witness to that side, and I pray I never do now I’m his betrothed. How does this man sleep at night? I struggle just with the stuff I’ve done from behind a screen. But this guy is unfazed, he oozes death and darkness. He emanates emptiness, like his soul has long been wrenched from his body. Only a hollow, hostile shell operated by an evil, merciless entity is left staring back at me now. There’s no life there swimming in the swamps of his eyes. Only promising death.
I clear my throat, try to rid the dry roughness there. “Fantastic.”
Curly Dark Hair snorts beside me, chuckling. It’s light and amused. I turn to him. “Sarky too. You’re going to have a field day with this one, Cade.”
