DOMINIC
With the tidbits of info Levin had been able to get from Celeste so far, I decided I should look deeper into things, which was why I was sitting at the palace a couple days after my fight with Hail to talk with my father.
“You haven’t been doing much with this place,” Father barked as we strode to the dungeon area. “Are you even trying to get women in here?”
“I’m considering running this as a legit, full-service business where the women actually want to be here,” I answered as we stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
I could already hear soft sobs in the darkness. I hated the way it made me feel. Before Bianca, I may have overlooked this shit, but now I felt everything—always putting her in these women’s places in my head and hating the thought of it.
Father glared at me. “Explain to me the revenue if you’re paying these women. What I have set up here is absolutely free. Everything is profit.”
“Except the sins,” I said evenly. “Those have a price to pay.”
“I daresay the devil would enjoy our kind, Son. We’d be rewarded, so where’s the sin in that?” He turned back and marched into the dimly lit room.
A few things had changed since I’d been here last. I’d stayed out of here since he’d shot a girl named Macy on my lap after she’d sucked my dick. I’d tried to calm her, and he’d viewed it as weakness and had sprayed her brains all over me.
Now, there was a decked-out stage with various BDSM contraptions on it and small tables around it so sick fucks like him could watch the torture. Because it would be torture. None of these girls were consenting. Consenting girls didn’t cry.
“What are we doing down here?” I asked as he settled at a table and gestured for me to sit.
I pulled the chair out and sat, watching him.
“You’ve agreed to everything the party planner has sent. She seemed surprised when I spoke to her on the phone, claiming she’d never had a bride and groom be so agreeable before.”
I nodded tightly. “The reception doesn’t matter to me. It’s all fluff. None of it makes a difference.”
“So you haven’t let your wife make any decisions regarding your celebration?”
“No,” I said. “I make the decisions. Not her. She’s not in a place to offer a say. She’s simply my prize, a piece to my empire.”
Father sat back and studied me, trying to see through my damn lie.
Fuck, when had she become more than a piece of the puzzle? The answer was easy. The first fucking moment my eyes locked on hers. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but thinking back, it was definitely then.
“Will she wear white despite the fact you’ve defiled her… first?” There was a note of poison in his words. He was still pissed I’d fucked her before he could taste her.
The men in my family had absurd traditions, that was for sure.
“She’ll wear white,” I confirmed.
He nodded. “It’s all a lie.”
I swallowed and remained calm. “What’s all a lie?”
“This life.” He gestured around us. “We aren’t human, you and me. We’re monsters cut from the same cloth. The same fabric that’s been cutting out sinners for centuries. You know, your grandfather fucked your mother in front of me before I married her. Moments before. He made me watch. She wept, pleading for it to stop. His men stood observing with me. My men. He fucked her so hard she bled. Luckily, he’d lifted her dress so as to not ruin the material.”
My guts churned with the knowledge of my mother’s defilement. I remained still, not revealing an ounce of my anger.
“Then she got up, dried her tears, and said I do at the altar. I got what was left, which wasn’t much. She was a good woman…until she wasn’t. Always trying to run and find a way out. It took over her mind. She fought me every chance she could.” He grew quiet as a soft sob sounded out in the distance.
What a fucked-up heart-to-heart.
“I wasn’t prepared for how I felt watching my father fuck her. In a way, I wondered if she secretly enjoyed it. In fact, I oftentimes believe she had. He’d made her come for him. I wasn’t much older than you when we married, so I didn’t know as much about a woman’s body then as my father did. But I learned.”
I stared at the monster in front of me, wondering when he’d drop the bomb he was setting the stage for.
“Our traditions make us stronger, Dominic. You may see it as foul and immoral, but I promise you, it’ll make you stronger.” He set his dark gaze on me.
“This is you telling me you’re going to fuck my wife.”