Page 239 of The Enslaved Duet

Noel grinned as he scraped the knife’s point over my lace cover nipple, back and forth like an out of sync metronome. “I have a new slave who does wonders with her whore mouth. Sleep is the only option after I’ve finished with her.”

“You’re repugnant,” I said and spat on his face.

He froze as the coagulated saliva adhered to his skin, then slowly crept down his cheek, leaving a viscous trail. I was close enough, perched on his lap like that, to see how his grey eyes so much darker than Xan’s silver—like mottled mercury or old led, something metallic and lifeless—went hard with displeasure.

“Rodger,” he called out in a pleasant voice completely at odds with the press of the knife to my chest and the toxic heat in his gaze. “Bring your mother forward, will you?”

Noel settled more comfortably in his chair, readjusting me so I sat perched on the rigid edge of his erection, the knife then pressed to my throat so hard, I felt blood form in a crescent moon. Together we watched as Rodger emerged from the shadows with Mrs. White in his hold. At first, it seemed familial, his growing frame just an inch taller than hers, a lanky arm wrapped around her middle, another on her shoulder under her hair like a little boy hiding behind his mummy.

It wasn’t until the low light of the candles cast yellow lamination over something with a dull sheen in the hand resting on her shoulder that I realized Rodger held a gun pressed to his mother’s temple.

Mrs. White’s pale, trembling face was ugly and tragic, the same urine yellow of Napoli, filled with the same inescapable dread. I read what she wrote in her eyes as we locked gazes, the resignation and the terror.

She’d known all along in some dark, irrevocable place in her soul that her own tool of survival would be the death of her.

“I told you I would kill every single servant in this house if you didn’t mind me,” Noel prompted me. “It seems only fitting to begin in this manner.”

“Noel,” I said slowly, surprised by the level of horror I felt. “Don’t do this.”

“Kill Mary?” he asked, his face creased with mild, polite surprise as if I had offended him, but he was too gentlemanly to care. “Why, I don’t intend to.”

My spine softened slightly with relief. I didn’t want her to die like that. No one deserved to be killed by their son and their husband, by the very people who should have loved her most. It echoed too profoundly in my heart.

At least I could die knowing the two people who had loved me most had died loving me, died after saving me.

“Rodger would do the deed, wouldn’t you, son?” he asked conversationally.

A shiver ripped out my spine.

Mrs. White whimpered, but Rodger only adjusted his hold, boyish face obscured partially by shadows, but the wedge of his smile even more white in the dark.

“Happily,” he responded.

“Unfortunately, that’s not quite what we have planned,” Noel said, as he adjusted and reached beneath his chair to produce another handgun, this one antique and so ornate it didn’t seem functional.

“Do you know how to use one of these, dear Ruthie?” he asked.

I stared back and forth between the weapon and the man with growing horror. “No.”

“Little filthy liar,” he crowed happily. “You killed Giuseppe di Carlo with a gun. Oh? You thought I didn’t know. I told you knowledge is power, Ruthie, and I have both in spades. Now, get up like a good girl and play this game for Rodger and me.”

My entire body shook as Noel helped me to my feet, and I gagged as he pressed the cold, heavy weight of the gun into my hand. My stomach ached with sharp agony. My vision swam as Noel stepped to my side and dug the point of his knife into my side over a kidney. Rodger handed his mother a small gun and stepped to the side with the barrel of his weapon still at her temple.

We were pawns on the board of a father and son chess game. Noel wanted to teach Rodger what it was to sacrifice his queen.

“What does he get by doing this?” I asked softly, already knowing the answer.

“Why, my dear,” Noel purred into my ear. “He getsyou.”

I swallowed around my heart where it sat lodged painfully in my throat and tried to steady my hands as they clasped over the handle of the gun.

“What’s the game exactly?”

“You have the opportunity to kill Mary right now with no opposition,” Noel explained, his voice almost wispy with delight, a man high on something less tangible than a drug. Something made of pure, distilled evil.

“What if I don’t shoot her?” I asked.

Hetsked. “Then your poor soft heart will be the death of you, as it is the death of every weak being, because then Mary will killyouto save her own life, won’t you, Mary?”