Page 48 of Vow of Darkness
I flinch. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“You shouldn’t have left in the first place,” he snaps. “It was naïve of you.”
“Why are you so cold to me?” I whisper. “You touch me. Put your hands and mouth on me. But you don’t let me in. Stop playing with me, Gabriel. It hurts.”
For a moment, shame flitters across his face and he looks away from me so I can’t see it for long but I like knowing he has emotion. It makes him more human.
“Let’s just go home.” He backs away from the car he hit and drives off. The owner of the other car cusses us out.
“Shouldn’t we have stayed?”
“I’ll have my men deal with his insurance. It’s fine.”
We drive in silence and arrive back at the gothic mansion like nothing has changed between us. I guess nothing has. Gabriel is still his cold, stoic self.
Once we get inside, he orders me to go into my room.
“You’re not the boss of me. But I’ll go into my room to show you that you can trust me. Maybe if you trust me enough, you won’t feel the need to control me so much.” I walk away with my head held high, feeling Gabriel’s eyes on my back the entire time.
Chapter Twelve
Aurora
In the night, I jerk awake, my heart pounding. I look around my dark room but I don’t see anything. It’s all calm and quiet and yet…
Getting out of bed, I tiptoe to the door. For some reason, I feel like I need to be quiet. Just an instinct.
I thought I was getting used to being in Gabriel’s mansion. Finding a sort of comfort. Maria and I talk a little bit. Alex is nice. Charles is distant but that’s fine enough.
But right in this moment, I feel like something is wrong. Uneasy.
I shiver in my thin nightgown. Gabriel never provided me with warmer pajamas. Even though it’s the summer time, there’s a chill in the air.
My body moves without me thinking and I end up downstairs, facing the hallway that leads to Gabriel’s dungeon. The place he kept my father. The place I made the deal that would sign my life away forever.
I don’t want to move. Everything in me is screaming to not go further. But then I hear a scream come from downstairs. Down in the dungeon.
Gabriel is torturing another person. I still remember the first time. I passed out right away but tonight, I’m going to listen. I’m going to be brave. Why exactly is Gabriel torturing people? Last time had to do with Giovanni who I still don’t know anything about. Is it the same thing or something different?
With a deep breath, I head to the large, imposing door and push it open. Fortunately, it doesn’t make a sound.
I strain to listen into the darkness. The sound of a man screaming and crying tugs at my heart. Does this man deserve it? My father didn’t.
But then I think of George and how he kept trying to assault me. Gabriel killed him like it was nothing and it didn’t bother me like it should.
“Where is Giovanni?” Gabriel screams. I flinch. So this is about Giovanni again. But who is he? Why is Gabriel going to this extent to torture people to find out?
“I am not going to tell you,” the man responds before he lets out a sharp scream. I don’t want to see what Gabriel is doing to the man. My husband has a deep, intense darkness in him that scares me.
The shameful part though is that it also excites me.
“I will keep hurting you, Mark. It will never end. So just tell me where Giovanni is and this can all be over.”
“Never,” he snarls. Another scream leaves him. But then something shocking happens. He… laughs. “You are pathetic, Gabriel. You will never get revenge for your family so give it up.”
I freeze. His family? My mind flashes back to the photo I saw in Gabriel’s room. The one he doesn’t put up for anyone to see… not even himself.
“Giovanni will die for what he did to them. And you will die first if you don’t tell me anything.”
