Page 232 of The Enslaved Duet

“Well then,” he said with a vague smile as his hands slid out of my hair and he patted my cheek, once more the docile older gentleman. “Maybe the day you die is closer at hand than you thought.”

Noel straightened and turned on his heel to walk back across the expanse of the room. Rodger stayed, his foot tapping out an erratic rhythm as he looked lustily down at me. Then he too crouched in the manner of his brother and father, so close I could smell the sweet cotton candy scent of his breath on my face. It was a deeply disturbing reminder of his youth contrasted to the ancient evil that had been passed down from his Davenport ancestors and transplanted in his eyes.

“If you fail,” he told me eagerly, his big eyes grey and unfeeling as concrete burying me alive. “He said I get to kill you myself and bury you in the maze with the others.”

He stood quickly, made to run after his father, and then quickly delivered a hard, swift kick to my exposed face that caught me right in the mouth. My lip split open like an overripe fruit, weeping so much blood I thought for a moment he had dislodged my tooth. I didn’t cry out with the pain, but my body contracted tighter as if taking up less space might minimize the hurt.

Rodger laughed as he looked down at me. I tried to evade his foot as it went for my face again, but I was caught up in the chains and dazed from the first blow. He planted his loafer on my face and ground it into my wet, broken mouth with another little chuckle of glee before he finally turned away.

I licked at the blood as it trickled out of my mouth onto the black marble tile and watched as his bloody footsquicked against the floor on his way out the door.

With a groan to release the tension of pain in my body, I rolled to my back and stared up at the mural of Hades bursting through the crust of the earth in his black chariot led by undead horses to spirit away the beautiful spring goddess Persephone.

I tried to breathe through the pain in my gut and jaw as I sought solace in my favourite myth. Many scholars believed that Hades had abducted Persephone against her will and that of her mother, and that, if any deals had indeed been struck, it was between Hades and Persephone’s estranged father, Zeus.

Why wouldn’t Zeus believe Hades was an excellent choice of husband? He was the ruler of one of the three kingdoms, the eldest child of Rhea and Cronus, and a war hero.

How was he to know what happened in the shadowy moors of the Underworld, where demons roamed and the undead toiled away their eternities?

No matter how the abduction happened, I chose to believe the unpopular view that Persephone had been stolen away against her will, but it was she who had decided to eat the pomegranate seeds to ensure she would have to return to the Underworld for six months of the year. After years of manipulation, she had taken her own destiny into her hands and decided to have the best of both worlds in order to satisfy the duality in her soul.

Of course, the whole thing was a creation myth to explain away the seasons, but it was also an allegory for my life in a way I never would have thought it could be.

Salvatore had manipulated me into being sold into slavery.

Alexander had wrenched me from my world as I knew it into the dark domain he’d been forced to reign in since birth.

Yet I didn’t blame either of them for their actions.

They were only trying to survive the lot life had given them.

And in the end, their actions had led me to a wealth of opportunities I might not otherwise have known.

I found the love of a good father, one with the defective morals of a Made Man, but with a wealth of loyalty and love for his family.

I’d discovered how utterly devastating true love could be, how it razed your soul to the ground and from the ashes, you were reborn as a new version of yourself, one with a heart made up from pieces of someone else.

Mostly, I’d learned to be the kind of woman I could be proud of; totally resilient, completely unafraid in the face of her enemies, and wholly willing to offer her heart despite the scars accumulated on it.

Tears pooled at the corners of my eyes, blurring my view of the vibrant ceiling painting. I closed my eyes as the wet raced down my cheeks. I didn’t need to look at the mural to see it in my mind. It had brought me peace the first time I’d been prisoner here, and it brought me a measure of consolation now.

A sob bubbled up my throat, wet and full of muck.

I released it into the air and curled onto my side in the fetal position as I finally allowed myself to release the truth.

The explosion that had rocked Osteria Lombardi had most definitely killed some of my loved ones. There was no way everyone could have survived unscathed.

I thought of Sebastian and Mama, of Giselle and Sinclair newly married and so in love, of Elena so bitter and so in need of a new start.

They couldn’t be dead.

Not my family.

Not Dante with his roguish grin and tender smile crafted just for me.

Not Salvatore so soon after I’d found him and began to love him.

It couldn’t be possible, yet I knew in my bones it was.