His father remarried too soon—a woman he couldn’t see the truth about because of his grief.
As a young child Brian hadn’t understood why his father didn’t protect him from her. But as he got older, he realized how sick the man had been. He’d been too weak to protect Brian from his stepmother’s bitter anger. And once he was gone, things only got worse.
Somehow Brian knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, either. Seeing the marks on Mina had created an opposite reaction than he was used to. Knowing Lindsay, the doctor might say that perhaps it was because he wasn’t the one in control of the damage. He’d left marks on women worse than what he’d seen of Mina’s, but her marks weren’t created by his hands. The girls always came to him as blank canvases to paint his sadism across in splashes of bright red.
Those women were his foul stepmother all over again. Not a fucking mark on her. And every time he punished them, he wrote out his revenge across her back. Killing her once hadn’t been enough. In the dungeons he could make her pay over and over, make her scream in pain and beg him for mercy he was no longer capable of giving—mercy he didn’t want to give. Mercy was weakness. Just an opportunity for someone to swoop in and find the cracks in your soul to hurt you.
Except Mina… she wasn’t that perfect unmarked canvas. Mina had arrived already broken, and suddenly, somehow this woman he’d only just met was locked under those stairs with him, huddling in the cold darkness.
19
Mina only worried about five times that her food might be poisoned. When nothing dramatic happened, she let go of the fear. Besides, Brian wouldn’t have put something in it. She’d known the moment she looked into those cold dark eyes that he didn’t do stealth pain.
He wanted to be there to watch you suffer. He wanted to deliver it with his own hands.
Though it was late, Mina doubted everyone was asleep. Night was when the perverts played. And yet, as she descended the endless stairs—stairs that seemed to have multiplied since the time of her arrival—everything was quiet.
Small lights along the base of the walls illuminated her way. Off the entryway on the first floor was a hallway and another set of stairs that were nearly hidden. A basement? In a house with the purpose this one served, it was probably dungeons. That thought alone should have sent her scurrying back up to her tower.
But she felt drawn, like young Aurora on her sixteenth birthday, moving steadily toward her doom.
She shook herself out of the brief sense of hypnotism. It felt as if some force outside herself pulled her, but whatever was down there was unlikely to be anything she wanted to see.
Mina was about to go back upstairs, when she heard someone coming down the hall. Heavy, sure footfalls. Brian? She was blocked in. If whoever it was kept moving closer, they’d find her. The stairs were her only option.
She slipped down the winding steps as quietly as she could. Behind the stairs at the bottom was another door. When she pushed it open, the heat almost knocked her over. There was an incinerator inside. She shut the door quickly and stayed hidden, waiting.
Whoever she’d heard didn’t venture below ground. She felt so stupid now. She moved from behind the staircase to see the rest of what was kept down here.
A long, narrow corridor stretched before her. The floor was concrete, the walls stone. At equal intervals were doors. Five on each side. Straight ahead at the end was another door, this one larger than the rest.
Each door along the passageway had a window with bars, but the door at the end was solid. Mina peeked into one of the rooms—a dungeon, just as she’d suspected. Terrifying implements hung from hooks on the wall. Poles were bolted into the ceiling and floor, meant to tie people to. Shackles hung from one wall. There was a wooden crate filled to the brim with things she wasn’t sure about—most likely more implements of pain. There were spanking horses and Saint Andrew’s Crosses.
But this place didn’t look like a play dungeon. It wasn’t like the BDSM parties she’d been to. It wasn’t naughty games with a thin veneer of pretend danger—danger that didn’t materialize in public, but only later when she’d given her heart to someone.
Mina squinted at a dark spot on the wall and another on the floor. Jesus, were those blood stains?
The door at the end of the hallway opened, and she froze. It was the stupidest and most useless fear response. She was sure that normal people, upon encountering danger and extreme fear, ran. But Mina’s muscles responded by going on lock down. She wasn’t sure she was even breathing—as if she could simply be still and silent enough to go undetected until the danger passed.
Brian closed the door behind him, his stare holding her captive. She glanced down to note one of his hands was bandaged. They hadn’t been when she’d seem him before.
Move. Move! Run run run!
Her muscles might not want to respond to the danger, but her brain screamed at her, throwing all sorts of logic and common-sense sounding plans at her. Like run. And move. But still, her legs stayed frozen inside blocks of imaginary ice that refused to melt and give her freedom.
“What are you doing down here, Mina?”
While words ran through her mind like a psychotic rat darting down a tunnel, her lips refused to relay any of those words to the man moving closer to her in the confined hallway—which shrank smaller with each long stride he took.
He pressed her against the stone, his hands on either side of her, blocking her in. An unnecessary gesture.
He stared at her for a long time—minutes it seemed—his eyes roving, taking in each thread of the lounge-wear she’d gotten at a clearance sale. It had seemed modest when she’d bought it. Now she felt naked and exposed.
Then he did the oddest thing she’d ever seen a human being do. She’d only seen animals do it on nature shows, or vampires in horror movies. He sniffed her like he wanted to eat her. A moment later, he spun her around and pinned her arms above her head.
She shivered as he lifted the back of her shirt. His fingertips skimmed over her scars—running the length of the long ones, then lightly touching the cigarette burns.
She wanted to say something, anything. She wanted to struggle free of his grasp and run. The person standing with her in the dark dungeon hallway was more animal than man, and if even a man couldn’t find it in himself to be decent to her, she surely couldn’t trust the one that sent all her warning bells ringing.
He’d spoken maybe two sentences since he’d brought her food up. And he didn’t seem prepared to engage her in intelligent conversation now.
She squeezed her eyes shut as he pulled her shirt down and pressed his chest against her back, his cheek resting on her cheek. Her breathing came ragged as he held her this way, no words passing between them.
After an excruciating length of time, he released her. Her arms were sore from being held up so long.
His mouth brushed her ear. “Run.”
Her body had refused the order when it came direct from her own brain, but from his lips, it sent her scurrying up the stairs. She didn’t stop until she reached the tower, even though she felt her lungs might burst from the trip. Mina sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the door, waiting for it to open and hoping it wouldn’t, listening to the rapid thumping of her heart.