Page 39 of Tainted Serenity

I don’t suppose he cares if I cut myself too deep or not. After all, he tried to kill me.

But he would lose hisprecious puppet,as he once told me.

It’s been two weeks since I was at the doctor’s. I still feel an unsettling aura surrounding him, not knowing what his intentions are, but right now, he seems relatively safe despite everything.

Being too entwined in my thoughts, I don’t notice the way the door opens until it’s too late. The creaking sound of the door gives away a loud screeching sound that pierces my eardrums until it physically hurts, and I flinch away, trying to hide my arm behind my back.

In the doorway stands a woman, the lights from outside my room cast a dull glow over her, making her look more like a shadow. I can only make out the outlines, nothing else, and my heart pounds like a madman inside my chest.

I’m just about to stand up so I’m not at a disadvantage when suddenly her red heels are right in front of me. The bright light shimmers through the room, making the color glisten as it reflects at me, as if she has polished them for far too long.

Cautiously, I raise my gaze and am immediately met by Irene’s glowering eyes, casting down toward me as if I’m a disobedient child who needs reprimanding. I swallow a lump, feeling how my throat bobs from the motion, and agony fills me, as though I’m swallowing molten lava.

Her eyes stare down at me before catching sight of the arm I’m trying to hide behind my back. There’s a sense of vulnerability in her eyes that flickers for a moment, her face slackening as she observes my arm, and I suddenly come to think about the woman I saw in the pictures a while back up in the attic. How could I not have thought about it before? This is her, the woman who wrote those letters.

That fleeting second quickly fades away when her eyes narrow on me. The look in her eyes speaks volumes, revealing a hint of her past, and I cannot help but wonder how she ended up here with Arthur.

With swift movements, she forces my arm to the front so she can see it, almost twisting it while doing so, and I have to muffle a whimper that tries to escape me.

I cannot show any weaknesses, even though I am weak.

With a chin held high, I stare straight into her piercing eyes with defiance, noticing the way her high cheekbones are too protruded from the bronzer she has put on.

“What is this?”

The sound of her voice, despite the fact that it is low, still spreads discomfort through me because it sounds as though she’s yelling at me.

“None of your business,” I simply state, soon realizing my mistake.

Her hand flies to my cheek as a stinging pain burns my skin, her nostrils flaring. Her gaze lingers on the redness on my cheek before her expression twists into a disdainful sneer. It’s impossible to escape the sheer authority she has; her presence shifting the air in the room and transforming it into something oppressive.

She leans closer to my ear, and I am in no position to move away from her hateful words that come next while she twists my wrist into an unnatural angle.

“No matter the pain you inflict on yourself,” she hisses in my ear with venomous words before continuing. “You will always be in the depths of ugliness. Your precious boy will not think you beautiful forever.”

Her words have my heart aching, and not because of the threat she thinks will affect me, but because of the mention of Grey.

“Where is he?”

She stares at me, laughing cruelly in my face at my obvious desperation.

“Where the fuck is he?”

This time, I manage to wrench my hand away from her iron claw grip, and soon I’m on to her, punching her sharp cheekbones until she stumbles backward.

She screams like a child in need of saving, and I stare at her, this time feeling the hatefulness toward her take over me from the inside.

“You’ve been a very bad dolly.”

My head whips around, my heart sinking to the lowest depths of the ocean as I stare into the eyes of the master. Those dark eyes have haunted my nightmares for years, making me unable to sleep and never giving me peace.

But it isn’t the master. It’s his brother who is just as cruel. His presence mixed with Irene’s makes everything worse, and it feels as if I have been thrust inside a dangerous cat-and-mouse game where there’s no chance of me ever escaping.

“Where the fuck is he?” I sneer, feeling more like an animal than myself, as my voice mixes with both desperation and determination—a dangerous mix.

“I’m not sure I know who you’re talking about.”

I want to wipe out the ugly smirk on his lips and revel in his pain until he screams from it. Within minutes, I have his collar in my hands, slowly suffocating him as I hear Irene calling on someone. I am too far in my head to care about anything right now other than strangling him to death. Arthur and Frederick are the same person in the same body, and I need to get rid of them. I will never be free otherwise.

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