The door clanged shut at my back. I startled at the sound and whipped around. Two more hooded black figures in white masks stood on each side of the door, blocking my exit. My adrenaline spiked. I scrambled back, only to realize I was on some kind of step.
“Natalie.” Luc’s mother hissed.
A shiver racked my body as I looked back at Luc’s mother. She was already three steps below me, near the chairs and the railing that overlooked I didn’t know what.
“This way.” She motioned me forward with a curt wave of her hand. “Stop dawdling.”
My pulse thundered in my ears. Slowly, I stepped forward. Sounds echoed from below that railing. Chants. Chains rattling. And a low moan I vaguely recognized.
My feet drew to a stop on the bottom step. The sounds increased in intensity. My arms began to shake as I stood there, not wanting to see what was beyond that railing. Wrapping them around my waist, I held on and slowly rocked from side to side, telling myself everything was going to be okay. That she was just trying to scare me. Luc wasn’t down there. They wouldn’t hurt him.
Cold fingers wrapped around my wrist, and Luc’s mother jerked me forward, right to the edge of the railing.
“I told you Luciano was waiting, dear girl. See for yourself.”
I gasped at the tight grip she had on my wrist, but when I saw into the room below, my eyes flew wide and the blood drained from my face.
It was some kind of ballroom, circular, with blood-red carpeting and enormous columns that rose to the three-story ceiling. Hooded black figures in white masks formed a giant circle in the middle of the space, but that wasn’t what held my attention. That wasn’t what sent bile sliding up my throat. What horrified me, what made me gag, was recognizing my Luc, chained to some kind of altar in the middle of the vast space, naked and clearly drugged, surrounded by at least ten women in nothing but elaborate feathered masks and sky-high stilettos, all touching and tormenting his bare flesh with their hands.
I jerked back from the hand holding me to the railing. “No. What...? How can you—”
“Oh, that’s no way to treat your hosts.”
Luc’s mother was stronger than she looked. She yanked my hand back to the railing. Before I could try to break free, a large figure moved up on my other side, trapping me between the two of them. A big hand closed around my other wrist—a male hand—and slapped my palm against the railing. Gasping, I looked up only to realize it was Antonio Salvatici, Luc’s father.
“Took you long enough,” he snapped.
“She was having trouble waking from the sedative,” Luc’s mother answered.
Luc’s father’s gray eyes were as cold as I’d ever seen them. He glared down at me, then huffed and looked back at what was happening below. When he nodded, I shot a look down as well. A figure in a robe and white mask moved around the naked women, stopped near toward Luc’s head, and leaned down to whispered something in his ear.
Luc’s eyes widened. He looked up my way. Then a spotlight flashed in my face, blinding me. I slammed my eyes shut and tried to back away from the glare, but Luc’s parents had death grips on my wrists, and there was nowhere for me to go.
Grunts echoed from below, followed by the rattling of chains. “No!” Luc said loudly. “Get her out of here. That wasn’t what we agreed to!”
I didn’t know what was happening. All I knew was that he was in pain and didn’t want whatever they were doing to him. “Let me go. I pulled back on the hands holding me, desperate to get to Luc, to help him. “Let me—”
Something hard and sharp pressed against my inner wrist, sending pain spiraling to my brain. My eyes shot open, and I swallowed a scream.
“Now, now.” Luc’s mother eased the pressure of her nail on my vein. “You have to watch, my dear. That’s your job as the good little wife. Look down there, Natalie. See what’s happening to Luciano all because of you.”
Her free hand closed around the back of my neck and squeezed hard, sending pain up my scalp as she angled my face toward the twisted gathering below. I blinked rapidly only to realize the women were now using their tongues and hands on Luc, stimulating every part of his bare flesh. My heart stuttered as I focused on his face. His eyes were tightly shut. Every muscle in his body was tense and struggling against the chains. And the agony in his features...
