Page 1 of Caress of Fire
Chapter 1
The house was getting cold now that the sun had long gone over the desert night, but none of the people around the table got up to feed the dying embers. The chill penetrated her bones, slithered inside her ribcage and spread to her brain, muddying her thoughts and making her numb to the disaster that threatened to swallow her family whole. What was left of it, anyway.
We’re never going to get out of this.
Marielle stared hard at the skeletal Delradon man sitting across the table. Ignio Marula’s crimson eyes were set on her with intense interest, and his long white hair fell down either side of his wrinkled face in a perfectly tame mass. He smiled at her, the corners of his thin lips curving with the peaceful joy of one accustomed to terrorizing others—and who enjoyed it.
A whimper came from her right, a sound that ripped through her skin and exposed the raw flesh underneath. The sound of the boy her brother, Devan, had been, not too long ago. And that he still was in many ways, even at seventeen.
All her instincts told her to look at him, at that handsome, innocent face she knew so well. That face the thugs had turned to ground meat with their fists—but Marielle didn’t dare take her eyes from Ignio Marula. The man was like a snake, best kept at a safe distance and under vigilant watch. His poisonous mind could make him strike at any moment, and those she cared about the most would lose their lives in the process.
“Please,” Devan spoke, his voice small and defeated, more like a boy’s than a man’s. “I can repay you. I just need more time.”
“My poor, dear boy.” Ignio shook his head, his face contorted in a parody of sadness and empathy. “I would love nothing more than to give you more time. As much time as you need, really.”
Marielle turned her head slightly to glance at the young man sitting at her right. His left eye was closed in a mess of purple flesh and blood from the repeated hits he’d sustained, and there was a long, deep cut on his right cheekbone. His lips and nose were bleeding, but the devilishly handsome boy was still there under the wounds. Devan’s lips lifted up, his single open, childish gray eye glowing with the hope borne of a good, trusting heart. The hope of a man who didn’t know the evil of the world because he didn’t have it inside him.
But she wasn’t her brother.
Marielle’s throat constricted painfully and she reflexively bit down on the interior of her cheek, hard enough to draw blood. She knew better than to let her heart swell at the kind words of a monster. Men like Ignio Marula didn’t give out free passes to dirt-poor humans like the Jansen siblings. Men like Ignio Marula crushed knees and broke arms, savaged wives and daughters—killed to keep the fear alive in the hearts of those desperate or naive enough to borrow from them.
Like her baby brother.
“Oh, thank you, Ignio, you won’t regret it.”
Devan spoke, louder this time, his natural enthusiasm bolting to the surface like it always did. Marielle’s heart clutched some more, and she refrained from grabbing her brother’s hand and squeezing it in her own. He hoped so easily, always saw the tiny spark, even when it was not there. She had to stop the surge before it was born, before it could hurt. Because there was no hope to be had, not anymore.
“I am afraid you misunderstand me.” Ignio Marula smiled some more, and his thin lips stretched impossibly wide, exposing a row of yellowing teeth that sent shudders straight to her soul. It was the smile of the beast, of what lay in wake when the light died and the child quivered, awake in his bed. It was the smile of the predator about to pounce and rip the deer’s throat open in a flash of blood and despair. “I would love nothing more than give you time to repay your debt—a debt you contracted of your own free will, and on terms you agreed to.” Ignio Marula raised his eyebrows and lifted his index finger to underline his point. “But what do you think would happen if I allowed you to renegotiate? Chaos. Chaos would happen, and my boys and I would be out of a job.”
Ignio Marula made a wide gesture to include the two Delradon men standing behind him and a chorus of chuckles answered his words. Marielle risked a glance at them, and her eyes were met by the stares of the Ferlin twins. Their thin faces split in ugly grins and their pale yellow eyes locked on her with something akin to joy, but more like lust. Lust for pain, for suffering and despair.
The chill traveled up her spine and enclosed her heart. Her family was at the mercy of these men, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“So, how am I to give you your money back?” Devan’s voice rose again, but this time it was high-pitched and shrill. “I don’t have it. I don’t have the money.”
Devan repeated his last sentence, over and over, his eyes lost in confusion. Marielle’s stomach flipped with anger and she breathed deeply, forcing herself not to bend over and puke all over Ignio Marula’s shiny white boots and pants.
He doesn’t understand. Devan never understood what would happen if he couldn’t pay.
Humans weren’t meant to prosper. Humans weren’t meant to rise above the dirt of the fields. Humans were meant to scrape floors and break their backs in mines and factories, not borrow small fortunes to improve their lives from the likes of Ignio Marula. Yet, this was exactly what Devan had done, and Ignio Marula had been only too happy to lend the boy more money than he could ever hope to pay back in his lifetime.
“Well then, dear boy, we’re going to have a problem, aren’t we?” Ignio Marula braced his elbows on the table and his smile vanished, replaced by the void stare of a snake looking down at an injured mouse, without an ounce of sympathy. “What am I going to do with you?”
A current of terror went straight through Marielle’s bones. Her eyes went from Devan’s limp, barely recognizable, expressionless face to Ignio Marula. The thug’s unnerving crimson stare moved from Devan to focus on her, and those eyes shone with a perverse glee.
“What am I going to do with your brother?” he said again. “What am I going to do with you?”
This was the question, wasn’t it? What was he going to do to them?
Ignio Marula’s tongue slid out to run over his bottom lip, giving him the appearance of a reptile about to strike. All Marielle could hear was the sound of blood pumping fast through her veins as she waited to hear her family’s fate.
Time felt suspended in a slow agony as Ignio Marula’s eyes traveled from Devan to Marielle. The Delradon’s expression changed, his eyes became heavy-lidded and his mouth hung slightly open. Lust was plain as sickness on his face.
Marielle’s face became numb and her heartbeat so hard in her chest it hurt.
No.
“Now, maybe you can help your brother out of this bind.” Ignio Marula leaned down, his torso hovering over the table, his eyes set on her, ignoring everyone around them. “What do you say to that, sweetling? You can work off your brother’s debt at one of my establishments.”
