Page 4 of The Beast

Once again, he hums as he walks, and I try to still my frantic heart. The last time I met his wife and learned the fate of his friend will be forever etched on my soul as if he took a knife and carved the images into it himself. Dark, cruel, sadistic, and evil. Not really the qualities a woman looks for in a husband and knowing that one day I will end up in that room is enough incentive to make me plot his death a little faster.

As he holds his finger up to the biometric entry system, my heart starts racing with fear and desperation as I consider what the special treat he has lined up could be.

I’m guessing treat is the wrong description entirely because it will probably involve heaping even more misery onto my already burdened shoulders.

As we enter the room, I try not to glance at the golden effigy spinning above the glass casket, knowing his friend is the only entertainment his dead wife gets to enjoy. Wesley betrayed Massimo and now spins as a golden light above his wife’s head as a perpetual punishment for his sins. The fact he’s paralyzed and yet lives on inside his mind is almost too much to contemplate and yet knowing how evil Wesley Vasquez was, I can’t feel sorry for him. If anything, I’m happy he had the cruelest retribution, which just shows how scarred my mind has become.

“Imogen, my darling, you are looking as beautiful as always.”

Massimo falls onto his wife’s coffin and starts wailing as he makes contact. Hammering his fists onto the toughened glass, making me wish he would succeed in breaking through and the jagged glass will sever an artery.

However, Massimo has the best that money can buy and I’m guessing the toughened glass is no exception. You could probably drop a heavy weight on it, and it wouldn’t budge.

Inside, the mummified remains of his wife stare up at him and I shiver with revulsion and fear. The last time we were here, Massimo promised my own destiny was to swing alongside Wesley over another coffin that has yet to be filled.

Massimo’s daughter is the lucky recipient and I pray to God he never finds her because knowing her fate when he does makes me fearful of it ever coming true.

Massimo blames his daughter for his wife’s death because she died during childbirth, and he only discovered she was alive at all a few weeks ago. He always thought a friend of mine, Flynn, was his son and instructed Wesley to make the boy’s life a living hell for killing his wife.

However, Massimo was tricked, and the real baby was sent away and as it turned out, Wesley himself was Flynn’s father.

“Winter!”

Massimo shouts my name and I jump, peering at him through startled eyes, which I quickly attempt to conceal. Massimo expects me to remain emotionless, an empty doll that he controls and commands, and any sign of humanity is stripped away if it shows itself.

His eyes narrow and I struggle to remain impassive as he beckons me across to the glass coffin.

“Come and pay your respects to Imogen. She wants to see you.”

I say nothing and move like an automaton to stand beside the coffin, and he screeches so loud it almost makes me jump.

“Pay your fucking respects, you bitch.”

I’m not sure what he wants me to do and as I hover near the coffin, I’m shocked when he grabs my head and slams me face down onto it, almost breaking my nose.

He holds my head firmly and screams, “Look at her! Look at my darling wife. Look at what they did.”

I open my eyes and stare into the empty pits of death and decay and the bile rises in my throat as I come face to face with mortality.

“Look at my beautiful bride. They did this to her, those bastards who betrayed me. That bitch who forced her way out of my wife’s beautiful defenseless body and took her life along with her. She will pay for that. They will all pay for that, and I will have my delicious revenge.”

Once again, he slams my face down hard, and I wonder if my nose is broken. A faint drop of blood spills onto the glass and, if anything, I am fearful of the repercussions of that. Any sign of anything less than perfection is liable to send him into a fearsome rage, and I’m more afraid of that than anything right now.

He starts to wail like a demon burning in hell and I suppose he is. Put there by his own mentality and as he pulls me to my feet, he packs the madness back into its box and smiles, looking around the room as if addressing a crowd. “So, I brought you here to tell you all of my plan, and I think you’re going to like it.”

He starts to laugh and dance around the room and if I wasn’t used to his manic personality by now, this strikes me as the moment he reveals the full extent of his insanity.

“As it turns out, my darlings…” He turns and smiles as if he’s a kid on Christmas day and just received his greatest wish.

“Today I am going to win. Today I am going to end this and today I am going to finish what I started all those years ago.”

The expression in his eye is different this time. It cuts me deep and chokes me to death. He has changed from the mad murdering bastard into an even more deranged version of himself and he turns to me with all the fury of hell in his eyes and spits, “It turns out that betraying me is a club many seek membership of. Do you remember our old friend Portia Symmons, my darling?” He turns to the coffin and growls, “She has taken me for a fool and sided with my enemies. She thinks she has the right to interfere in our lives, but we both know I am always ten steps ahead of the pack.”

The dread curls around my soul edging out the hope that has always lived inside me for an end to this madness as Massimo says with deep anger coating his words, “Today is the day I cleanse my world of all my enemies and you my darling Winter…” he looks at me with triumph, “Will have a front-row seat and watch everyone you ever cared about discover how powerful I really am. Today they lose everything and there is absolutely nothing they can do to prevent it from happening.”

CHAPTER2

ALESSANDRO

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