Page 20 of Bathed in Blood

The younger girl nibbles at her raw bottom lip, and. I do my best not to threaten to kill or maim her. She’s a timid thing—no family, no friends outside of the trade she was kidnapped into when my father bought her from a brothel in New Orleans. Said she looked like my sister, Abigale, but I don’t see it. She can stay here, earn a wage, get her health and mind in order, the same deal offered to my princess.

Not yours, Christian. Not. Yours.

Only difference being,theprincess cannot leave. She knows it. Nobody does what she does, as well as she does, and gets a chance at a happily ever after.A normal life. The girl finally relents, handing me the tray before quickly bolting back up the stairs. Father always had a thing for strays, cats, dogs,people. I never understood it. Why hire reformed whores and murderers, druggies, and people broken beyond help to do the cleaning when you could find someone with less baggage? The girl’s sobs echo off the wide, empty halls.

I stalk towards her room, making the food under the domed platter jostle, probably spilling on the inside. My eyes scan past the open security station, the guard inside picking his nose in front of the dozens of screens. Before I can consider pausing and demanding a new one, I punch the code into the locked door, breezing through it.

Her head snaps up towards me, her eyes resolved. The gray sweats she’s wearing are a far cry from the designer lingerie I’m used to seeing her in. Even so, she’s fucking stunning, the same way a small, rare bird is made even more so because it would be so easy to kill it, so easy to have it stuffed, to keep its beauty for yourself. Her red hair is braided down her back, the same way it was the night I took her, the strands unraveling since she’s not allowed any band to keep it together.

The room is clinical, small, devoid of anything to help pass the time, only containing a bed, recliner, and desk. The bathroom attached is barely big enough for the shower inside it. She crosses her legs underneath her as she fiddles with a frayed hem on the blanket.

I just stand there, food in hand, staring at her like a dumbfuck, trying to figure out what to say. AndasI stand here like a cuck, people upstairs are busting through the few files we managed to pirate from the Sullivan servers before the wall slammed back up. Not a great sign, considering there should be nobody left to give a fuck. Unless this is their daddy’s version of a clean-up job, but even that makes little sense. Why leave it open versus just wiping the evidence entirely?

Soon enough, I won’t need the princess to divulge. I’ll have any information we could possibly need. Still, it doesn’t stop my palms from aching with the desire to pry all her secrets from her pretty lips. I shift on my feet, gripping the tray harder than necessary. Irritation flares inside me as she goes back to focusing on the blanket. Her eyes should be on me. Endlessly. I want her attention; Ineedit. For a moment, I’m a fucking child, standing quietly in a full room, begging to be noticed. It’s pissing me off.

“I told the girl I wasn’t interested in eating,” she offers finally.

Very well.

I sit the plate down in front of her on the bed, tossing the lid off. The metal makes an unholy sound as it bounces off the cold tile floor, skidding to a stop. To her credit, she doesn’t budge. I lift the packet of oyster crackers right in front of her eyes. “You like these? Never saw the purpose of them myself.”

She just stares at the crackers.

God, give me fucking strength.

I deposit them in the soup we had for dinner, stirring, grateful most of it stayed in the bowl. It’s what they’ve been putting her stool softener, vitamins, and antibiotics in, like a fucking toddler. A woman I once watched bust a man’s testicles under her boot like grapes, then force a woman to lick it up, seconds before she buried an axe in her back…is being tricked into taking medicine like a stubborn three-year-old. And me? The feared eldest son of the Vanegas family, a man who has lived thirty-seven years and most of them spent killing, torturing, and ending lives, is blowing on her soup.

So it doesn’t burn her fucking mouth.

What in the holy mother of fucking hell is going on right now?

She stares at me like I’ve just asked her to recite Shakespeare backwards as I lift it to her mouth, offering it to her. “Either you eat yourself, or they call the good doctor and force it.”

She doesn’t open her mouth.

Okay, I tried.

I jerk my gun out of my waistband, flicking off the safety and pulling back the hammer in one fluid motion. “Say ahhhh.”

Her eyes flick towards the gun pressed against her forehead, then back at the spoon before opening her mouth. She doesn’t look worried about the gun. In fact, she doesn’t even glance at it again. Several more bites, and I start to lower it. She looks almost concerned as I do, like she doesn’t know what to do without it. She doesn’t know what to do with the choice, the kindness. I doubt they gave her a choice in anything.

Noted, the princess responds to violence, but it doesn’t scare her. Find out what scares the Blood Princess.

Part of me hates that, more so than the fact that they had her figured out in a way I don’t. The other part, my cock, is already straining painfully against my zipper. She takes another bite, another bite thatIfeed her. It’s a sick kind of satisfaction, and I school my features to pretend I’m not getting off on it. We sit in silence as I offer her bite after bite, and she takes them, being so deceptivelygood. My cock strains until every throb is painful, a wet spot forming on the crotch of my three-piece suit.

When the bowl is empty, the soggy oyster crackers left at the bottom, I reach for the rice, my princess shakes her head. “I’m full.”

My hand tightens around the small bowl, my eyes darting around the room, searching for a reason to argue, any fucking reason to stay in here for a while longer. Why? Because apparently, I’m a fucking masochist.

“Christian…” she hesitates, drawing in an unsteady breath “Are they all dead? You’re positive?”

I damn near see red. Here I am, debating on force feeding her lukewarm rice just to spend another ten minutes with her, and she’s thinking about the fucking Sullivan brothers.

My hand finally releases the small bowl as I slide the tray onto her desk. I don’t answer her right away, shifting back further on the small lumpy bed so my back hits the wall. She shifts closer, her small hands reaching towards me, and I nearly stop breathing.

“You don’t understand—" She cuts off, those pretty golden eyes shining with tears she won’t let loose. Her hand is paused, caught between neutrality and touch. Touch me, princess. Give me any justification to take you, to wipe them from your memory, to show how good being touched can feel. I’m no better than them, because I’m seconds from taking you, even if youcried for me to stop. I mean, shetouchedme, unaware how close to snapping my already lax self-control is. She started it.

“I have to know for certain,” she whispers.

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