“You can’t do this to him,” I shrieked, struggling harder against the hands holding my wrists, but still couldn’t break free. “Let him go. Let him go right now.”
“Do you know what that is, Natalie?” Luc’s mother hissed in my ear, ignoring my pleas. “That is a man who does not respect our ancient traditions. That should be you down there, surrounded by the Knights of this House, cleansing you of your peasant bloodline. But instead, it is my son. My selfless son who volunteered to take your place in this ritual. I suppose one could call that true love. I see it as weakness, don’t you, Antonio?”
Luc’s father only grunted at my side, never once looking away from what those women were doing to his son.
His mother clucked her tongue and looked back down at the scene. “Of course, perhaps Luciano wanted this all along. He is a man, after all. And they do have...needs. I wonder how many times he will climax during the ritual. I’m sure you can only make him climax once. These girls are highly trained, however. And much more talented than you.”
My vision blurred. The women below were becoming more aggressive. I struggled harder, was desperate to break free, to rescue him. Luc fought against the chains and tipped his face as far from me as he could. But when he groaned, when I recognized the sound—a mixture of pain and humiliation and a sensation he couldn’t escape—my heart seized, and a primal scream grew inside me, one I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold back much longer.
My head grew light. I couldn’t breathe. Felt as if I were in some kind of horror movie as I watched a blonde lift her head from whatever she was doing to Luc, climb up on the altar, and straddled his waist.
I gasped when I realized what was about to happed, and a new sense of horror tightened my lungs.
“Oh God. Stop. Stop this,” I shrieked, fighting harder. “Please. Stop this!”
The room went absolutely silent as the woman lowered herself to his lap. Luc bit his lip and went still as stone. But his eyes were tightly shut, his face turned as far from me as he could turn it. And his straining features, the torment on his face... I knew this wasn’t what he wanted. It wasn’t what he’d agreed to. It wasn’t pleasurable for him in any way.
“The only person who can stop this is you,” Luc’s father said in a low voice at my side.
The blonde sighed and began to move.
Sickness surged up my throat, and I looked away, struggling not to pass out. “I’ll do it. whatever you want. Just...stop this insanity. Please.”
“What we want,” Luc’s mother said in a calm voice at my other side, “is for Luciano to take his rightful place with this family and this House, willingly and without protest.”
My stomach pitched all over again. There was no way that would happen. Luc hated his family. He didn’t want to be a part of this House. And after this...
“You’re the only one he listens to,” Luc’s father said in that same lifeless, low voice on my other side. “Agree to bring Luciano back to the family, and these kittens will not fuck him to the end of the ritual.”
My head spun. My heart pounded hard. The woman moaned and grunted, being as vocal as she could, jostling Luc, rattling his chains. Tears burned my eyes. Misery seared my chest. I swallowed hard to keep from vomiting.
“What will it be?” Luc’s father snapped.
The woman began shrieking in Italian. Words I didn’t even want to try to translate.
I dropped my head, shaking through sobs I couldn’t control. Luc would hate me forever if I made any kind of deal with his sick parents to bring him back to this disgusting family.
“They pumped him full of erectile dysfunction drugs,” his mother whispered in my ear. “A
nd GHB to enhance his arousal. He can go all night like this. I wonder how many of those beta slaves are fertile?”
Oh God, no… “I’ll do it,” I gasped. A new wave of nausea roles through me. “I-I’ll bring him back to the family. Just stop this. Stop raping him. He’s your son, for God’s sake.”
A victorious look passed over Luc’s mother’s face as she glanced past me to her husband. Luc’s father simply nodded, clenched his jaw, then motioned to someone below.
I held my breath and looked back down. Another black-draped figure moved around the altar and tapped the woman’s shoulder. She slowed her gyrating long enough to angle toward the figure. Then she nodded, leaned forward, and pressed her mouth against Luc’s as she picked up her pace.
My vision turned red, and that scream inside me burst free. “You bastard! You said you’d stop!” I jerked back even harder on the hands holding me. “You said it would be over!”
