He enters a moment later, handing me a fork and knife made of heavy, real, but very tarnished silver. “Here, pet,” he says simply, and then he pulls out his chair and takes a seat next to me, pouring himself a glass of wine.
I look down at my own plate, unsure if I’m allowed to start eating before he does. He’s just sitting there, unmoving, and my stomach rumbles again. The food looks delicious, better than anything I’ve ever eaten, and I want to tear into it—but I also don’t want to anger him.
Several minutes pass, and he just sits there, frozen. I chance a look from under my eyelashes, glancing sideways at him. I see his hands are fisted on either side of his plate, the muscles in his forearms flexed hard, his jaw tight with the muscle there leaping. “I—can’t—” he suddenly grits out, teeth grinding, and grabs the wineglass so harshly I’m afraid it might shatter. “Je ne peux pas le faire putain!”
I don’t understand the snarled words in French, but the desperate, pained anger in his voice makes me recoil, staring as Alexandre drinks the wine quickly, tossing it back in a single swallow, and snatches his plate from the table. Without a single word to me, he stalks out of the room, not bothering to so much as look back at me as he leaves.
I kneel there, frozen, until I hear the slam of a door from upstairs. Confusion washes over me, but as several minutes pass and he doesn’t come back down, I fail to see the point in continuing to kneel there. Slowly, wincing from the ache in my legs, I reach for the plate and sit down at the table. I’m ready to spring back down to the floor at the slightest hint of a footstep, but there’s nothing. The house is silent, and after a moment more, I dig in.
It is, without a doubt, the best meal I’ve ever had in my life—and the strangest. I sit at an old dining table in a Parisian apartment, the cold wind outside slapping branches against the window, and look at the full moon hanging in the sky. It feels—almost peaceful, if I don’t think about why I’m here or what I’m missing.
It’s been a long day, and for just a moment, I give myself that. I eat my roast chicken alone at a table in Paris, and I breathe in the silence.
I have a feeling that it’s not going to last.
9
ALEXANDRE
The pain in my head feels almost unbearable.
You should have punished her for talking back. For asking for something. You’re spoiling her.
She didn’t understand. She didn’t deserve punishment.
You should know better. She’ll act out now. She’ll test you. If she gets hurt, it’s your fault.
You left her alone down there.
Idiot.
Fool.
You don’t deserve her.
“I know!” I shout the words aloud in my empty bedroom, the half-eaten plate of food abandoned on my side table. “I know,” I whisper again, sinking to the floor, my back against the bed as I drag my fingers through my hair, again and again, tearing at it.
I left Noelle alone. She could be doing anything, finding anything, behaving like a guest instead of a pet, like I allowed Anastasia to do.And look how that turned out.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit at that table, as if the past could be washed away in one day. It wasn’t Noelle kneeling there. It was Anastasia again. And with that came all the memories—the painful days of punishment, when I forced her to kneel no matter how much she hated it, her joy when she earned her way back into my favor, my forgiveness. The weeks that followed—the happiest weeks of my life…and then the second-worst night in all of it.
The night I hurt her beyond forgiveness. Onthattable.
I close my eyes against the onslaught of images, pressing the heels of my hands against them until they ache. I see it again over and over, her fear and horror, his astonishment, and Yvette standing there with a gun to Anastasia’s head. Another man inside of her, atmycommand, and all because Yvette poisoned me. She poisoned me with lies and whispers and made me violate the woman I loved with another man’s body.
She brought out the monster.
No,the insidious voice in my head whispers.If you’d listened, if you’d trained Anastasia, none of it would have happened. If you’d listened to her. She understood your weakness.
“It’s not weakness!” I scream into my hands, but the voice won’t stop, and now it’s rattling in my head again. It fucking hurts.
I didn’t want this. I didn’t want another woman that I’ll only come to hurt in time. I wanted to die, but no one will fucking let me, because I don’t even deserve that peace. For a brief moment, I’d thought that Kaito might have been right—that Noelle could be a fresh start. But I couldn’t even make it through a meal at that damned table. I couldn’t punish her for talking back.
Not even just a monster, but a weak one. You can’t even decide who you are, monster or man.
I grit my teeth and reach for the phone. I can’t do this. All I want is to be left alone, to let my demons drag me down without anyone else watching. Kaito can take her back.
“Alexandre.” Kaito’s voice purrs over the line after the second ring. Long years of business and sometimes-friendship earned me his personal number some time ago. “Did you receive your gift?”