Page 5 of Sweet Obsession

Growing up as Minos’s only biological son, I may not have had a front-row seat to all of the sins he committed, but I was privy to enough of them to develop a thick skin. It was the only way to survive. He wasn’t going to change his actions just because I find murder stomach-turning. If he knew how much I hatedeverything he did, he would have taken away the sliver of freedom that made my life worth living. I could say I didn’t have any other choice, but somehow I don’t think this stranger wants to hear it. “I’m sorry,” I say again, managing to make it sound more sincere this time.

“Maybe.” He lifts his hands, and I go cold at the sight of his leather gloves. “Youwillbe sorry. I’ll make sure of that.”

I don’t stop to think. I burst into motion, rolling across the bed away from him. Some part of me already knows what I’ll find when my hand lands on the knob: it doesn’t turn beneath my grasp. Locked. Of course. This person, intent on revenge, wouldn’t leave anything up to chance. Of course he locked the door behind him when he came to murder me.

He grabs my arm before I have a chance to decide on a different course of action, spinning me around and slamming me back against the door. He pins me there with a hand across my throat. “What is Circe planning?”

I might laugh if I had the breath for it. So, not a murder. An interrogation. Of course. It was my mistake for thinking Poseidon’s honesty would prevent him from getting his hands dirty—or allowing his people to get their hands dirty. Naive of me.

“Answer the question.”

I let my head fall back to rest against the door. “The answer to that is above my pay grade. But even so…it doesn’t take a genius to look around and draw the obvious conclusions. Her squadron is in the bay, so she intends to take the city.”

He tightens his grip around my throat and slams me back against the door. “No shit. Give me the details.”

“I don’t have details.” If I did, I would’ve bargained for my freedom and my sister’s freedom long before now. Gods,thatis what I should have been focusing on. If I’d managed to get those details, I could have saved us both.

It was only in the last couple of weeks, when our father turned on my sister, that I realized there was no coming back from this. There was no gaining his approval. We had disappointed him one time too many, and he’d rather see us dead than see us turn against him.

If I live long enough, eventually I’m going to have to deal with the truth that he turned a gun on me, with every intention to pull the trigger and end my life. That my sweet, precious sister killed him first. That she bloodied her hands to keep me among the living. That she will bear scars on her soul because of my failures.

Fortunately, I’m likely to die before I ever have to face that reckoning properly. Maybe it’ll even happen today.

The stranger glares. I think he might question me again, but instead he moves too fast for me to brace, punching me in the stomach. The breath rushes from my lungs, and every muscle in my body seizes up as I bend in half with an instinctive need to protect myself from the blow that already happened. One would think I’d have learned to take a punch by now. Apparently not.

He uses the opportunity of my agony to haul me back to the bed and throw me down on my back. I’m still trying to force air into my seizing lungs when he straddles me and shoves my hands over my head. A click of handcuffs registers before the feeling of cold metal against my wrists. The man sits back on his heels, his disgust written all over his face. “It’s pathetic that someone so weakhelped orchestrate so much pain. So many deaths of people better than you.”

My first full breath comes out in a rough laugh. It’s painful that everyone from my own father to this stranger have such an accurate read on me, but it’s nothing new. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Okay.” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a switchblade. “I’m going to cut you, again and again, until you tell me exactly what I need to know. Poseidon might be pissed that you bled out all over his fresh sheets, but the information you give me will make it all worthwhile.”

“Torture.” I make a face. “I would think a big, strong man like you would know that torture doesn’t work. That’s practically Bad Guy 101. Except I suppose you think you’re the good guy? Color me not convinced.”

He presses the tip of the knife to the center of my chest, right at the bottom of my sternum. “Yeah, that’s the thing.Poseidonis the good guy. Not me. I figure if you blubber like a baby, at leastsomethingthat comes out of your pathetic little mouth will be true. That’s enough for me.”

He might say he’s a bad guy, but it’s not the truth. He’s convinced himself he can make this work. He can make himself strip me apart piece by piece and come out okay on the other end. It’s sad. Somehow, I don’t think he will thank me for saying as much, though.

I take a ragged breath. “I’ll be honest. All it will take is you cutting me once, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I’m more a fan of giving pain than taking it. That doesn’t mean my information will be accurate. I don’t have what you’re looking for.”

“We’ll see.” There’s no further warning. He drags the knifedown my stomach in a shallow slash. I thought that getting punched was agony. It’s nothing compared to this. It’s no mere scratch that he’s dealt me. It fucking hurts.

“I don’t know anything,” I gasp. I can’t breathe, not even to cry out. Somehow, a part of me didn’t really believe he’d do it.

“I think you do.” He drags the knife in a parallel line to the first. Another searing stroke that has me clamping my jaw shut to contain a scream. “What is Circe planning?”

“Death and destruction to all Olympians, probably. Definitely the Thirteen. She doesn’t seem to like them much.” I hardly sound like myself. Surely that’s not my voice, so rough and thready?

He cuts me a third time.

This time I can’t stop myself from crying out. “I told you what you wanted to know! I answered you. You’re supposed to stop hurting me.”

He grins, but not like anything is funny. His eyes look almost sad. “When did I ever say that I would stop hurting you if you answered me?” He cuts me again before I can find an answer.

And so it goes. My world narrows to each cut, to each new pain that blossoms in the wake of the last. I answer his questions…I think. But I don’t know what I say. There’s no space for intention when all I can experience is agony. At one point, I start screaming and I can’t make myself stop.

That’s when the door slams open andheappears.

Poseidon, looking like an avenging angel, but maybe that’s the haze of pain talking. His fury is written all over his roughly handsome face. It only becomes more pronounced as he takes in the scene: his man straddling me, the mattress soaked with my blood. Ihalf expect him to step back and close the door and let the torture continue.

---