Page 41 of Tainted Serenity

The door suddenly opens once again, and Daxton’s expression turns into one full of coldness, giving an air of authority in Arthur’s presence.

“I see you’re finally awake,” he merely states before surveying me from head to toe, his gaze lingering on me for far too long.

Daxton clears his throat as if noticing, and I can’t help but wonder once again what his intentions are. He is a complex human, his expressions always unreadable, with no way of understanding him.

“Are you going to behave?” Arthur says as he grabs something from his suit pocket.

I only glare at him with distaste while quickly casting a glance toward Daxton. A smirk plays on his lips, further deepening my confusion about his intentions.

“I always behave.”

As the words leave my lips, I witness a snort coming from Daxton while Arthur cuts him a dangerous glare.

“Enough! He roars, causing me to flinch. “I expect the utmost obedience from you, Naya.”

His eyes shift to mine, making me uneasy and wanting to get the fuck away from the chair I’m strained to. Silence descends over the surroundings as Arthur grabs an object that looks like a remote before clicking on it, starting the smaller television hanging in the corner of the room.

The motion makes my heart hammer inside my ribcage, and I cast an uncertain look toward Daxton, who shrugs his shoulders as if he doesn’t know what this is about either. I feel Arthur staring daggers at me until I’m forced to look at the screen playing something, and my eyes widen at the sight.

A man with raven-red hair is on the video, which seems to come from a rewind of a live feed dated two days ago. Every distinct feature is painfully familiar—that angular jaw I have traced more times than I can count, those muscles I have licked and worshipped. All those unmistakable features signify it is him, yet I refuse to believe that it is. This man cannot possibly bemyGrey.

The hammering within my heart makes it nearly impossible to breathe, my soul confined to my bones despite wanting to desperately escape. I stare as the man who looks like Grey beats the fuck out of another man lying on the floor, his head bruised from the foundation and his eyes swollen shut. A sickening terror fills me when Grey crouches down, pulls out a knife from his pocket, before staring at the man on the floor with a sinister smile on his beautiful lips. Nausea churns me as pure fear grips my very being, and I’m unable to tear my gaze away, frozen in place. Using the knife, Grey plunges it into the man’s stomach, tearing his shirt apart, then coating it in blood, allowing the blade to penetrate the skin, and I watch the agony in his body language.

Precisely like Arthur did to me many weeks ago.

Acid forms in my mouth as nausea now burns through my throat, mixing with the saliva and giving an awful taste.

“Is this the man you previously asked about?”

But I have no words because I do not recognize the animalistic form of the man who brutally kills another man in the same way Arthur tried to do to me.

Chapter 16

Naya

Watching the man youlove brutally stab someone the same way another did to you hurts more than I care to admit. It isn’t him in the time-stamped live feed, not really. I cannot accept the fact that Grey would willingly do something like that, especially after witnessing what Arthur did to me in the woods on that snow-covered, cold day.

Unless what Arthur said is true, that Grey truly has given up on me and no longer needs me in his life. That fact hurts more than anything, feeling as if Grey is taking that knife and stabbing it right through my heart, tearing it apart until nothing but flesh and bone remains, and my ever-lasting love for him.

I stare at the wall even minutes after it has stopped playing. All that is left now is the empty, cold stone wall glowing a blue color in the dimly lit room. I haven’t felt my chest expand, as if I am holding my breath, trying to process what I just saw.

It was him. Grey’s well-built body and those toned muscles underneath his shirt that got sprayed with blood as he stabbed the vulnerable man. It was undoubtedly his face with those mesmerizing sapphire blue eyes that always makes me feel like I’m finally home. His eyes locked onto the camera mounted on the ceiling, and a resentment that could not be missed radiated from his frame as he mouthed the words that made a chill spread across my spine in a creepy yet welcome sensation.

“Happy now?”

The moment Grey whispered that, I sensed Daxton’s body stiffening beside me, and it appeared as though his reaction held more secrets than what I could interpret as his own fear, evidenced by the clenching of his fist. Though there appeared to be something deeper about his reaction—a lingering significance I couldn’t make out. He gave Arthur a fiery glare while ignoring looking at me.

Arthur seemed far too content with the situation, watching me like he would an animal at a zoo while trying to coax a reaction out of me. I did nothing but stare at the wall with an emotionless expression while feeling as if my world was collapsing on the inside.

Do not show your weakness.

That is a promise I will never break, especially not in front of Arthur or Daxton.

I don’t know what to believe anymore, my thoughts scattering in the wake of a deadly tsunami that will surely drown me.

I’m still restrained to the chair, unable to move. Arthur left the room a while ago; I can’t decipher how long it’s been, with a broad smile plastered on his lips at what he accomplished. If he is anything like his brother, his arrogant ass will think he has won over me now and that I won’t ask about Grey anymore. As if I could ever forget about him. If he thinks I will surrender to become his doll, then he is fucking wrong. I don’t give up that easily, and I certainly will not give up on the man who ever made me feel when all I wanted to do was feel nothing at all.

Daxton stands behind me by the drawers full of unknown tools, fumbling with something.

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