Page 175 of Risks of Temptation

32

Malin

"I voted for you,"Gustave informs me.

My stomach twists. I grumble, "I don't want to know what conversations were going on about whatever poor woman they've been breaking in for that bastard's offspring."

"It's best you don't look," Gustave mumbles. "But there is no picture of the woman this time. Only a video from Evandro Torres. It must have been taken before he was killed. He wished the President's son a happy thirtieth birthday and claimed she is worth every penny his father spent on her. And he didn't send her to Louis's whorehouse to get broken in. He sent her to his and said she broke faster than other women."

Nothing should surprise me anymore. But my stomach pitches for this faceless, nameless woman and all who have ever stepped foot in any of these whorehouses.

"When is this over? I'm not sure how much more I can take. And ma belle..." I turn to the window. It's already dark. The city lights of D.C. twinkle all around us. The sidewalks below us are bustling with people going about their everyday lives.

Will I ever be able to give Emilia what she deserves instead of this cesspool we are in?

"You underestimate her," Gustave replies. "She can handle it. Better than you."

Anger flares through me. I spin toward him. "You don't think I know my wife better than you? And she shouldn't have to handle it."

Gustave holds his hands in the air. "I didn't say she should. But she will be the reason you survive the room tonight."

"What are you saying?"

Gustave crosses his arms. "You have memorized the bylaws. If you do not make her submit...if you don't enjoy every moment of it, the others will know you are a fraud. All eyes are still on you both. They have not stopped wanting her."

My chest tightens.

He continues. "She knows her role. She is okay with it. From what I have seen, she enjoys it. Let her. It will keep you both alive. Do not forget the President and Prime Minister will do anything to have her."

"I will never forget that," I growl.

"Then make the shift. You have weakened, my brother."

I want to tell him I haven't, but I can't seem to get my head in the game tonight. Ma belle's instructions to find a dark corner and throw our boundaries away plays over and over in my mind.

I should be grateful she can fall so far into it and enjoy herself and me, instead of hate every moment. But I worry about her. She morphs so easily.

Once this is over, and she isn't in this world anymore, will she still be happy with just me?

It's the question I've avoided but now can't get out of my head. She thrives on the danger. Other women never overcome the fear of it. Ma belle embraces it.

The other men see it. They want to re-break her to prove she is no different from the other women, and they are more powerful than her and me.

"You have been away from events too long," Gustave says as a fact. "It happened to me, too."

"When?"

Guilt enters his voice. "Shortly after Bernadette broke."

I turn back to the window and point to the street below. "I want ma belle and me to be like those people. Clueless to the horrors of the world."

"You will never be. Once evil exposes itself, you won't ever forget it. You already know this. Emilia understands this, too. I see it on her face."

Emilia's face as a little girl pops into my mind, intensifying the rage I feel.

Liquid hitting glass fills my ears. I turn. Gustave hands me a drink of scotch. "The boundaries you have created will not exist tonight. There is no getting around it. We are close to ending this. If we don't, everything you hate in the room will happen to more women at an exponential rate. It will become the norm." He pours himself a drink.

I take a mouthful, letting the alcohol burn my throat. This conversation is doing nothing to ease my nerves. "Where are we at with everything? I want this to end."