Page 52 of The Villain
The instant I do it, he stops talking, hunching forward. If he wasn’t injured, I wouldn’t be able to hurt him. His expression at first is disbelief. It’s that moment before his brain registers what happened. I know the instant that pain hits and Cassian’s face goes to rage, his mouth tightening into a hard line as red bleeds into his shirt, the wound opening, his hands tightening on me. I push against his chest to get away. Shit. I didn’t mean to do this. I needed him to stop. To shut up. I just needed him to stop.
“That was a mistake.” Cassian’s words are short, his pain written on his face. He’s controlled, and I think that’s when he’s most dangerous.
Before I can respond, he wraps one arm around my middle and pulls me to himself, lifting me off my feet and stalking out of the bedroom. He walks slowly, each step heavy with pain and purpose. I try to pry his arm off, twisting to get away, calling out for help knowing no one will help me, but even injured, he’s too strong and far too determined.
“Where are you taking me?” I demand as we cross the church to a corridor behind the altar. This one is in shadows and when I’d found the door locked and tried to see about a way in, a soldier had stopped me. Now, I see Cassian reach his free arm up. He groans with the pain of extending it and the bloody stain spreads on his shirt as he takes the key from above the frame and unlocks the heavy door. When he opens it, stale damp air hits me, the smell of a closed up underground room, of stone walls filling my nostrils, making me remember his warning thatfirst night.
“If she gives you any trouble, put her in the crypt.”
“No!” I scream, fighting with all I have as we descend stairs where the only light is what is coming from inside the church and in this dark corridor it’s not much. “Stop! No!”
I claw at his forearm, twisting, begging. But he doesn’t stop. He keeps walking, a silent, brutal, heartless beast. The perfect villain. We reach the bottom of stairs carved into the stone. It’s pitch black down here, but he must know it well because he can’t see any more than I can, I’m sure. He pauses, holding on to me with one arm while with the other, he switches on a lantern. The place is suddenly illuminated, and I wish it wasn’t. God, how I wish it wasn’t.
They put you in the basement when you’re of no consequence. When they want to hurt you. But this? This is something else entirely.
I shake my head, clinging to him, taking in the cave-like room, this underground space that houses sarcophagi that, judging from the stone, are older than time. I shudder with cold and when Cassian releases me, I find myself clutching his forearm, refusing to release him as I try to blot out the scene.
He picks up the light source. My gaze follows. It’s a small battery-operated lamp with a handle. It’s bright and I think if it were a flashlight, it would be better because it wouldn’t illuminate so much of the space.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks, looking around the room before turning his gaze to me.
I look up at him as he walks me backward. I went too far. Shit. I went too far.
“Do you know the history of Devil’s Peak? Of this particular church?”
I do, but I don’t answer. I can’t. Because it’s not supposed to be true. I draw closer to him, hating that I’m clinging to him rather than trying to free myself of him and refusing to walk toward the wall where I see the iron shackles lined up and hanging open. Empty. For now.
“No?” he asks, gesturing around the space.
I know the secret history. I just didn’t know it was more than a rumor. Our town has an ugly past, one the church tried to cover up. Devil’s Peak. It wasn’t always called that, but the locals renamed it several hundred years ago because so many men and woman disappeared from the town and from towns all around it. Bribes had been paid. Given the location, the cliff’s peak at the end of what is now Cassian’s property into a violent ocean, this secret crypt. I understand why the place was chosen even if it was a church. Money is money and even men of the cloth aren’t immune to the power it brings.
There’s a reason this church became a ruin. A reason a mafia boss was able to buy consecrated ground.
“You’ve studied this church in detail, Allegra. I saw that much in your books. So, you know what these are.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask weakly, my thumb absently closing over the stump of my pinkie finger. I remember how it hurt. How I watched that dirty butcher’s knife come down. They chopped it off. And I just stared at my hand, my finger lying there beside it, not believing it, not feeling anything, not yet. Hearing my mother’s screams. Screams that pierced my ears. Andthen I remember the blood. And I remember the pain. Oh God. The pain.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask again, my voice sounding strange. Hollow. My throat is so dry, and panic makes it hard to breathe. “What are you…”
“This corridor was closed off when I bought the property. It was uncovered during the rebuilding.”
My back hits the wall. I hug my arms around myself, shivering in the damp cold. Cassian looks down at the bloody stain on his shirt, then back at me, his eyes narrowed, the blue looking black in this shadowed, dark place.
“What are you going to do to me?” I ask again, seeing the countless shackles lined up along both walls that look to be hundreds of years old. “Don’t leave me here. Please. I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me here!” I beg in a panic, tears hot on my face.
Cassian sets one hand across my stomach to hold me against the wall as he stretches my arm and shackles it to the wall.
“Cassian?” My voice breaks and I shake my head.
“You need to learn that when you fight me,” he says slowly, stretching my other arm out, shackling that. “I will punish you.” When he is finished, I try the restraints, tugging, but they hold. I see the others around the cave. This was a torture room. A murder room. Here. In the underbelly of this church.
I shiver as he slowly strips off my clothes. Once I’m naked, he takes my face in his hands his thumbs wipe away tears as my gaze lands on the implements of torture hanging in the far corner. I look up at him, stilltrying to get close to him even though I’m bound to the wall.
I close my eyes and feel myself starting to rock and it’s like I’m back there. Back in that basement room. And she’s upstairs and they’re making her play for them, the notes breaking as she misses the right ones. She can’t play anymore. It’s not possible, not after what they did.
Cassian says something and it draws me out of my head.
He cups my face and I open my eyes to look up at him. His hands are warm. His body close. His eyes search mine.
