They do work for him after all.
Turning the corner, I realize we’re close to the stairwell again.
I don’t know what comes over me, but the next thing I know, I’m darting down the hall toward it as if my brain has suddenly dropped off the face of the planet.
I barely make it halfway to the stairwell before a hand has closed over my upper arm and yanked me back around.
I slam straight into Valentine’s hard body with the momentum, his nails digging into my skin as he glowers down at me. Surprisingly, his expression isn’t one of anger … but disappointment.
“And to think I was starting to expect better of you,” he says, clicking his tongue in annoyance.
“I-I,” I stutter, not knowing how to explain myself as my mind comes whirring back to life, chastising me for trying something so catastrophically idiotic.
“Save your breath,” Valentine sneers, “I’d be a fool to think you didn’t need breaking in, and you’d be a fool to think I won’t enjoy breaking you.”
I let out an involuntary whimper as his grip tightens, and my shoulder begins to ache from the way he’s dragging me along to keep pace with him.
I’m sweating by the time Valentine stops in front of a door that I actually recognize.
He’s taken me back to his room.
Opening it, he tosses me roughly inside, and my knees crash painfully against the hard floor. As if I needed any more bruises.
“I don’t expect you to love me, but youwilllearn to obey me,” Valentine says, filling the door frame as I turn to look back at him. “The sooner you realize there’s no escaping your fate, the easier this will be on you.”
“This isnotmy fate,” I snap back, the pain and hatred I feel for this man emboldening my tongue. “They’ll come for me. They will save me.”
Valentine steps into the room, shutting the door behind him as I scramble back, shrinking away from him.
“Such naivety,” he says, looming over me from his great height. “No one is coming for you, girl. The sooner you realize that, the better. You are mine. Dante and his broken psycho cannot set foot in my house, let alone touch me. You have no one now. I am your everything.”
“You’renothingto me,” I hiss, spitting on his shiny black shoe like the idiot that I’ve come to realize I am.
I barely have time to blink before Valentine’s hand closes around my neck, dragging me up and off the floor as if I weigh nothing more than the robe still clutched in his other hand. I desperately claw at his wrist in an effort to ease the tension on my neck as he lifts me off my feet and up in front of his face.
Valentine’s eyes narrow, his head tilting slightly to the side as if deciding whether or not I’m really worth the trouble of keeping alive.
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” he says, breaking the stretching silence between us even as my eyesight begins to tunnel. “If you were anyone else, I’d snap your neck right here and now.”
“What’s stopping you from killing me?” I choke, what little strength I have starting to wane.
“Oh, I wouldn’t snap your neck to kill you,” he growls, his eyes flashing dangerously. “No. I’d simply immobilize you. I’d destroy you from the inside out, in ways you can’t even begin to imagine … and I’d make sure you could feel every second of it. Your screams would haunt the nightmares of the dead. Cross me again, Evelyn, and not even Dante’s love for you will hold me back a moment longer.”
He tosses me back and onto the bed where I roll over onto my stomach, gasping for air as I clutch at the sheets. It takes me several long seconds to process what Valentine’s just said as he crosses to the other side of the room.
I watch as he tosses the black robe over the back of a chair and unlocks a small box that I hadn’t noticed before.
“Why did you say that?” I ask, my mind slowly piecing my thoughts together.
“Say what?”
“That Dante loves me.”
Valentine’s shoulders tense, his back still to me as a moment of silence passes between us.
“I didn’t say that,” he finally answers, the tension only seeming to grow stronger.
I open my mouth to argue, but then quickly snap it shut as I remember the threat that he made only seconds ago. I don’t need him to repeat what he said, or even explain it … the very fact that he’s now unwilling to admit that he said it is proof enough.