Page 231 of The Enslaved Duet

My mouth was cotton coated as I opened it in an attempt to gulp in more of the cold, damp air of wherever the hell I’d woken up in. The ground was a frozen, unforgiving bite beneath my hip and leaden legs, but as I traced my quaking fingers along the grooves in the tile, I recognized it for what it was.

The black and white checkered tiles shot through with gold that composed the floor of Pearl Hall’s ballroom.

My stomach tossed violently up my throat, and before I could stem the flow, I was leaning over painfully to throw up whatever poison was left in my system. The acrid scent filled my nose and made my stomach convulse until every ounce of liquid was wrung from my body.

I fell to the floor beside the mess, quaking and sweating as I curled in on my hollow core.

There was no doubt in my mind that Noel had dragged me back to this place to remake the hell of my initiation into the games of the Order. I knew cameras were placed throughout the ballroom, trained on me twenty-four hours of the day, watching me for any weakness they could possibly exploit.

They.

It seemed the spare had taken over as Noel’s heir and was being probably groomed to take his place as Satan’s living incarnate.

As if conjured by my thoughts like the devil himself, the door opened with an insidious hiss over the polished marble floors and the clack of expensive shoes echoed throughout the cavernous hall.

I didn’t raise my head when the two pairs of shoes came to a standstill just inside my view. They were polished black leather loafers, the same style, but one pair smaller than the other.

Twin horrors.

Before I could even blink, one shoe lifted backward and then slammed into my stomach.

Pain erupted like an overripe fruit bursting in my middle, and I choked on my scream as I curled further into myself.

“She’s not so pretty anymore, is she, Father?” Rodger asked as he lifted his foot again and aimed it at my chest.

“Settle, boy, we don’t want her to lose consciousness before she understands just what is happening here, do we?”

“No, Father,” he agreed with quiet, sinister delight.

He couldn’t wait for what was to come.

He was only a boy, barely on the cusp of manhood, yet the joy that should have been reserved for Christmas or his first co-ed dance was displaced. I had no doubt he would take more pleasure in whipping me than he ever would from what Santa might bring.

It hurt my heart to realize that you were never too young to be a bad human.

Noel stepped forward into a crouch the very same way Alexander had the first time he’d visited me in the ballroom nearly five years ago. I watched him pinch his slacks to accommodate the muscles in his thighs, the way he flicked a piece of lint off the flannel and onto my leg. He had a broad, handsome face with a strong square jaw and thick hair he’d given to all three of his sons.

His was not a face of evil. He was handsome, charm etched into the lines beside his eyes that hinted at a life filled with smiles.

It was all such an elaborate lie.

I knew he must have studied the tapes of my time being broken in the ballroom, and this re-enactment was all part of his master plan.

And at every stage of that plan, he’d intended to administer the maximum amount of pain on Alexander and on me.

I collected the thick, metallic bile on my tongue and raised my head enough to look him squarely in the eye while I spat into his face.

The wet clot landed on his cheek and slid slowly to the crease of his mouth. I watched with acid in my gut as he merely parted his lips and licked the sludge away with his tongue.

A second later, he had lunged forward, his hands locked in my hair and twisted at such painful angles, I cried out helplessly in pain.

“Disrespect me again and I’ll let Rodger skin you alive and then nurse you back to health only to do it all. Over. Again.”

I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t look away, but he read my capitulation at the backs of my eyes.

“Now, I want to welcome you to your new home. At the moment, it consists of these four walls. This ballroom is all you will know until you earn the right to more.” A wide, toothy smile crossed his face as he recited the same lines Alexander had. His hands wrenched harder in my hair like a sticky light switch flipping on my stream of tears. He licked one and then bit into my cheek before pulling back to finish his speech. “You know, Ruthie, how to earn the right for more because this is a game you’ve played before. Only this time,Iwill break you, and in the end, the only thing you will know is the sound of the wordMasteron your lips as you beg me to let you tend to my needs.”

“You can keep me chained in here until the day I die, and I willnevercall you by that epitaph,” I vowed.