My father barked, “Continue.”
Benito grasped Natalie by the arms and threw her down, then straddled her hips to keep her legs from nailing him.
I knew full well why my father had left Benito with Natalie. Because he was the most depraved of the three. And when I heard Benito snarl, “How do you want it, bitch? Do you want it the way I gave it to your friend?” I knew the other reason he’d picked Benito was to torment Natalie one last time before she died.
Fight! I wanted to scream the word. To yell for her not to give in, but I knew if I did, all of this would be for naught. So I bit my tongue and swallowed the roar building in my throat as I heard Natalie’s clothing rip. As her screams echoed in my ears. As they melded with Benito’s growls and taunts.
And I prayed. I prayed harder than I ever had before.
“Your little distraction won’t stop this,” my father mocked. “There’s nothing up there to burn besides a few benches. You’ve lost.”
“No, you’ve lost,” Marco said in a low voice somewhere close.
My father sucked in a surprised breath.
“Don’t make a sound,” Marco said. I jerked my head around and stared up at the knife Marco held at my father’s carotid artery. “Or I’ll slit your throat.”
My father growled, “You’ll hang for this.”
“Possibly,” Marco whispered. “Now unchain him. Very slowly, and very quietly.”
They shuffled close, then the chains at my wrists dropped to the dirt floor with a thud.
I jerked out of my seat. Every instinct in my body screamed for me to rush to Natalie, but I resisted, because if I did, my emotions would overpower me and everything we’d planned would fail.
“Go,” I said to Marco, taking the knife from his hand and pressing it to my father’s throat from the front as I backed him to the wall.
“You don’t have it in you,” my father sneered, taunting me, even now when he was trapped.
I flicked the blade across his cheek, then pressed it back to his throat. Blood oozed from the four-inch gash. “Don’t test me. I promise you won’t like the results.”
A grunt sounded at my back, followed by a gurgling sound and Natalie’s bloodcurdling scream.
I couldn’t look. I forced myself not to turn. But I saw what happened in my father’s horrified eyes.
“It’s okay, Natalie. It’s me, Marco. It’s time to go.”
“Marco?” Natalie said in a dazed voice.
“Yeah, come on. We have to go.”
Footsteps sounded at my back but I still didn’t look to see that she was ok.
“Luc? Oh God, Luc!”
Her voice moved out into the corridor, and I heard her scream my name again, followed by Marco’s low voice trying to quiet her. But I focused on my father.
His eyes turned icy, roiling with contempt. “You are no son of mine. They’ll torture you for this. You think that flogging was bad? Wait until the Grande Cavaliere gets his hands on you. You’ll beg for death before it’s over.”
All the rage I’d lived with, all the misery he’d put me through, every ounce of torture I’d endured—mentally, emotionally, physically—it all gathered inside me like lava rushing up through an active volcano. And when it reached the peak, I didn’t even try to hold it in.
I tossed the knife toward the wall, drew my fist back and slammed it into his nose. He spun down the wall. I grabbed him again and plowed my fist into his face. Cracking his cheek, his jaw, the bones around his eye. Fury was my weapon, and I let it fuel me, I let it control me. I let it consume me.
My father sagged against the dirt floor and gasped, bloody and bruised, a shadow of the man I’d once known.
I stumbled back and stared at him, feeling nothing as I breathed deeply. No remorse. No pity. Not even a fraction of the emotion a son should feel for his father.
“Bastardo!”
My father hurled himself at me. Even battered and bloody he was strong, and he took me down hard.
I grunted as my back hit the dirt. His fist cracked against my jawbone, sending the coppery taste of blood across my tongue. My head snapped to the right.
He scrambled to his knees and drew his fist back again, but I was quicker. I hooked a leg over his and flipped him to his back. And then I slammed my fists against his face. One after another, until he was limp beneath me and groaning, begging for me to stop.
I stumbled off him, but only long enough to grab the rope Marco had left me by the door. Coming back to my father, I grasped him by the collar and dragged him toward the bed.
Benito’s limp body lay at an angle over the mattress, his lifeless eyes staring toward the wall, blood from his slit throat covering his body. I shoved my foot against him and sent him rolling off the far side, then I hauled my father up and onto the mattress where I made quick work of the rope, tying it around his wrists and ankles and looping one end to the rusted iron headboard so he couldn’t get free.
He groaned, struggled, and looked toward me with his swollen and bloodied face as I moved back to the door. “Lu...ci...ano.”
I grabbed the can of kerosene Marco had left with the rope. Kerosene my father and his sick Knights used to keep the torches lit down here when they chained beta kittens to these walls and mattresses and raped and tortured them as if they were nothing but animals.
“I told you I would make you suffer the way you’ve made countless others suffer.” I sprinkled kerosene all over Benito and my father.
My father sputtered and gasped as the liquid splashed into his mouth.
“I told you I’d kill you if you touched her.” I set the kerosene on the ground at my feet and pulled a cigar from my pocket. “You should have listed to me.”
His swollen eyes widened in true terror as I pulled out a book of matches, put the cigar in my mouth, and lit the end.
“N-no.” He struggled harder against the ropes holding him down. “N-no you c-can’t. I’m your f-father.”
I stared down at him. “You’re a monster. And your reign in this House is over.”
I dropped the smoldering cigar at his side. It fell against the mattress and smoked. But no matter how he wiggled and twisted, he couldn’t reach it. And he couldn’t put it out.
Tugging a match from the booklet, I struck it against the back. A single flame ignited in my hand.
“Please, son. I’ll do anything.” Panic lifted Antonio Salvatici’s voice two octaves. “Stop this madness at once!”
I stared into his eyes—eyes that were just like mine—and flicked the burning match toward the bed.
It ignited the kerosene with a pop and a burst of flames that sent me back several steps. My father’s ear-piercing scream echoed through the catacombs as the fire consumed him. I lifted a hand against the heat and moved farther back. And as our eyes met for the last time and I watched his flesh begin to melt, I knew I was finally free.
I didn’t wait around to watch him die. Coughing against the smoke already billowing through the cell, I turned for the corridor and tugged the collar of my shirt over my mouth.
I could have gone back up through the sanctuary of the old church on my parents’ property that camouflaged this torture chamber, but I wasn’t sure what I’d find there. And I was desperate to get to Natalie. So I used the old hidden tunnel Marco had reminded me of when he’d stopped me from going balls out on my own after Natalie and we’d hatched this plan. The same hidden tunnel we’d used when we were ten that we’d discovered one day by chance led from the woods near the ritual stone into the catacombs that ran under the chapel.