Luc’s father’s grip around my wrist squeezed so hard, I grunted and gasped as pain radiated up my arm and slammed into me. But it was his icy words in my ear that brought my fight to a standstill.
“You do not say when, worthless female. I say when. I am the Grand Duke, not you.”
The woman below started screaming, and with her, I heard Luc’s strained grunt as he fought what she was doing to him.
“That kitten is going to fuck him to his release so he remembers his place in this House,” his father sneered down at me. “And when she is finished, the ritual will come to an end. Unless you’d like to challenge me again. In which case, I’ll let each kitten in that room fuck him into delirium, as many times as she wants.” His cold, lifeless eyes narrowed to black dots of nothing. “What will it be, little wife? His fate is in your hands.”
Pure hatred whipped through me. But not even that hate was enough to make me defy this man. He was too powerful. And I...I just wanted this to be over.
The words felt like ashes in my mouth, but somehow I managed to say, “Just end it. No more.”
“Watch her finish him so you remember your place as well,” he said in that malevolent voice.
My stomach pitched, but I knew not to defy him any longer. Swallowing back the bile, I turned back to the ritual below, only the best I could manage to do was stare at the red carpet beneath the stone altar as my vision wavered and sounds echoed in the room.
“Believe in us no matter what happens.” Luc’s words from only hours ago, when he’d called to tell me they weren’t letting him come home to me just yet, echoed in my head, sending a hot rush of tears right back to my eyes, blurring my vision all over again. “I love you. I will always love only you. Promise me you won’t forget that.”
He’d known. My breath caught on a sob as I tried not to look at what was happening on that altar. He’d known what they were going to do to him, and he’d been desperate to make sure I knew how much he loved me.
Tears rushed down my face. None of this changed how I felt. I would always believe in us. “I won’t forget,” I whispered, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. “And I love you too. Always.”
Silence fell over the room. The woman sighed, and through blurry vision, I realized she was climbing off him, moving back to the edge of the inner circle where all the other females were now standing, waiting their turns.
I lifted my gaze to Luc, lying still on the rock slab, his face still tipped as far away from me as possible, his naked body glistening with sweat. He wasn’t moving, was no longer struggling against the chains holding him down. But his quick and shallow breaths, the way the muscles in his neck twitched told me he was still in agony, fighting not to let anyone see.
Things happened so fast, I barely had time to process. One second, Luc was lying on that slab. The next, several hooded black figures in those hideous masks were unchaining him, hauling him off the altar, and dragging his limp and naked body toward me.
My pulse shot up. Two long chains dropped from the ceiling not more than twenty feet in front of me. The hooded figures attached Luc’s arms to the chains, and he was jerked upright, his feet barely touching the ground.
“What’s happening?” The air caught in my throat. “What are they dong to him now?”
Luc didn’t look up at me. He hung his head and shook. Behind him, a figure draped in red, wearing a gold mask, stepping out of the shadows.
Horror seized my chest. I turned wide eyes toward Luc’s father. “You said it was over. What are they doing?”
“The cleansing ritual is over,” Luc’s father said in a cold voice, never once looking at me. “This has nothing to with your marriage. This is his punishment for defying his House.”
He nodded down toward the figure in red. The man pulled a large leather whip with multiple tails tipped with barbed ends from his cape and flung it outward with a crack.
“No.” Holy God. It looked like some kind of medieval torture weapon. A scourge, I realized, struggling harder than I ever had, understanding dawning. “You can’t do this?”
“Thirteen lashes,” Luc’s father called out loudly beside me. “One lash administered by each of the thirteen Knights, starting with the Grande Cavaliere. Begin.”
Chants filled the room. Twelve more hooded figures moved forward. The rest formed a semicircle around Luc. The figure in red drew his arm back and then forward, and a crack that sounded like cannon fire exploded through the air.
“No!” I screamed.
