Something was about to happen; I could feel it. My mind kept going to worst-case scenarios.
Romero cleaned my wound and covered it with gauze before leading me from the room. We walked down to the lower level in silence.
I immediately spotted Arlen sitting at a long farmhouse table. She was still filthy and it looked like she had yet to fall asleep. A teeny trickle of guilt ciphered into my psyche. How had I forgotten her so fast?
Grimm and Cobra calmly stood on either side of her, as if they’d been instructed to do so. I licked my lips and shot a quick glance at Romero. Something just wasn’t right—not that it ever was.
Grimm slowly approached us, holding something in his hand. He passed it to Romero and then whispered something I couldn’t hear in his ear. Whatever he said had Romero’s gaze turning stony and his jaw clenching.
“What’s going on?”
“I think we need to discuss a few more things in detail.” His voice housed no emotion, giving away nothing. He’d had a swift change in demeanor in the span of ten seconds.
As he walked me towards the table, we bypassed a large circular sectional. Painted on the floor directly in front of it was an inverted pentacle. The five-pointed star had a single downward spoke, turning something once righteous wicked.
Before I could question what the deal was, I spotted the large skull of a ram with the same pentagram painted on its forehead in red, serving as a centerpiece.
Were they Satanists?
“Have a seat.” Romero pulled out a chair for me at the end of the table and I cautiously sat. Arlen was at the opposite end, staring at me with a warning in her cognac eyes and maybe…fear.
“You’ve been a busy girl, Calista.”
He stood behind my chair and laid my necklace on the table in front of me. I hadn’t even realized it was missing.
The black inverted cross starkly contrasted with the brown tabletop. I heard him move away but I didn’t turn to see what he was doing.
“You haven’t told me what you were doing in my woods yet, but we can get to that later. What I really want to know is how long you’ve been a fan.”
I stared down at each picture he slowly placed in front of me. Four detailed pictures of four mutilated bodies with a cross carved straight through their centers.
“Was that question too hard? Do you need a few minutes to come up with a reasonable explanation?”
“You have an excellent photographer.”
He knotted a hand in my hair and pulled my head back, forcing me to look up at him.
“Do not fuck with me, Cali. I am exactly the kind of person you don’t fuck with. You wanted my attention, and now you’ve got it. Why. Are. You. Here?” He pulled my hair a little more with each word, making pain ripple down my scalp. My eyes burned with unshed tears from how far he had the skin around them stretched back.
“How did you know I liked my hair pulled?”
There was laughter from the opposite end of the table. He didn’t find it nearly as amusing. He kicked the chair out from underneath me,
lifted me by the head, and slammed me down onto the table.
Strands of hair tore in his hold. When my jaw hit the wooden surface, I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood. His body covered mine, making sure I couldn’t go anywhere.
“Girls like you don’t wander around in the woods, and you sure as fuck don’t get dumped off. I’m going to ask you one last time. Why are you here? I know you didn’t do all of this just to get a sample fuck, though you wouldn’t be the first—definitely the craziest.”
What a cocky fuckin asshole.
I tried to knee him in the balls but I couldn’t lift my leg high enough. “You haven’t ever met a girl like me, cause if you had you wouldn’t have just made that dumbass statement. I only wanted your help!”
“That is definitely a new answer,” Cobra commented from the other end of the table.
“It’s an honest answer,” I growled.
“You did all that in hopes that I’d help you because I’m a good guy?” Romero sneered.
“No. I thought you’d help me because it’s fucking David and you’re the only one with balls big enough to go after him.”
He stared down at me with an unreadable expression.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I snapped.
And I was. I had snuck out at night for months to kill those women in hope I would come across one of the Savages, always sticking to the same area. I always chose women who were followers of David.
It took me hours to take them apart and make sure they were in places journalists would find. Having to sneak in and out of the compound, ditch my bloody clothes, and hide a murder weapon got old—fast.
Tito and Grady were my lucky break. I had stumbled upon their secret meetings entirely by accident. I’d been trying to make it back to my room before Jinx woke up and saw the bloodstains on my hands.
Romero looked at his friends and did some sort of silent communication bullshit before taking a step back, letting me go. I sat up, just to be pulled off the table and spun around. My palms hit the wooden surface as he gripped me from behind.
The scene at the other end of the table had me clenching my jaw and balling up my fists.
Grimm had a machete resting on top of Arlen’s head. She had her eyes trained on me, looking rightfully terrified.
“What do you have to offer that would benefit me in any way?” Romero asked.
“I know where my uncle meets with his delegates.”
At my words, a pregnant silence ensued.
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. I’m going to make you a deal, Pixie. Listen to me very closely. You’re going to take me to this supposed meeting place.” He pressed himself into me and slightly lifted me up by the throat. “And you’re going to give me something I want…”
When he didn’t immediately finish his sentence, my thoughts ran wild. If he asked for where I’d been or where I came from, I couldn’t tell him—I wouldn’t.
Outside of that, I had no idea what he was playing at. I didn’t have anything. I had no home, no money, and no resources. Come to think of it, I was a bit pathetic. I truly had nothing and I felt the need to apologize for it.
“I’m sorry, but––”
“I want you.”
My brain froze, hitting an embankment of confusion. I was quickly becoming irritated with his blunt responses. The manhandling didn’t bother me much. I actually kinda liked it, though I preferred it to be under different circumstances. “You already—what do you mean, you want me? We just did that whole thing…upstairs.”
“I did that whole thing upstairs. You just sat there. Why wait to make it official? We even have three attentive witnesses.”
“Witnesses…you want me to marry you?”
“This goes deeper than marriage.”
His tone was so serious I fell off my train of thought. No one laughed or commented at his statement.
What could be deeper than a marriage?
If vowing to honor, forsake, and cherish till death wasn’t enough for this man, then he was a little too high maintenance.
I was so damn confused, and it was hard to think clearly when his hard dick was pressing into me through his jeans and Arlen’s life was a blink away from ending. I tried to articulate my uncertainty in a way that wouldn’t offend him and get me potentially killed along with her.
“You want all my knowledge and you want me in a way you’re being purposely vague about? That doesn’t seem like a very fair deal to me.”
“I’m not a fair person.”
“Oh, you don’t say? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Cali, let me tell you what’s about to happen if you don’t agree.”
He forced me to arch my back, making me feel every bit how hard he was.
“I’m going to make you watch my brothers destroy every hole on your friend’s body before they take off her head while I fuck your sweet little ass.
“And after all that, I’m still going to get what I want. I’d just treat you like all the other bitches that come here and beg to be a part of my world, a world they wouldn’t last sixty seconds in. Do you know what we do to them, pretty girl?
“We use them. We break them down until they have nothing left to offer. We take what was once whole and break it into a million unfixable pieces. Half the time, our dicks are still inside them when we snap their fucking necks.”
Holy shit. By the time he was done, his words had me soaked, damn near ready to ask him to fuck me again.
I didn’t want to be broken. The thought of breaking someone else with him, though…that sounded like my kind of party. But if I went down that road, I knew how it would end, which was precisely why I could never let him know just what it was he did to me, the way he made me feel.
Not to mention Arlen’s life was in my hands. If I thought for one second he was bluffing, I would call him out on it, but I knew he would act on his threat in a heartbeat. I could only hope she was strong enough to survive the ride of insanity we were about to climb on. After all, I would be fucking the conductor to ensure we survived.
I knew a deal was the equivalent of handing over my soul, but I didn’t have any soul to give anyway.
“I’ll do it.”
“Cali, it’s not worth it. Don’t you dare take that deal!”
I took it—and everyone in the room seemed to know something I didn’t.