Page 202 of The Enslaved Duet

“We both know that’s not true.”

I swallowed hard at the quiet pride in Xan’s voice. He had missed me too, and that small thought opened a wealth of treasure in my chest. It felt monumental that he should have missed me all that time just as intolerably as I’d missed him.

“You know,” he continued conversationally, “I knew you’d convinced her to move to America years ago. I had these vivid dreams about finding you and ripping you apart with my bare hands…the only reason I didn’t was because my sources told me how much she relied on you, how much you had done and continued to do for her.”

There was another vibrating pause.

“Considering that and the fact that I now know for certain Salvatore did not murder Mum, I’m still loathe to do so, but I must say…thank you.” I watched Xan tip his glass to his lips and drain the liquid. “Thank you for taking care of her when I couldn’t. For keeping her living as much as you could when I wasn’t there to take care of her.”

Dante seemed struck dumb by Xan’s words, even more so than I was mouth agape crouching at the door to my bedroom. He was suspended in the amber of his brother’s unusual gratitude, his big body lax but utterly still, his eyes glazed as his mind worked furiously behind them.

Finally, he reanimated, and he did so to look at Xan from under lowered lids and nod once, firmly, slowly. “I didn’t do it for you, and I would do it again, forever. The thanks, though…it’s appreciated.”

Alexander nodded once in return, noble in his graciousness.

I loved him so vividly at that moment that even the colours in the dark seemed brighter than ever before.

“You love her,” he said, and it was not quite a question, but still, Dante hesitated and then responded.

“I do. Not exactly the way you worry about. Though I have to say, it’s hard to look at a woman like Cosima and not covet her, let aloneknowa woman like her so filled with love and light despite her dark past and not want to fight every day to be worthy of some significant part in her life.”

I fell back to my bottom on the ground, rocked by his words.

“I told her once,” my husband said softly with a tiny smile tucked into the crease of his left cheek. “For the first time in my life, she made me feel like a hero, instead of a villain. She does that to people, makes them feel ten feet taller.”

“You love her,” Dante said, the words lined with bitterness. “You don’t deserve her, but seeing as she obviously loves you back, I guess I’ll have to live with it.”

“I’m not capable of love,” Xan admitted with a one-shouldered shrug as if it didn’t bother him. “But if I was…”

Dante snorted, the burst of sound breaking the tension between them. He walked forward to join his brother at the island and poured some whiskey into the second empty glass for himself before taking a seat. “Not sure what you know about love, brother, but that energy between you and your wife? That’s about the definition of it.”

They were both quiet, looking down at their glasses before Xan’s face cracked at the edges with condescending mirth. “Dante, the armchair phycologist.”

I watched in awe and humbleness as the two great men laughed softly, gruffly together at my kitchen table. What I had witnessed wasn’t just a beautiful conversation about two men loving me, but a détente between brothers who never should have been at war in the first place.

And that made me smile as I picked myself off the floor and went back to bed.

Cosima

The auction was held on Christmas Eve—of all places—at a bridal warehouse owned by one of the Order members out on the farthest edge of Queens. The middle of the space had been cleared, but the elegantly clad gentlemen sipping glasses filled with hundreds of dollars’ worth of scotch and champagne were hedged in on all sides by rows of virginal white garments that signified a woman’s hope, love, and happiness.

The contrast was not lost on me. In fact, I couldn’t swallow the bile as quickly as it rose in my throat, and I had to duck between a chiffon gown and a classy silk sheath to purge my belly of acid before I could continue through the rows to the main event.

There were half a dozen platforms in the middle of the room, placed in front of a wall of mirrors so that the slaves for sale could be demonstrated from all angles to the gentlemen’s best advantage.

The auction hadn’t commenced yet, but I could see Sherwood, who had come all the way from England, speaking with an elderly man too old to walk unassisted let alone fuck a poor slave, beside a podium placed in the center of it all. Simon and Agatha had found out that Sherwood, still the head of the council, had come to perform a ceremony to transfer power from the American head of the organization—most likely the decrepit man he now spoke to—to his successor.

I was happy about this, if you can call the feeling of dark pleasure curling through my gut happiness. I hadn’t confronted Sherwood yet on my crusade to right the wrongs done to me by the Order, and I wanted that chance before we snuffed them out for good. I wasn’t exactly sure when the moment had happened, the switch had flipped, and I’d gone from suffering victim of my circumstances to righteous avenger. However, it had happened I was grateful for it. There was still a balance to maintain. I didn’t want revenge to make me manic and cruel or victimization to make me weak and bitter, but it was an easier line to find now that I knew both could be had. Living four years in the perpetual gloom of my past, fighting tooth and nail to live an ordinary life under that strain had been no life at all.

Now, standing amid men who had always been predators, knowing that they were currently lambs awaiting slaughter, I felt oddly filled with peace.

The end was near.

Alexander hadn’t wanted me to go at first. There was no real need for me to be there when Xan would be the one bugged with audio/visual to document the entire exchange.

But one look at the resolve hardening my expression like some grotesque Venetian mask had changed his mind immediately. If anyone knew the power of vengeance, it was my husband.

There were women allowed in the American chapter of the Order of Dionysus, but only a few milled about the warehouse, dressed to impress, haughtier than the men as if it proved their worthiness to be there. In the culture of the Order, I suppose it did.