“N-no, Master,” she stammered, even though what she wanted to say was, “Not yet.” A tremble spread through her limbs, and she couldn’t stop it.
“She’s terrified of you,” Lindsay said.
“She was terrified of me from the moment she first laid eyes on me. So nothing’s changed,” Brian retorted.
“Please listen to reason. It will go so much easier if you’ll just let me treat her. And you, too. We can make this work.”
“No! Do not interfere with us, or you will beg me for death by the time I’m finished with you. Are we clear?”
Lindsay nodded quickly, and Brian backed off. He grabbed Mina’s hand and dragged her to the main level, past curious stares, and down to the dungeons.
Once inside his room he shoved her onto the bed. The anger rose off him, threatening to materialize and strangle the breath from her.
“I’m going to take a shower. You’d better still be here when I get back.”
He slammed the bathroom door, and a few moments later the water began to run. The betrayal swamped her. Now more than ever she needed to know how much money it had taken for the doctor to pretend this was okay. She believed Brian would kill Lindsay if he didn’t stay away, and a dark part of her felt satisfied at the thought. Because this was the man who’d subjected her to Brian, the one person in this house she’d prayed to safely avoid until she left this place.
Brian’s room wasn’t much different than many of the other rooms at the house. There were shackles on the wall above the bed, but that was no different than her tower room. A fireplace stood against one wall, making the space feel almost cozy.
It was only the fact that it was underground and its close proximity to the dungeons that made the room feel malevolent and remote.
Besides the bathroom and the closets, there was another door she hadn’t noticed. It was locked with no window or peep hole to see what was behind it. Just a locked door.
She sat on the bed and hugged her knees to her chest and watched the black clock on the wall. Fifteen minutes passed. Any moment he would come out of that bathroom and whatever horrible thing he had planned for her would begin in earnest. But then another fifteen minutes passed and no Brian. The water kept running.
It was a long time to take a shower. She got off the bed and moved closer to the door. Had something happened to him? God, she hoped so. Please let her be lucky enough for him to have stroked out or had a heart attack right there in the bathroom. Please. Please.
But when she pushed the door open, she heard crying. No, it wasn’t crying. This was deeper and more profound. This was gut wrenching sobbing—the kind of grief expressed when the love of your life dies.
As she stepped inside, the sobbing stopped. But he didn’t turn around. The anger and fight seemed to have deflated out of him. At least for now. Brian sat in the glassed-in shower, his knees drawn to his chest, his back to her. The water must be freezing by now.
Something drove her on, pushing her closer, despite the clear danger he posed to her—the danger he posed to all living things. She let out an audible gasp when she saw his back. It was striped with scars as bad as hers. A few perhaps worse. Who could have ever done something like this to him?
The scars were old and stretched. That was when she realized. He’d only been a child. Growth spurts had stretched the scars, making them appear even more grisly than they might have, had they been created on a grown man.
Was this why he was the way he was?
The fear and instincts to fear fell away, and everything seemed to crystallize in front of her bright and clear like the answers to the universal questions had been elegantly written out for her in the drops of water still coming from the shower. It wasn’t about her anymore. All she felt in that moment was compassion. This was nothing like Jason. This was something different.
Brian heard the door creak as she slipped in—then her gasp when she noticed the mangled scars on his back. If another person had seen him like this, they would’ve been met with swift violence, but not Mina.
He’d spent the last half hour mentally berating himself for yelling in front of her. It hadn’t been aimed at her. He’d only been goading the doctor. The gall of Lindsay to think he could insinuate himself between them, that he could micromanage the relationship and keep his nose pressed against the glass recording and documenting everything. Never. Lindsay had no place or business here.
Still, he’d shouted in her direction. He’d lost control in front of her, and now she was even more afraid of him if that were possible.
He jumped when the shower door opened, and a moment later her warm hand was on his shoulder. He covered it with his own, and they stayed like that for a long time.
“The water’s cold,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She reached with her free hand and turned it off. The last bit of icy water gurgled as it slid down the drain.
“Go back to the bedroom, undress, and get in the bed. I’ll be there in a minute.” It was only early evening, but he was so tired, like every last ounce of energy and life had drained from him. It had been a long day. It had been a long week waiting for her. He just needed time to prove that whatever kind of monster he was, she didn’t ping his radar the same way.
Her hand tensed underneath his but she went without a word.
When the door clicked shut, he struggled to stand and grabbed a towel from the rack. He shivered when the cool air hit him. It was so weak for him to be in here crying like this, like a baby. Like the child he’d once been. When would it stop chasing him?
She won’t tell anyone.
Even if he permitted her to see the doctor, she wouldn’t tell. He’d felt it in the energy that had passed between them. She was his in a way that went beyond collars and captivity or any amount of money. She didn’t know it yet, but he’d felt it just now when she’d left a piece of her soul in his hands.
Brian gripped the sink, steeling himself against the emotions that still overwhelmed him. He’d been hurt that she’d hidden and ignored his call. But what had he expected? She didn’t know yet that he was her protector.
It made him feel powerful in a new way… instead of breaking things, holding them together. The itchy darkness that slithered under his skin was quiet and still. For now. He held no illusions that it was over, that somehow she’d saved him and pulled his soul from the brink. It wasn’t like that. The monster would call for someone else’s blood and tears, but now it demanded something more, something he’d never given to another soul and wasn’t sure he had the ability to give.
When he stepped out of the bathroom he felt her fear, and unlike the other women, it made a sick feeling knot inside his stomach because when he saw her afraid like that, all he could see was himself. Until this point in his history, the normal reaction for someone taking him back to that place under the stairs would have been anger, violence. Any reaction to make it go away. But hurting her felt like hurting himself, and he’d been hurt enough for one lifetime already.
Mina’s clothes were neatly folded in a nearby chair. She was under the covers, curled on her side facing the bathroom door. Wide, frightened eyes rose to his.
Brian took the towel from his waist and draped it over the chair with her clothes, then he joined her.