Page 219 of Sweet Dominion

Nailed.

Strung up like grotesque marionettes dangling from the very high ceiling.

I clamped a hand over my mouth, fighting the bile that rose up in my throat.

What is wrong with Leo?

The scene was a macabre masterpiece of brutal cruelty.

There were seven dead bodies up there, spread wide and nailed into the wooden beams overhead.

Some of them had ropes wrapped around their torsos, securing them in place.

Blood dripped down from their wounds, staining the ceiling in dark streaks, pooling in tiny drops on the floor beneath them.

What the hell?! Like. . .why did he do that?

The ropes cut into their skin, some of them so tight that their arms and legs looked twisted and contorted, like the last moments of their lives had been spent in agonizing pain.

My stomach lurched.

And these weren’t just random men. They were part of Aunt Suzi’s people who she had told to watch TT.

I recognized some of their faces, though now they were pale and bloodied, with empty-wide eyes.

And that wasn’t a metaphor.

Leo took the eyeballs out of their lids.

Oh God, oh God.

I trembled. “W-why?”

“He put them up there so TT wouldn’t see them.”

“He could have. . .put them in. . .a room.”

“Your sisters might have come up and went in a room.”

That still was insane, but I had nothing else to say. Lei knew his father and he’d said all of that so calm because he was used to the horror that Leo could bring.

Jesus Christ.

I tightened my hand around his, clinging to him like my life depended on it.

And maybe it did.

Because right now, in this house, surrounded by monsters in monk robes, it felt like we were standing on the edge of a precipice, one wrong step away from joining the dead men hanging above us.

Lei’s voice snapped me out of my horror. “It’s going to be fine, Moni.”

But I could hear the lie in his voice. He didn’t believe that. He was just saying it to keep me calm.

I should have never looked up.

Never would I make that mistake again.

Because now the image of those bodies was burned into my mind. Every blink brought it back in vivid detail—the nails, the blood, the empty eyelids.

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