Luc’s whole body jerked. The snap of the flogger striking his bare flesh was drowned out only by Luc’s grunt as he tried to hold back a scream.
“You made an agreement with us,” Luc’s father said in that stone-cold voice as the Grande Cavaliere handed the weapon to a figure in black and stepped away. “You are now bound to that agreement.”
The leather slashed through Luc’s skin, echoing with a deafening clap over the chants. I winced with every blow, hot tears flooding my eyes as I watched Luc jerk and tremble with a pain I couldn’t even imagine.
“There are consequences to betraying us,” Luc’s father went on.
I knew there were. But I also knew, because of what Luc had done for me here tonight, that I was safe. The Entente operated within a very specific set of rules. Ancient, sacred rules I found abhorrent, but which these sick fucks followed above everything else.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered, unable to look away from Luc through the blinding blur of tears, wanting him to know he wasn’t alone. “You can’t kill me. Not after this. Not after the agreement Luc made. We both know it.”
Another lash struck his back. I jumped at the crack of leather biting into bare flesh, at the tortured groan from Luc’s throat and the way he trembled in the chains. My stomach pitched when I spotted the blood sliding down his legs.
“Perhaps not,” his father said at my side. “But if you break our agreement, then by the laws of this House, there are plenty of ways we can punish you. If that happens, you’ll live, but what you see here now won’t even compare to what awaits you then. And trust me, little wife, we will make sure Luciano has a front-row seat for that show.”
Another whip echoed through the vast room, followed by the crack of the leather. I jolted at the sound, but slowly turned my gaze up to Luc’s father’s.
He was staring down at me. Like a lion hunting its prey. And in his icy eyes I saw truth and the promise of a brutal retribution should I defy him. One I knew would break Luc in a way this depraved ritual here today never could.
A hard, vicious hatred brewed deep in my heart. One I’d never known I could feel. One that solidified everything inside me. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to hurt these people. I was going to make this man pay for what they’d done to Luc.
And I would enjoy ever single moment of it regardless of what it meant for me.
Chapter Two
Natalie
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. I was still shaking from what I’d seen and heard. From the things they’d done to Luc. Fro
m how bloodied and broken he’d been when they’d finally released him from those chains.
As they’d been taking him down, they’d whisked me out of that balcony and rushed me back to my cell. I didn’t know if Luc was alive or dead. He’d been limp through the last few lashes, barely even moving. And every time I pictured all the blood staining the carpet beneath his feet...
Bile rushed up my throat, forcing me to stop my pacing in the cold cell and swallow hard. I’d changed back into my pajama bottoms and tank, partly because I’d hated that dress, partly because I’d already gotten sick all over it. I told myself to hold it together. I was no help to Luc in breakdown mode. I had to focus on him. Had to focus on finding him and helping him and making sure he was okay.
The heavy door pushed open and clanged hard against the cement wall. Jerking toward the sound, I stared wide-eyed at the red-draped figure wearing a gold mask as he moved into the room.
My breath caught. The figure didn’t speak, just stepped into the room and stopped three feet in front of the door as he stared at me, blocking my one chance for freedom.
A chill rushed down my spine. I knew who he was. Luc had told me the Grande Cavaliere—the leading advisor to his father—wore red at the rituals. He was the one I’d watched fuck that beta slave among the trees in Tuscany on my first trip to Italy. He was the one who’d overseen Luc’s lashing. He was the one, I remembered from my conversation with Luc in the South Pacific, who’d ordered the gang rape and murder of that girl Luc had tried to help escape twelve years before.
I swallowed hard. Luc had told me to stay away from the Grande Cavaliere, had said that he was evil. And as the man stared at me with those soulless eyes, I felt the truth of that in my bones. There was no light in his eyes. Unlike Luc’s father, who was cold but still human, this man was nothing but malevolence and hatred and darkness. The kind of darkness that blackens the souls of serial killers and terrorists and mass murderers.