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Twenty-Seven

Maddie

Two weeks later.

It’s bright and sunny outside as we slide into July.

Claude just made me breakfast in the kitchen.

Aidan got up much earlier and ate in the formal dining room.

He had a meeting with a business associate.

It’s so hot today that I’m not willing to wear shoes even in the house.

The cold kitchen floor is soothing under my feet, and I consider going out to the garden maze to read.

I’m almost through the entire Jane Austen catalog with only Emma remaining.

I leave my plate in the sink and have just left the kitchen when I hear a crash in the formal dining room.

I should ignore it. It’s not my business.

I’ve spent the last three weeks since the wedding carefully navigating around who and what Aidan is.

Trying not to think about it. I know he’s killed people—or so he says.

But even if he hasn’t directly killed them by his own hands, he’s had them killed. And isn’t that the same thing?

I’ve allowed him to charm me and woo me—to make me forget. I’ve looked at who he is with a soft focus lens. No sharp angles or edges.

He’s an enigma I don’t understand. I should hate him. No self-respecting woman just falls into the arms of the man who has terrorized her since they were children. I don’t want him to win, but when he loses, don’t I also lose? My body wants him even if my mind sometimes puts up a weak fight.

Impossibly I’m still technically a virgin.

I thought our wedding night was just a stay of execution, and that surely the next day he would deflower me and take what he believes to be his.

Or maybe when he returned from “business”.

But the past two weeks he’s continued to only tease me.

His mouth on my pussy has been a constant.

Fingers. Toys. In nearly every room of the house and quite a few places outside.

He never demands anything from me. Not once has he pushed me to my knees to make me suck his cock. He’s treated me… reverently, as though he doesn’t have the power to take what he wants without my order. And now it’s getting weird. He told me he’d make me beg for it, but I didn’t believe him.

Maybe I should have.

I hear the shatter of glass, and even though every instinct in my body says to just keep on walking, the curious part of me with no self-preservation instinct opens the door to the dining room.

“I control the air you breathe,” Aidan says, cold and dark. But he isn’t speaking to me.

It takes me a moment to fully comprehend the scene in front of me.

There’s a man in a suit on his back on the long cleared-off dining room table.

Aidan’s hand is around his throat as he glares menacingly down at him.

Bodyguards stand like sentries lined against the wall, making no sound, staring straight ahead as if they have no idea what’s going on here or simply don’t care.

Aidan looks up, and his wild eyes lock on mine.

And now I know without any doubt. Yes, he did kill those men in the alley. I’ve denied it as long as I could, but the mask has come off. He never lied about what he was. He told me from the beginning. I just didn’t want to hear it. I was too afraid of what it might mean for me.

The past few weeks haven’t helped me interface with reality any better. Aidan swept me up in his Beauty and the Beast montage, seducing me away from my common sense and self-preservation instincts.

But now I can see it. Death may very well be his closest friend and ally. They are at the very least poker buddies.

I’m struck in this moment by just how much of his darkness he’s chosen not to aim at me. How much of it he’s actively hidden from me. And I can’t decide if it’s been a mercy or cruelty.

Finally I listen to my instincts, turn, and run. I hear Aidan’s roar behind me. “Bring her back here!”

Yes, the polite mask of civility is definitely gone.

I run out the back door and flee into the gardens.

The grass is cool under my bare feet as I run.

I know I can’t get off this sprawling gated estate, not now.

I always have to have an escort when I leave the property, guards and a driver, and I know that won’t be allowed today, maybe not ever again.

I’ve seen too much.

Is he going to keep me locked in the house? Is he going to kill me now that I’m a witness? Now that I’ve seen something directly and have more than just hints of his darkness with some well-placed tattoos?

The guards behind me are communicating with walking talkies.

The garden maze has a separate entrance and exit and is a great place to get lost and hide in, but before I can reach it, a large guard steps out from behind a tall hedge, blocking my path.

He drags me, kicking and screaming, back to the house.

I bite him. He releases me from the shock of it, and I break out in a run again, but another two guards are waiting for me.

