But it’s not a lack of a viable escape that suddenly halts her movement. It’s recognition and then bleak understanding.
“I can’t stop it.” It’s not a question. It’s resignation wrapped up in a poisoned bow.
“No,” I say quietly. “But I can.”
“How?”
I answer her question with one of my own. “Do you love me, cara mia?”
“With all my heart.” She offers a watery smile.
“Do you love me enough to put your life in my hands?”
Her smile fades. “Luca, you’re scaring me.”
Good. She needs to be scared. Tonight will be a test of both of our strengths. “You turn eighteen tonight. Just before midnight, they will come for us.”
“Us?” she asks, hissing out the last consonant.
“It’s my job to prepare you.” At her horrified expression, I take her hand in mine and clarify, “To bathe you and dress you in your ritual whites.” Those bastards want complete purity. Too bad for them, hers has already been taken and branded onto my skin. “When we enter the sanctuary, I’ll be expected to join the congregation to observe the rite.”
“Rite.” She spits the word out with disgust. “You mean rape.”
“Are you strong enough to endure it, cara mia? Can you go somewhere else in your mind until it’s over?”
“Can you?”
That’s a question I can’t answer. I’ve purposely ignored thoughts of twelve other men seeing her. Touching her. Feeling the comfort and warmth of her pussy squeezing their cocks. My heart pounds as the black mist darkens to a smear of onyx fury.
Can you?
I’ll have to. It’s the only way she’ll not perish in flames.
I don’t answer her. Instead, I step forward and draw her close. Like the magnets we are, Madi folds into me, her chest fusing to mine in our own binding ritual.
A promise.
“When it’s over, do as they say. Let them lead you from the stone tablet back to our cabin.”
“I’m coming back to the cabin?” The spark of hope in her voice is like a dagger to my soul. “I thought you said they were going to kill me?”
I stare at the ground, wishing it would open up and drag me to hell. “This is my final test. I’m to ensure their seed remains within you while they build the funeral pyre and then deliver you to it.” Lifting my head, I slowly meet her frightened gaze. “I stole you, I end you. Ashes to ashes...”
“Oh God...”
“But it won’t happen, cara mia. There, in our cabin, where we share ourselves, where we fuck, I’ll take our revenge. I’ll make them all pay. I’ll spill blood for every tear you’ve shed.”
As God is my witness...
“And then?”
“And then, we leave. Just like you wanted, remember? We’ll run together. We’ll get lost together. We’ll save each other.”
As I repeat her own words to her, Madi’s tense body relaxes in my arms. “Where will we go?”
“Anywhere you want.”
But there’s still sadness etched in her troubled eyes. “Your father...there’s a darker evil in his soul than the others,” she whispers. “I see it when he looks at me. What if he has planned for a retaliation? What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t.”
“But if it does—”
“If it does, then you run, my sweet rose. You run and you don’t look back.” The words are like a sharp knife pressed against my throat. Sinking my hand through her hair, I twist the strands around my fingers while drawing her head back. I need her to hear me. I need her to promise. “You run until you can’t run anymore and then you get up and run again,” I demand, gripping harder. “Do you understand me?”
Those dark green eyes fill with tears, and as I release my hold, she wraps her arms tightly around my neck. “Luca, I’m scared.”
“Be strong and courageous,” I whisper into her long blonde hair. “Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” And neither will I.
The words are meant for her, but the message cradles us both. For twenty years, I’ve lived only to prove myself worthy of God.
Tonight, He proves Himself worthy of me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Luca
PRESENT DAY
“I remember,” she muses, her voice thick with the memory I know is chiseled as deeply into her mind as it is into mine. One that no amount of blood will ever erase. “I loved and trusted you then, Luca. For all the pain you caused me, you were all I had. You were my only light.”
“I have no light,” I tell her coldly. My patience has expired. I need her to expel this fantasy she had of me being any semblance of her solace and savior. I need her to shed the final remnants of Madigan Bailey so that Madi, my Madi, can look at me and see her true self in my eyes. “I’m a dark-souled monster, cara mia. A devil. The predator who saw you on your perfect little street in front of your perfect little house and took it all away. I stole your name and your life and left you in the hands of twelve rapists and murders.”
“No! You’re wrong,” she insists. “You saved me.”
“You saved yourself, Madi. You fled while I bled. They stole your identity, your mind, and your sanity, but my blood gave you freedom. One that has always come with a price you’re just now realizing.”
The defiant mask peels away from her face. The one I’ve watched her parade around to the world as if she fit within the lines of their ideals. Now, I watch her transform. My heart pumps a vicious rhythm as she sheds the business suit facade fused to her skin to reveal the woman I’ve craved for ten years.
The one I stood in the shadows and watched brutally murder eleven men.
And the one who forced me out of solitude two months ago when she tried to take the twelfth and final victim away from me.
Number twelve.
The Reverend.
My father.
The catalyst to her captivity and the poison in our veins.
“I became one of them,” she says flatly. There’s no emotion. No tears. Just flat acceptance. “I became a killer. The bloody walls... They weren’t a hallucination. That was their blood. It was on my hands because I became them,” she repeats.
“We both did. That parishioner’s blood flowed that night along with mine. You watched it. You felt it. You craved it. I saw the lust for his suffering in your eyes. You hesitated before running, not only because of me, Madi, but because your wrath needed to be fed.” My hand travels up her neck, my fingers dancing along the pulse thumping wildly in her throat. “That’s the thing about unfinished work, cara mia. It always finds its way to completion.”
TEN YEARS AGO
I’ll never get the sound of her screams out of my head. The pleas to God that fell on deaf ears. The cries of my name as, one by one, the twelve men brutally took her while the entire congregation watched and cheered.
I grip the wooden pew and sink my teeth into my tongue to stifle my curses, swallowing the blood as it pools in my mouth. I pretend it’s their blood on my tongue. I calm the beast inside me gnashing its teeth at its cage by imagining the pew is their necks, my hands crushing their throats and ending their reign.