Page 14 of Cruel God

“I’m sure you can handle everything that gets thrown your way.” I turned my back on him, ready to be done with this conversation.

“You can be sure of it,” he called after me.

I paused. “Sure, of what exactly?”

“That I can handle whatever gets thrown my way.”

My smirk morphed into a full-blown smile as I stood with my back toward Colton. I heard every threat, every promise echo loud and clear in his words, and it sent a certain kind of thrill down my spine. “I don’t doubt that for a second, Mr. Riggs.”

Chapter 5

Past

“Come, boy. It’s time you catch a glimpse of everything the life of a Cain has to offer.”

I studied my father as he stood by the one door in the house he had kept locked at all times.

There had been so many times that I stood in front of that door trying to imagine what it was he kept down there. It had to be something fundamentally important to him since he carried the key to that door on a chain around his neck. It was like silently conveying the message that if anyone wanted access to whatever was down there, they had to kill him first. Cut off his head and remove the key.

Dramatic? Probably. But he was a dark horse. Unpredictable. Even I felt like I hardly knew him. My own father. A man I had lived with my entire life.

I stood behind him, watching him slip the key into the lock and turn it. My pulse raced, and I suddenly felt nervous. Unsure whether I still felt curious about what was behind that door.

He pushed the door open. “Come. Follow me.”

My feet felt heavy as I obeyed by walking behind him. We moved down a long, dark hallway before descending a spiral staircase, the steel complaining under my father’s weight.

“What is down here, Father?”

He took the last step, and I could hear the soles of his shoes resound off the concrete floor before he flicked the switch, an entire row of fluorescent lights going on at once.

“This, my son, is our empire.”

In front of us stretched a large corridor with closed doors on either side. Steel bars that covered the openings at the top of each door glinted under the bright light. Even I realized that whatever was behind those closed doors wasn’t meant to come out.

It was a prison.

My father placed a hand on my shoulder. “Let me show you the gold our empire is built on.” The look on his face was nothing short of pride. He practically beamed with delight, as if nothing gave him more pleasure than showing his son the Cain legacy.

Still touching my shoulder, he guided me to the first door on the right. “Look.”

A warning prickled down my spine. Something told me that once I looked through that hole, my life would change forever. But my father saw my hesitation, and with his palm on my back, he shoved me forward, my nose colliding with one of the steel bars. Pain erupted through my face, but I barely noticed it because the only thing my mind was focused on was the girl on the other side of that door.

Huddled in a corner, naked and shivering, was a girl with dirty blonde hair. She seemed around my age but sickeningly thin. I could see her collarbones protrude, her cheeks sunken in. But what rattled me the most were her eyes. The way she stared at me, her eyes glazed and empty. It was like she didn’t even see me standing there, as if she looked right through me.

It was the most haunting thing I had ever seen in my life, and I wondered if that was what a person without a soul looked like.

I wrapped my fingers around the cold bars, my knuckles brushing against my cheeks. I couldn’t look away. I wanted to. But I couldn’t. The girl’s hollow eyes had me entranced in the most disturbing way.

My dad moved in next to me. “That’s number five seven one. We got her a few months ago. She was a feisty one. Not easily tamed. But eventually, we broke her.”

“Dad,” I whispered without turning to look at him. “What is this?”

“This is how men like us rule the world.”

“How can you say that?”

“Ignorant people have this misconception that money controls the world.”

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