When they get me back to the dining room, one of them pushes me into the chair at the end of the table. I’m now only inches from the man Aidan has pinned down. I have Aidan’s full attention now, and I have never wanted it less.

“Maddie, don’t you know the story about what killed the cat?”

I swallow hard.

I actually don’t know what killed the cat. The saying is that it was curiosity, but curiosity about what?

Maybe I am the living version of this story since I’m still asking that question when that’s the entire lesson.

“Why are you here?” he asks, his gaze still locked on mine.

There is this very stupid part of me that wants to be a smartass right now and say something like Because you kidnapped me . But I don’t. Something in his energy is far different than the smooth charming facade he’s shown me these past few weeks—the facade I was foolishly starting to buy into.

“I… I heard a noise. S-something broke.” It’s me. I’m the thing that broke. Or maybe I’m the thing that’s breaking now. My gaze drifts to the shattered breakfast china on the floor.

He looks back down at the man on the table.

“Please…” the man says, struggling. “It was just a misunderstanding. I swear I’ll never cross you again.

Vito got it all wrong. I swear to you, on my mother’s grave, I’m loyal.

I would never break the omerta . You know that.

I worked for your uncle Martin, you know me.

Nobody that wasn’t supposed to got hurt. ”

The words come out of him in a rush as soon as Aidan removes his hand from the man’s throat. Aidan is more fixated on me than his captive’s words, but I can’t stop thinking about Aidan’s words.

I control the air you breathe.

Aidan’s eyes are still locked on mine. And we’re in that alley all over again, before I knew who he was, when I thought he was just another dangerous stranger. Maybe I was right the first time. Who is this man I married? He’s still a complete and utter stranger.

“Kid! Please! You know me!” the man gasps out from beneath him.

Aidan’s hand is once again on the man’s throat as he takes his gaze from me and glares down at him.

His voice is so cold I could swear icicles are forming on the fireplace mantle behind him. “Kid? You dare disrespect me when I hold your life in my hands? I am Mr. Stryker to you.”

Aidan pulls a knife from his pocket and unsheathes the blade.

The man’s eyes widen. Im sure mine do too because I know this knife.

It’s the knife I tried to bring myself to kill Aidan with on our wedding night.

It’s the knife whose handle brought me to my first orgasm at his hand.

Pleasure and pain. Life and death. Two sides of the same coin.

“Mr. Stryker! Mr. Stryker! Please, we can work something out!”

It happens so fast. Aidan pulls his hand away from the man’s throat and slits his carotid artery right in front of me.

I would run again except that the bodyguard who pushed me into the chair is still standing behind me.

His hands press down on my shoulders, reminding me of his presence and his orders.

I flinch and look away when the man’s blood splatters on my face.

“Don’t look away, Maddie. This is what I am! This is the beast you’re allowing yourself to start to love. Do you like what you see?”

If I weren’t so scared, I’d be angry. The nerve of him! He’s the one who was busy wooing and shielding me from all this and wrapping everything up in luxury and gifts and charm. If I lied to myself about him, he’s the one who set the stage to make that so easy.

I feel the tears moving down my cheeks, but I do look at him. He’s covered in blood as well. The man is dead. It was quick, so quick. The blood continues to pour out of him, spilling onto the table and dripping down to stain the hardwood floor.

“I don’t love you,” I practically snarl.

How could I ever love a monster like this?

But these words ring hollow. I may be too ruined, too far gone to ever walk back the things I was starting to feel for this man.

Against my own judgment, against our history, against even our present.

He is not a good man, and I’ve known it from the beginning.

His hard gaze refuses to allow mine to drift from him again.

“Don’t you?”

“I hate you!” It’s probably an unwise thing to say, but I cannot let myself love this monster, and I find myself grateful that he’s pulled away the illusion finally.

“You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.”

He climbs up off the man he just killed, wipes the blade down with a cloth breakfast napkin, and sheathes and holsters it.

“Take care of this,” he says with the imperial command of a king. He’s still looking at me, but he’s speaking to his guards. Aidan wipes his hands on the napkin before dropping it on the table. He straightens his suit.

The guards spring into action and carry the body out.