She’s quiet for several long seconds. Refusing to take his bait.
“Hmm… maybe I’ve got it wrong. Karl, continue.”
The blow comes from the back this time, right at the middle of my spine. Feels like the bastard grabbed a club from somewhere unseen. I arch forwards and roar in agony as my eyes roll back towards the warehouse ceiling.
“No!” Renata bleats. “Stop!”
I feel her scream as though it’s echoing inside me. When my head sags forward again, Rokiades is gazing at Renata with a jealous triumph in his eyes.
“What will you do to make it stop?” he inquires gently.
I want to tell her not to say a word. Let me suffer, I plead again. I can take it. I’ll take it for you.
But she won’t look at me. Can’t see the message in my gaze. He’s laid the perfect trap… and she’s about to talk right into it.
“Anything,” she says. The word flies out of her in an agonized moan.
I feel my chest constrict uncomfortably. It’s a feeling I don’t recognize. One I’m not used to. One I’m woefully unprepared to deal with.
“Then it’s simple,” he says. “Marry me. Freely and willingly. In front of my friends, family, and colleagues. That is my condition. If you accept it, the beatings and the torture will cease.”
“You’ll release him?”
He snorts with laughter. “No, of course not. I am no fool. Kian O’Sullivan is a valuable asset and I will not set him free. At least not yet. But he will be given a room with a bed and three meals a day. And of course… no pain.”
Renata flinches. Her eyes flit up to mine.
I shake my head. Imperceptibly, but I’m almost certain she notices. And yet she ignores it.
“Fine,” she says, without missing a beat.
I don’t even have the energy to argue.
Rokiades looks positively euphoric. “Yes?”
She nods. “I’ll marry you.”
“How wonderful,” he says. “Well then, we’re engaged. Officially. How lucky you are to be here for it, Kian! A moment to remember.”
He puts a hand on Renata’s shoulder. I want to fucking break it off.
“Now, Renata, my love, let us seal the promise,” he serenades. “Give me a kiss, glikia mu.”
She tenses visibly, but she doesn’t cringe away or refuse him. She takes a step forward and presses her lips to his cheek in the lightest of kisses before she backs away.
The Greek’s face twists into anger. “That is not worth the sacrifice I’ve just made for you,” he snarls. “Make me believe you mean it.”
The gap between this moment and the next feels like it lasts a lifetime. Renata standing there, tall and lithe and beautiful. Her hair like dark silk. My heart aches with how bad I want her. How wrong this is to make me watch this shit.
Renata closes her eyes.
Leans forward.
All the pain I’ve been dealt is nothing compared to this. To watching her give herself up to another man. To a fucking beast.
I’ll take a thousand needles to the skin, a thousand punches to the gut if it means never having to witness this shit.
But just as I go to turn my head away, my good friend Karl snatches my face between his meaty, bloodstained hands and forces me to look…
Right as Renata’s lips touch the Greek’s.
I strain against my bonds and try to roar, though almost no sound comes out and I’m tethered too tightly to my wooden boards to do much more than tremble the metal chain-links.
My vision goes red. The only thing I can see is all the ways I’m going to kill this motherfucker when I get free.
He doesn’t know it yet. And neither do I—I don’t know how I’ll get out of here, or when, or what it will cost me.
All I know is this: sooner or later, that moment will indeed come.
And when it does, I’m going to make him hurt.